First Deputy Attorney General Bruce L. Castor Jr. speaks during a news conference in Harrisburg, Pa., Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2016.
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She won in a landslide, becoming the first Democrat and first woman elected to the office, and earned early praise from Democrats for refusing to defend a legal challenge to the state’s law banning recognition of same-sex marriage.
Kane was convicted Monday of charges of perjury, obstructing administration of law, official oppression, false swearing and conspiracy.
Castor is a former district attorney and commissioner in Montgomery County.
In an episode that seemed more likely at a mob trial than a statehouse corruption case, Kane’s political operative described being taken to a parking garage, stripped of his phone, keys and wallet and searched for a recording device before a lunch meeting with the attorney general.
However long he remains state attorney general, though, Castor would not have a role in the Cosby case, which is being handled by county prosecutors.
Kane would not talk about her legal issues or her trial that ended Monday night in a guilty verdict, but she did talk about her work as the state’s top cop and listed some accomplishments as she spoke with the media before starting her last day on the job.
Kane faces jail time. On Tuesday, Wolf called Kane’s situation “unfortunate” and said her decision to resign “is the right one”.
Then four years later, she received a big endorsement from former President Bill Clinton in her primary race for Attorney General.
Instead, Kane dragged the state through an expensive and embarrassing tenure, of which her resignation was likely the most appropriate step taken.
In an August 10, 2015, statement, Kane said that the criminal charges launched against her were part of ongoing political retribution for requesting that the emails be released to the public, a request that was blocked by Judge William Carpenter in what she called “a tortured interpretation of our state grand jury secrecy law”.
Ultimately, the 50-year-old Kane was undone by what prosecutors portrayed as a personal vendetta for her critics.
Now, Kane is facing jail time and can not even practice private law after losing her license.
But the judge would not allow Kane’s lawyers to raise the email scandal in court as the motive to prosecute her.
Pennsylvania’s attorney general is facing growing pressure to resign after her conviction on charges she abused her office’s power to smear a rival and tried to cover it up.
Castor has not received any pledges of support from Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf or top lawmakers.
The state Senate’s Republican majority leaders had threatened a vote to order her removal from office under a constitutional provision never used in modern history.
Kane doesn’t have to resign immediately and could potentially stay in office through January 17, when a new attorney general will be sworn in. She was convicted of leaking confidential information then lying about it.
Suspecting a former state prosecutor leaked the story to the Inquirer, Kane sought payback and ordered aides to leak secret investigative information to the Philadelphia Daily News created to show that that prosecutor had never filed charges in a 2009 probe into a Philadelphia NAACP official, prosecutors said.
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September 2015 – The state Supreme Court suspends Kane’s law license in light of the criminal charges against her.
