She was unavailable for comment, but since the investigation broke, she says she has broken no laws, and that her prosecution was engineered by former assistants in her office she exposed for exchanging pornographic and racially insensitive emails. Kane has said she’s innocent of the charges, and in a speech last month said her official capacity is under attack from people who don’t want her to release pornographic emails that implicate them. He added that a “constant” stream of Right-to-Know requests for the emails has led Kane to conclude she must release the unsavory messages in their entirety. Last week, Kane’s staff was in Commonwealth Court fighting a Philadelphia Inquirer request to see the emails, arguing they are not public records.
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The slow-motion implosion of former Democratic rising star Kathleen Kane continued Monday, as the state supreme court suspended her law license. She was charged with perjury, obstruction and other counts. In this case, that will be October. 21, he said.
The petition to suspend her license is related to the criminal case, which Kane says was spurred by former prosecutors afraid she’d reveal the existence of the pornographic emails.
“It has always been her intent to release all of the emails that she thought she could release”, Ardo said. In fact, the grand jury said that Kane failed “to examine a wealth of internal documents – documents created by and in the possession of the [Office of the Attorney General] – that contradicted” her public claims and a formal report made to the grand jury about the undercover sting investigation.
“Her concern has faded”, said Ardo. But he said he doubts the review would be completed this week.
The state’s Democratic governor, Tom Wolf, is among those who have called for Kane to step down, and his spokesman said that the court’s decision is “further proof that [she] can no longer perform the duties of her office”.
Alas, the high court also noted in its order that it “should not be construed as removing Respondent [Kane] from elected office”, despite a provision of the state constitution which provides that the attorney general must be a member of the Pennsylvania bar. Those included email conversations about criminal investigations.
But that scrubbing effort, Ardo said, will let all names of participants stand, in furtherance of Kane’s intention to put everything associated with the office’s once-secret, pornographic e-mail club out there for public scrutiny. The images ranged from graphic sex acts to scantily clad women to pant-less men.
The court notified Kathleen Kane on Tuesday that her suspension would take effect October. 21. The order effectively strips Kane of the full official powers of her office, and could trigger an unprecedented legal and constitutional chain reaction involving all three branches of state government and cost her the $158,764 job.
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Kane and her lawyers did not say Monday whether she would appeal or challenge the order, which was issued through an emergency process usually reserved for lawyers who are brazenly stealing from clients or behaving erratically in court.
