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Pa. Records Law Doesn’t Cover AG Porn Emails, Court Rules
The attorney general is also facing criminal charges, including perjury and conspiracy, for allegedly leaking secret investigative information to a newspaper to embarrass her detractors.
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Kane’s office spokesman said Kane is reviewing the ruling and will likely announce her plans in a written statement next Wednesday.
Kane’s previously made public dozens of emails with content that ranges from juvenile humor to sexually explicit images.
She claims that the charges against her resulted from her willingness to take on what she called the old boys’ network of Pennsylvania law enforcement.
The Inquirer a year ago asked the attorney general’s office to provide copies of pornographic or otherwise inappropriate emails shared among a number of agency employees and former employees. The request covered all employees since 2005.
Though Kane has released a few of the emails – and has insisted publicly that she wants to make all of them public – her office fought the newspaper’s right-to-know request.
“All of the states that have addressed the issue have concluded that the contents of government employees’ personal emails are not information about the affairs of government and are, therefore, not open to the public under their respective open records acts”, wrote Judge Dan Pellegrini for the majority. Kane challenged that decision in court. The emails are not public records just because they were sent through agency accounts, he wrote.
A one-judge dissent by Judge Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter said content isn’t the only variable.
“For emails to qualify as records “of” an agency, we only look to see if the subject-matter of the records relate to the agency’s operations”, he wrote.
Her position on whether they should be made public has been elusive.
It is unknown whether The Inquirer will appeal the state court decision to the Supreme Court. All had ties to a former prosecutor in the office with whom she had been feuding.
Bruce Beemer, the first deputy attorney general, said he believed the office was operating legally even though the state constitution requires the attorney general to hold a law licenses.
Another high-court justice then abruptly retired after papers revealed his involvement and was suspended by his colleagues.
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Beemer and three other top lawyers in the OAG testified before the special state Senate committee considering whether to remove Kane in light of her suspended law license.