Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced on Tuesday that she is stepping down, Reuters reported, following her conviction in a perjury trial.
Advertisement
“I have been honored to serve the people of Pennsylvania, and I wish them health and safety all their days”, Kane said in a short press release Tuesday afternoon. While she did not find that politics played a role in that investigation, she did discover that former state prosecutor Frank Fina and other officials were exchanging mildly pornographic emails on state computers, and informed the press.
But on Monday, she was found guilty of nine charges, including perjury and obstruction.
Kane used her discovery of a disgusting chain of racist, sexist, and homophobic emails, which had been traded among state officials all the way to the Supreme Court, as a tool to make her enemies look bad.
Castor says his first priority will be to continue what he has been trying to do all along since becoming Kane’s number two: restore public confidence in the work that the office of attorney general does, and restore morale in the ranks of the office.
The truth, as bluntly laid out by Montgomery County prosecutors, was much simpler than that. “The evidence was overwhelming in that regard”.
Even a former Kane supporter, Northumberland County Democratic Chairman Rodger Babnew, said last week’s four-day trial surfaced disappointing details about Kane’s conduct.
Those accusations of revenge compelled judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy to warn Kane at the conclusion of her trial Monday to refrain from any further attempts at revenge.
Assistant District Attorney Michelle Henry joined the chorus of those denouncing Kane’s actions. She schemed to discredit a prosecutor she blamed for embarrassing her-and she meant business.
She was considered a rising star in the Democratic party after her 2012 election as the first female Pennsylvania attorney general.
She faces up to seven years in prison on the most serious charge when she is sentenced on October 24.
Castor knew he would be the acting Attorney General after she told him she was resigning, a decision he said needed to be made.
“We believe that our defense was compromised and we will fight that till the end”, Shargel said.
She won in a landslide, becoming the first Democrat and woman ever 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. “If there is a Mr. Hyde to her Dr. Jekyll, I haven’t seen it”. However, prosecutors produced a secrecy oath she signed the day she took office.
Kathleen Kane after a preliminary hearing in Norristown, Pennsylvania on August 24, 2015.
Kathleen Kane’s resignation is mandated by state law.
Her political consultant described being taken by her security agents to a Philadelphia parking garage to be frisked for a wire – and stripped of his wallet, cellphone and keys – all so he could have lunch with Kane at a hotel.
Advertisement
She defeated Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.) in the party primary, despite his endorsements from union officials and numerous state’s elected Democrats.
