The testimony by Bruce Beemer, the state’s former first deputy attorney general, kicked off day two of Kane’s trial on perjury, obstruction and other charges related to the leak that prosecutors say was meant to settle a political score.
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Long before the trial started there were rumblings coming out the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office concerning a hostile work environment.
“I was aware the attorney general and Mr. Morrow were trying to frame me”, King said.
That story focused on a 2009 grand jury investigation involving former Philadelphia area NAACP leader J. Whyatt Mondesire.
When he told Kane they needed to investigate, she said it was “no big deal” and they had “more important things to do”, he said. But he says he’s telling the truth now.
Morrow, who has been granted immunity in exchange for his cooperation with prosecutors, admitted from the witness stand that his story has changed and evolved over time.
For months, a linchpin of Kane’s defense had been her contention that she was a “stay at home mom” in 2009 and had never signed a secrecy oath for cases from that period.
Testifying as a prosecution witness under a grant of immunity, Morrow said that he and Kane, after learning that there was a grand jury investigation into the leaked material, met in August 2014 and “conspired” to put together a story alleging that neither knew how the leaked materials got into the hands of a Daily News reporter who used it as the basis for a story. “I lied in the grand jury to protect Kathleen”. Prosecutors say she did so to retaliate against Frank Fina, whom she blamed for a March 2014 story that detailed her decision not to charge Philadelphia legislators accused to taking bribes.
They also played a phone call intercepted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on April 22, 2014 in which Mr. Morrow tells a friend that Ms. Kane was coming “unhinged” and asked him to deliver a package to a reporter that contained information that Frank Fina had “killed” the 2009 invesigation into J. Whyatt Mondesire.
From the witness stand Mr. King accused Ms. Kane – a couple of times – of trying to set him up and pin a crime on him.
King, who had dated Kane in law school, said he took a steep pay cut to spend a year in public service as her top deputy.
First-term Democrat Kathleen Kane is on trial on charges of perjury and obstruction.
Less than two months later – after King had submitted his two-weeks notice – King said he saw the Philadelphia Daily News article detailing the Mondesire investigation.
The defense says the material wasn’t confidential.
He admits he passed an envelope from her to a campaign consultant that eventually reached a newspaper. Adrian King, 1st Assistant Deputy A.G. before beamer, testified he ultimately left the office for private practice because he felt he was being set up for the fall over the leaked information.
Farber implied the testimony Morrow provided Thursday, claiming Kane had knowledge about the documents that were exchanged, can not be trusted since he lied previously under oath. Among these was Kane’s assertion, read from a transcript from the investigation into her actions, that she released the material to the newspaper herself because her press office had been “dismantled”. Security agents took Morrow’s cellphone, keys, and wallet, patted him down for body wiretaps, and then brought him to meet Kane.
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