Dan Gleiter/PennLive.com Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane leaves court after the second day of her trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown on Tuesday.
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“Prosecutors allege in court documents that Kane directed the release to embarrass former state prosecutors Frank Fina and Marc Costanzo, whom she blamed for providing information for a March 2014 article in The Philadelphia Inquirer that blamed Kane for ending a bribery probe against city Democrats”.
After working in the Lackawanna County District Attorney’s Office and then stepping down to raise her two sons, Kane, who had never run for public office, set her sights on the state Attorney General’s Office, according to Shargel, after determining that “the criminal justice system was broken”.
A jury of six men and six women has been seated to hear the perjury and obstruction trial of Pennsylvania’s attorney general. “Revenge is best served cold, those were her [Kane’s] words”, Special First Assistant District Attorney Michelle Henry told jurors at the start of her opening statement.
But defense lawyer Gerald Shargel promised a bruising cross examination of Morrow and other former top aides to Kane.
To the contrary, Kane is the victim of a former first deputy and political consultant who lied repeatedly to hide their own roles in the leak, her defense argued before the jury in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court.
Steele has been laying the foundation for his case against Kane, having county Detective Paul Bradbury read to the jury much of the evidence that he found in his investigation to bring charges against the state’s top prosecutor. The judge in the case told jurors Kathleen Kane’s perjury trial should last about a week.
Kane has hired a small army of private attorneys to represent her. While there, he was given a series of secrecy oaths, which Kane had signed signifying she would keep secret all information from grand juries.
“I will not allow them to discredit me or our office.this is war”.
“She worked hard to achieve her success”, he said, accusing prosecutors of “trying to make up a feud”.
The judge ordered jurors and lawyers to reconvene at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday when lawyers will give their opening statements to the jury and witnesses will begin providing testimony. She lost her law license over the charges and did not seek re-election this year. King alone decided what to release, her attorneys have said. Bradbury from his 2015 investigation at Kane’s Harrisburg office.
Kane visibly bristled at the defense table when Beemer referred to her as “the defendant”.
Bruce Beemer, who headed the criminal section, testified that he was stunned when he saw the Daily News article because he knew the Mondesire leak must have come from their office. “As I reviewed article a little bit more, then I realized there’s a lot going on here and a lot of problems and one of them certainly, the grand jury”. “What I said to Adrian was, ‘People need to know about this.’ He agreed”.
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He is sitting with Kane’s family as this trial begins to unfold.
