Pennsylvania AG Kathleen Kane proclaims innocence, blames 'Porngate' backlash for charges
Kathleen Kane’s booking photo. Photo from the Montgomery County District Attorney.
Speaking publicly for the first time about criminal charges accusing her of leaking grand jury information and then lying about doing so, Pennsylvania attorney general Kathleen Kane proclaimed her innocence in a Wednesday press conference.
Although she blamed political fallout from last year’s “Porngate” email scandal for the charges, “My defense will not be that I am the victim of some old boys’ network,” Kane told reporters. “It will be that I broke no laws of the Commonwealth. Period.”
Six state employees were fired over sexually explicit emails exchanged from 2008 to 2012 over state computers and two more resigned, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. In the attorney general’s office, 23 workers were reprimanded, Kane said.
Many of the emails at issue were never made public and Kane said some involved in their distribution have sought to damage her reputation, assisted “wittingly or unwittingly” by prosecutors and judges.
“You may be asking why would individuals go to such lengths to conceal their involvement in this email chain,” she said. “But make no mistake, the stakes for these individuals, whose participation in this email chain has remained concealed behind the cloak of grand jury secrecy, could not be higher.”
Kane is the first Democrat to be elected as attorney general in Pennsylvania, according to the Inquirer.
Updated at 4:11 p.m. to adjust the wording of the headline.
