Former Pennsylvania attorney general seeks to avoid jail

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Former Pennsylvania attorney general seeks to avoid jail

Maryclaire Dale, Associated Press

Updated 11:23 pm, Sunday, October 23, 2016


PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Supporters of Democrat Kathleen Kane once hoped the ambitious lawyer might reach the U.S. Senate.

But the one-term Pennsylvania attorney general will instead learn Monday whether she is going to jail over a perjury and obstruction case that stemmed from a political feud.

Democrat Kathleen Kane, 50, argues that the loss of her career, law license and reputation is punishment enough. She has asked a judge in suburban Philadelphia to sentence her to probation or house arrest so she can be home to raise her two teenage sons.

However, prosecutors call her crimes "egregious" and will push for jail time. They say a paranoid Kane ruined morale in the 800-person office and the wider law enforcement community through a calculated scheme to embarrass rival prosecutors who had left the office.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Former-Pennsylvania-attorney-general-seeks-to-10155076.php

[Mc Mike]

1. My state's A.G.

The first Dem A.G., since the position became elective (I think 1980). It was reported that a Dem named Eisenhower defeated Corbett in '04, initially in the papers. Then there was a sudden reversal, and Corbett "won", which was odd. It looks like the repug A.G. kicked off his time in office with election fraud. It seems like one mechanism the repugs in the state use to keep a control edge in PA despite being a minority in the state, is that they always have the A.G.s office, no matter whether the Dems take the state gov, or not.

Corbett ignored the pedophile ring around noted repug bigmouth Paterno, and never prosecuted one case of "voter fraud". When he became gov, he pushed for mandatory t.v. ultrasounds, ("Close your eyes" Corbett), pushed voter i.d. laws to prevent "rampant voter fraud" in PA, cut a billion from the education budget.

The speed with which Kane got investigated, charged, and convicted is interesting, because of how slow the cases against repug pols seem to go, nationwide. She goes down, McDonnell in VA doesn't. DeLay in TX gets a reversal. Edwards is out, forever, and his betrayal of his wife was unforgivable, but the repugs are running a triple adulterer for prez now, like they did in '08. We get to see and hear Gingrich, Giuliani from the family values party weigh in on the issues, all the time. Drump, Christie, Perry, LePage, Walker, Scott should all be in prison right now, but "these cases take time." Sometimes.

Kane didn't ask rank and filers like me for donations when she ran. Raised my eyebrows at that, a bit. But what she did was investigate how come there were no investigations from Corbett into certain PA crimes, no Paterno Sandusky, no investigation into a missing DA, no investigations into repug state Senators and Reps, but big ones into Dem Reps. She ran into a brick wall of Judges on both sides of the political divide, and was accused of leaking their communications and perjuring herself by denying it.

The repugs said she leaked like a repug congressional committee investigating a Dem pol does. And that is the greatest crime of all, completely unforgivable.

I hope she stays out of jail, and Josh Shapiro wins the A.G. election this time around.

[DeminPennswoods]

2. She got more votes than anyone, incl Obama

Kane actually got more votes 4 years ago than Obama. A big part was PSU alumi who were (and are) angry about the whole Sandusky investigation. She promised to investigate why Sandusky wasn't discovered/charged earlier. She hired an outsider to do the investigation. It was thought the Corbett era emails that were automatically deleted after 6 months were unrecoverable, but the investigator found a techie who was able to recover all the email. In those recovered emails were a bunch of mysoginistic, racists and soft porn emails sent between and among judges, attorneys and state civil servants. That lead to one of Corbett's cabinet secretaries resignation along with a couple others in his admin as well as 2 state supreme court justices.

The whole case is pretty complicated, but the short version is the original asst DA, Frank Fina, who prosecuted Sandusky was forced out when Kane took office. It was a blood fued between them. The MontCo DA who brought the charges against Kane and the judge who oversaw the case were/are both partisan Rs. The charge was flimsy, leaking GJ testimony from 2009, and would likely never have been filed if not for the feud. The ironic thing is that the entire Sandusky GJ report, which was supposed to be secret, was posted accidentally on the AG's website for at least a day before being pulled down. No one was ever charged or prosecuted for that.

The bottom line is that altough it was accidental, Kane ended up really exposing the whole "good old boys" law enforcement and judicial network. She should get a medal, not a jail sentence.

[Mc Mike]

3. I voted for her, and agree that she should be A.G., and her investigations should continue.

I didn't know she got more votes than Prez O.

I'm definitely on her side instead of her rightie opponents and the co-opted 'bi-partisan' types on our side, who somehow come down on the side of the repugs.

I do my best to not vote for any candidates who cross file, if it can be helped.

BTW, thanks for that heads up on VotesPa. I wasn't able to view the voter rights pdf you referred to, but did look around the site.

[DeminPennswoods]

4. Votespa is on Twitter too

Happy to help. Votespa is on twitter. They have the intimidation info there as well.