Reports: Kathleen Kane Could be Charged Thursday
After months of speculation and waiting, TribLive is reporting that Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane is expected be charged on Thursday with crimes stemming from her leak of grand jury information to a Philadelphia newspaper. 6ABC reports the same from its own sources.
Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman has been weighing a grand jury’s recommendation that Kane be charged. “The grand jury said Kane lied in testimony before the panel and tried to cover up her actions,” TribLive reported. “It recommended charging her with perjury, criminal contempt, obstruction of justice and official oppression.”
Ferman did not comment. Kane’s spokesman in Harrisburg denied knowledge of forthcoming charges, as did her attorney.
As we’ve previously reported: The grand jury found Kane leaked documents about a 2009 investigation of Jerry Mondesire, then the head of the Philadelphia NAACP, through a political operative to then-Daily News reporter Chris Brennan. No charges came of the investigation, but details of the investigation were revealed in a Brennan-authored story for the Daily News on June 6, 2014. (Brennan has since moved to the Inquirer.) The document was redacted of all but two prosecutor names — one being Frank Fina, a former member of the attorney general’s office (he moved to the office of Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams) with whom Kane had been feuding.
Kane leaked the info despite being warned ahead of time by staffers that release of the 2009 grand jury information was probably illegal and violated grand jury rules, the grand jury found.
This spring, Philly Mag’s Robert Huber profiled Kane’s rise from unknown mid-state lawyer to the state’s first female attorney general and subsequent decline into scandal.
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