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AG Kane pushes back over e-mails

HARRISBURG — The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office pushed back Wednesday on suggestions it did not provide all the offensive or explicit e-mails linked to state Supreme Court Justice Michael Eakin during inquiries into his conduct last year.

Attorney General Kathleen Kane contended that an internal review found her office provided electronic versions of Eakin’s e-mail exchanges including questionable content to a Supreme Court-appointed lawyer and officials from the state agency that investigates allegations of misconduct.

Both ultimately cleared Eakin. But the Judicial Conduct Board ended its investigation Dec. 9, before all of the allegedly offensive or explicit e-mails were made available, a Kane spokesman said.

Eakin is alleged to have swapped some of those e-mails with prosecutors.

Earlier this month, Kane described some of the e-mails from Eakin’s private Yahoo account in the name of “John Smith” as containing racially offensive jokes and misogynistic pornography. She gave the material anew to the Supreme Court and Judicial Conduct Board on Sept. 30, saying it could violate judicial conduct rules.

Descriptions of some of the e-mails have appeared in Philadelphia Daily News reports this month, accounts that Kane’s office said Wednesday were based on authentic copies of the e-mails.

The newspaper said Eakin sent an e-mail in 2010 to a deputy attorney general that included a joke about a doctor telling a woman who was beaten by her husband, “You see how much keeping your mouth shut helps?”

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