Bruce Castor Jr.

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s attorney general told employees Thursday that an outside review of offensive or objectionable e-mails is now in his hands, and he’s conferring with senior advisers about what to do with it.

Acting Attorney General Bruce Castor Jr. said in an e-mail to the agency’s roughly 800 workers that some of them were notified that their names may be included in the report.

“When there is more to report, I will let you know,” Castor said. “Please don’t be anxious.”

He said the report can’t be released without his approval.

Castor was responding to e-mails sent this week by a team of private lawyers hired by Castor’s predecessor, Kathleen Kane, to review the e-mails that have roiled the state’s legal and governmental circles for two years.

One e-mail warned the recipient that they won’t be mentioned in the report, but will be listed in an appendix as someone who sent fewer than 50 inappropriate e-mails. The law firm provides an e-mail address to send responses by Monday. It defined inappropriate e-mails as those containing “obscene material, nudity, or offensive materials, such as racism or sexism.”

Under Kane, who resigned last week after being convicted of perjury, the attorney general’s office disclosed hundreds of e-mails that cost the jobs of several high-ranking government officials, including two state Supreme Court justices. The e-mails were found on the servers of the attorney general’s office and had been circulated among some of the office’s employees and others inside and outside of state government.

The content that has surfaced so far included explicit pornography and messages demeaning toward women, blacks and Muslims.

A spokesman for the attorney general’s office, Jeff Johnson, said he did not know how many people were sent notices from the outside legal team led by former Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler.