State attorney general charged in grand jury leak
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — The state’s top prosecutor was charged today with leaking secret grand jury information and lying about her actions under oath.
Attorney General Kathleen Kane leaked information to a political operative to pass to the news media “in hopes of embarrassing and harming former state prosecutors she believed, without evidence, made her look bad,” Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said at an 11 a.m. news conference announcing the charges.
Kane, the first woman and first Democrat elected attorney general in Pennsylvania, is charged with perjury, obstruction and abuse of office.
A grand jury recommended charges in December in connection with allegations Kane unlawfully leaked information from a 2009 investigation in what witnesses said was an attempt to embarrass critics.
Criminal charges mark a new low in Kane’s tumultuous three-year tenure, further weakening her shaky hold on an office that has seen an exodus of top aides, fumbled corruption cases, feuds with former prosecutors and misstatements she later had to retract.
The investigation centered on allegations that a June 2014 Philadelphia Daily News article about a former Philadelphia NAACP official’s alleged misuse of state job-training grants contained confidential information from a grand jury case.
A statewide grand jury recommended Kane be charged with criminal contempt, perjury, obstruction, false swearing and official oppression.
The grand jury judge, William Carpenter, referred the matter to the county district attorney’s office in January.
The 49-year-old Kane has acknowledged giving information to the Daily News but denied it was bound by secrecy laws and said she hasn’t broken any laws.
