HARRISBURG — The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office found itself in the awkward position Thursday of having to acknowledge that it had misspoken on the pornographic e-mail scandal.

In a statement, Renee Martin, spokesman for Attorney General Kathleen Kane, said she “misspoke” when she said Kane would not bring criminal charges related to the pornographic images her office discovered when reviewing e-mails of state employees.

“In fact,” Martin said, “the attorney general has not made a decision one way or the other.”

Martin made the remarks on criminal charges Wednesday, appearing to temper explosive comments Kane made the day before on national television.

On Tuesday evening, Kane told CNN that some of the pornographic messages contained images of children — the first time the office had suggested that minors were depicted among the cache of sexually explicit images.

“They are deplorable: hard-core, sometimes graphic, sometimes violent e-mails that had a string of videos and pictures depicting sometimes children, old women,” she said.

Possessing or exchanging child pornography is a crime that often results in jail time. But on Wednesday, Martin appeared to walk back from those comments, saying that though some of the images included children, they did not constitute child pornography.

She also said Kane had decided not to bring any criminal charges in the scandal, which has led to resignations, suspensions, and discipline for dozens of state officials and employees.

“I misspoke,” Martin said in her Thursday statement.