HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania government remains in a state of disarray after the state attorney general, who is facing separate criminal charges herself, recently exposed the rampant exchange of pornographic and vulgar emails by government officials.
Attorney General Katherine Kane announced on Tuesday that she will not seek a second term and will focus more on her home life.
“I am a mother first and foremost,” she said. “Because at the end of my life, I hope that history judges me well, but that’s for time to tell. I hope more that God and my sons judge me well.”
Kane will go on trial later this year after being accused of leaking confidential grand jury information to a reporter and allegedly lying about it under oath. She denies the charges, stating that she is being targeted for her work to expose pornographic emails in the state government, including employees in her office.
Kane announced her findings about the inappropriate emails in September 2014, resulting in the resignation of Environmental Protection Secretary Christopher Abruzzo and Board of Probation and Parole member Randy Feathers.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery also stepped down after being accused of sending eight explicit emails to an employee in Kane’s office, and Justice J. Michael Eakin was suspended by the Court of Judicial Discipline over the matter. Police Commissioner Frank Noonan and Kevin Harley, former spokesperson for then Gov. Tom Corbett, were also cited in the discovery. Nearly two dozen state employees were reprimanded and six were fired.
In December, Kane released one million emails from employees to a special prosecutor who is currently continuing an investigation into the matter.
Kane found the pornographic correspondence while looking into why it took the state three years to prosecute now convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky. The messages, videos and photos sent or received between 2008 and 2012 contained sexually graphic content, disparaging remarks about those of other races or homosexuals, or demeaning comments about religion.
“It’s a mess,” Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli told reporters in November. “Accusations and counter-accusations. And it gets worse every day. It’s like going into a war zone.”
“I think there will be an avalanche if this is all released, and I think there will be a housecleaning unlike any we have ever seen,” Terry Mutchler, former director of Pennsylvania’s Office of Open Records, told WTAE television.
Last week, the Pennsylvania Senate voted on whether to impeach Kane for alleged perjury, but failed to obtain sufficient votes to do so. In her speech on Tuesday in Scranton, she opined that officials should focus more on those sending porn on government computers rather than seeking to remove her from office.
“If the legislature spent a fraction of the time investigating this content as it has on the one individual who exposed it, we could start to restore credibility to our judicial system and give Pennsylvanians a system of justice in which they can be proud,” Kane stated.
“I told you I would fight corruption, and I’m fighting corruption, regardless of the personal cost to me,” she said.
“[T]he chain of events that led to this moment … began with a group of state prosecutors and judges passing pornographic, racially offensive and religiously offensive emails amongst each other—email traffic sent and received on government computers and on government time,” Kane also asserted in August.
The House Subcommittee on Courts is expected to consider this week whether or not Kane should be impeached. Gov. Tom Wolf has called for her resignation.
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