Pennsylvania AG Kathleen Kane Found Guilty Of So Many Things, Bye PA AG Kathleen Kane!

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane (D - Bad Kathleen Kane, Bad!), the first woman and the first Democrat to be elected to the position since it became an elected position in 1980, has been found guilty on nine charges including perjury, obstruction, and criminal conspiracy, and faces up to seven years in jail. Understandably, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolfe has called for her to step down from her position.

Kane was accused of leaking information from a grand jury investigation into the finances of former NAACP leader J. Whyatt Mondesire, whom her adversary Frank Fina had chosen not to prosecute back when he was a chief deputy attorney general, to a newspaper, and then lying and saying she did no such thing.

This is all mostly related to a vendetta Kane reportedly had against Fina and former Attorney General Tom Corbett, for a variety of reasons.

It all started when Kane launched an investigation into whether Corbett and Fina had purposely dragged out Jerry Sandusky's trial so that he wouldn't be in the news while Corbett was running for governor. It was around this time that a local newspaper article popped up investigating Kane for ceasing to investigate a number of Democratic officials accused of taking bribes (which she says was because the only witness was unreliable).

Kane believed that Fina had gotten the newspaper to investigate the bribery as retaliation for her having investigated them for their failures in the Sandusky case. While the investigation into the Sandusky trial cleared Corbett and Fina of any wrongdoing, it did reveal a fuckton of emails between mostly male government officials filled with particularly degrading porn, racist jokes, the mocking of the poor, and all kinds of gross things. Fina, in particular, had sent a number of extremely offensive emails.

Via Esquire :

First up: a batch of raunchy and misogynistic motivational posters that Fina had forwarded to a pair of state special agents in 2009. Some encouraged women to do whatever it took to please their male bosses, such as providing oral and anal sex. "Take advantage of every opening," was the tagline to one. Fina forwarded an assistant district attorney another email that same year—"RE: Need Motivation for the Weekend?" read the subject line—that contained almost two dozen offensive images. "Halloween: Giving girls the excuse to dress like whores since 1983," read the caption of a photo of a busty woman in a skimpy nurse's costume. "Rainbows: Not as gay as you might think," was the caption of another, a shot from behind of a woman's legs spread wide, her limbs covered in striped stockings. "My favorite is Rainbows!" Fina wrote.

The unfortunate thing here is that Frank Fina is obviously a gross human against whom it is not hard to imagine having a vendetta. It's not hard to imagine being the first female Attorney General in the state, and seeing all this Good Ol' Boys shit and wanting to take some fuckers down. Being prone to having vendettas myself, I totally get the impulse! But you can't really have them as an Attorney General, and you certainly can't break the law in pursuit of one.

Although she and her lawyers maintain her innocence and intend to appeal, Kane says she will resign at close of business tomorrow, stating "I have been honored to serve the people of Pennsylvania and I wish them health and safety in all their days."

Sorry the good old boys made you crazy and break the law, Kathleen Kane. Better luck next time!

[ New York Times | Esquire ]