Two years after disgraced former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane was sentenced to prison for leaking confidential grand jury documents, she is now expected to finally begin her prison sentence.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on Monday rejected Kane’s last legal appeal of the decision that sentenced her to serve prison time alongside the criminals she used to prosecute. Kane now faces her original 10 to 23 month sentence on two felony and seven misdemeanor charges related to perjury, obstructing the administration of law, and engaging in official oppression.
Kane, 52, was convicted back in October 2016 for leaking confidential grand jury documents to discredit her political opponents.
But the chain of events that led to her fall from grace was set into motion back in 2014, when the Inquirer first broke the story that Kane had shut down an undercover sting of Harrisburg corruption undertaken by her predecessor, former AG Tom Corbett, without filing any criminal charges. Kane reportedly discarded the results of the sting, saying that the sting only targeted black Democrats.
Kane was so outraged by the Inquirer leak that she leaked grand jury documents establishing she had investigated the Philly NAACP’s former director to purportedly prove she was serious about corruption. She was later prosecuted for leaking the documents and then lying about it. She also released hundreds of sexist, racist emails swapped by former prosecutors at her office, in the scandal later known as “Porngate.”
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Meanwhile, former Philly DA Seth Williams took over the sting investigation and went on to file charges against six Philly politicians, all of whom pled guilty except state rep. Vanessa Lowery Brown, who was convicted by a jury last month. (Williams himself was later sentenced to five years in federal prison for corruption charges).
Kane, the first woman and first Democrat elected to the post of Attorney General, was considered a rising political star at the time of her election and even named as a potential candidate for Senate. For the past two years she has been on house arrest pending the appeals of her conviction. She was free on $75,000 bail, but after the Supreme Court declined to review her conviction, the Montgomery County DA’s office said it will ask a judge on Tuesday morning to revoke her bail.
