Three additional judges were among senders of inappropriate emails, Pennsylvania report says
A report commissioned by former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane found nearly 12,000 inappropriate emails were exchanged by government employees, including judges and lawyers.
But the new attorney general who released the report, Bruce Beemer, said the report found no evidence of inappropriate ex parte communication between prosecutors and judges. Beemer also said the methodology used for the report wrongly flagged innocuous emails, and he would not be releasing the names of the email senders. Publications covering the news include the Morning Call, the New York Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Legal Intelligencer (sub. req.) and the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.).
Among the senders of the sexually explicit and offensive emails were 370 attorney general staffers and county prosecutors, 25 judicial staffers, three judges and two Supreme Court justices.
The two Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices already retired amid revelations they were being investigated for inappropriate emails. The Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board said it had received the report and would conduct its own independent investigation of the emails.
Beemer said most of the judge emails were exchanges with spouses or family members.
Beemer called the report a poor use of taxpayer resources, though it did find previously undisclosed emails in the attorney general’s office. The cost of the report was $385,640.
Kane had commissioned former Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler of BuckleySander to investigate the emails before her conviction on perjury and obstruction charges for leaking grand jury information and lying about it. Kane had claimed the charges were fallout from her office’s probe of the emails.
