Pennsylvania AG Kathleen Kane ordered to stand trial on leak charges
Kathleen Kane’s booking photo. Photo from the Montgomery County District Attorney.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane has been ordered to stand trial on charges that she leaked secret grand jury information to the press in an effort to embarrass a political rival.
Kane, 49, did not speak to reporters as she left a courthouse in suburban Philadelphia Monday following a hearing in the case, the Associated Press reports.
But defense lawyer Gerald Shargel bemoaned the fact that the looser rules of evidence and lower burden of proof in preliminary hearings left him little chance of getting some or all of the charges against her dismissed.
Kane, the first Democrat and the first woman to be elected to the post, is accused of leaking a confidential grand jury memo and a transcript to a Philadelphia Daily News reporter. She is also accused of lying about it to a grand jury investigating the leak.
In a press conference earlier this month, Kane maintained her innocence.
“My defense will not be that I am the victim of some old boys’ network,” she told reporters. “It will be that I broke no laws of the Commonwealth. Period.”
No trial date has been set. But Kane could face up to seven years in prison of convicted of perjury, the most serious of the charges against her. Her next court appearance is scheduled for Oct. 14.
