NORRISTOWN >> With the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruling in their favor, Montgomery County prosecutors have won the latest round in their legal battle to take embattled Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane to trial on alleged perjury charges.
In a one sentence order issued on Wednesday, the state court granted District Attorney Kevin R. Steele’s request to “quash” Kane’s appeal of a county judge’s pretrial rulings to the state court. The ruling essentially allows Kane’s Aug. 8 trial date to remain on schedule.
“The commonwealth believes that defendant is attempting to appeal a non-appealable order…,” Steele wrote in court papers filed in April with the state court.
Kane’s defense lawyers Gerald L. Shargel and Ross Kramer had filed a so-called “interlocutory appeal” with the state court of the pretrial rulings handed down by county Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy, who denied some of Kane’s pretrial requests.
On March 28, Demchick-Alloy denied several of Kane’s pretrial motions, including Kane’s bid to bar the entire 22-member county bench from presiding over her alleged perjury trial and her request for an out-of-county judge to hear the case.
Kane faces trial on charges of perjury, obstructing administration of law, abuse of office and false swearing in connection with allegations she orchestrated the illegal disclosure of confidential investigative information and secret grand jury information to the media and then engaged in acts designed to conceal and cover up her alleged conduct.
With the charges against Kane, prosecutors allege the 49-year-old first-term Democrat orchestrated the release of secret information about the 2009 Investigating Grand Jury No. 29 to Christopher Brennan, then a reporter at The Daily News, in order to retaliate against a former state prosecutor, Frank Fina, with whom she was feuding and who she believed provided information to The Inquirer to embarrass her regarding a sting operation he was in charge of and which she shut down.
Kane also is accused of lying to the 35th statewide grand jury in November 2014 to cover up her alleged leaks by lying under oath when she claimed she never agreed to maintain her secrecy regarding the 2009 grand jury investigation.
County prosecutors allege they discovered evidence that Kane signed a so-called “secrecy oath” on her second day in office on Jan. 17, 2013, promising her secrecy for statewide investigating grand juries one through 32. The oath compelled Kane to maintain the secrecy of all matters occurring before past and present statewide grand juries, prosecutors alleged.
Kane, who is not seeking re-election, has claimed she did nothing wrong and has implied the charges are part of an effort to force her out of office because she discovered pornographic emails being exchanged between state employees on state email addresses.
