Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane was on “a mission of revenge” when she orchestrated a “cloak-and-dagger” operation to illegally leak information to vilify a critic, prosecutors said Tuesday in the opening of Kane’s trial in Norristown, Pa., on perjury and obstruction charges. Her defense attorney countered that Kane was a victim grappling with lies from her former second-in-command and a political consultant who have repeatedly covered up their own roles in the leak, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Kane, 50, was charged last year after prosecutors said she had illegally leaked secret grand jury information to embarrass former state prosecutor Frank Fina — and later lied under oath to cover it up.
“Revenge is best served cold,” said prosecutor Michelle Henry in opening statements, citing a line she attributed to Kane. While the defense portrayed Kane as a high-minded prosecutor who left the details of the leak to others, Henry described her as obsessed with Fina, once the office’s most high-profile prosecutor as the overseer of all corruption cases. She said Kane blamed him for a 2014 article in The Philadelphia Inquirer that disclosed that Kane had secretly shut down a sting investigation without bringing charges against Philadelphia Democratic officials who were caught on tape pocketing cash from an undercover agent.