Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, an ally of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, announced her resignation Tuesday, a day after a jury convicted her of perjury and other charges in a scheme to smear a political rival.
Kane, a Democrat in her first term, once considered one of the state party’s rising stars, said she would leave office at the end of the day on Wednesday. The move came shortly after Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf had called on her to quit.
“I have been honored to serve the people of Pennsylvania and I wish them health and safety in all their days,” Kane said in a short statement.
A jury Monday night convicted her of abusing the powers of the state’s top law enforcement office to malign a political rival, and of lying under oath to cover up her actions. Sentencing is set for Oct. 24; the felony charges carry a maximum penalty of seven years in prison.
Mr. Wolf said Kane’s resignation “will allow the people of Pennsylvania to finally move on from this situation.”
Her conviction came on the same day that Mrs. Clinton was campaigning in Pennsylvania, which has emerged as a key battleground state this year and where the Democratic nominee is leading Republican Donald Trump in polls.
Kane worked for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008, and Bill Clinton campaigned for her in the attorney general’s race in 2012, recording a campaign ad for her. The Republican National Committee said Tuesday that Mrs. Clinton’s silence on the criminal case spoke volumes.
“Hillary Clinton’s silence on Kathleen Kane’s conviction on nine felony counts is a troubling abdication of leadership, especially given the fact that Kane is a former staffer of hers and her husband worked to elect her attorney general,” said RNC spokesman Michael Short. “Clinton’s silence is yet another reminder of the rampant sleaze in her political orbit and that she lacks the ethical compass to lead our nation.”
Kane, 50, is the state’s first woman and first Democrat elected to the office. She was viewed as a possible challenger to Republican U.S. Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, but her career unraveled over a petty political vendetta.
Prosecutors told jurors that Kane orchestrated an illegal leak to a newspaper of secret grand jury documents to encourage a story critical of former state prosecutor Frank Fina, whom she considered a rival. Jurors agreed that Kane then lied about her actions under oath.
Her deputy, Republican Bruce Castor, will take over as acting attorney general. She hired him earlier this year; Mr. Castor is a former country district attorney who ran unsuccessfully for attorney general in 2004.
Kane has insisted that she did nothing wrong, and said she will appeal her conviction. She has suggested that she was the victim of a plot to remove her from office as retaliation for her publicizing pornographic emails that were exchanged between state employees on state computer systems, a scandal that reached all the way to the state’s Supreme Court and forced the resignation of two justices.
After spending years as an assistant district attorney in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Kane linked her career fortunes to Mrs. Clinton in 2008 in the Pennsylvania presidential primary against then-Sen. Barack Obama. Mrs. Clinton won the state but lost the nomination.
When Kane ran for state attorney general in 2012, the Clintons saw an opportunity to repay her loyalty and also to teach a lesson to her opponent in the Democratic primary, former Rep. Patrick Murphy. Mr. Murphy had endorsed Mr. Obama in the state’s 2008 presidential primary instead of Mrs. Clinton.
After defeating Mr. Murphy, Kane won the general election by nearly 15 percentage points. She was mentioned as a potential challenger to Mr. Toomey for this year, but had decided against a Senate bid in favor of running for a second term as attorney general.
In 2013 she announced that she would not defend the state’s version of the Defense of Marriage Act against a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. She said she believed the state’s ban on gay marriage was “wholly unconstitutional.”
In 2014 a grand jury began investigating the leaking of documents that allegedly came from Kane’s office, at a time when she was being criticized for mishandling prosecutions of Democratic officials in Philadelphia and at the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. She was charged in August 2015 with perjury, false swearing, obstructing administration of law and official oppression in connection with the grand jury leaks.
Her defense team included Washington attorney Lanny Davis, who once served as special counsel to former President Clinton.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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