Prison term for disgraced former AG Kathleen Kane

Kathleen Kane’s fall from grace was sealed Monday when a Montgomery County judge sent her to prison for leaking confidential information to embarrass a hated rival.

Kane, 50, wept before the judge and said that she would “cut off my right arm” if she was separated from her two teenage sons in a pre-sentencing statement, according to the Inquirer.

The former attorney generalwas convicted in August of leaking confidential grand jury information and and lying about it.

She resigned from office a few days later.

Kane will serve 10 to 23 months in prison after being sentenced Monday for charges related to perjury, obstructing the administration of law and engaging in official oppression.

“Today is another sad day for the Commonwealth and its citizens,” said actingAttorney General Bruce Beemer, who stepped in after Kane resigned in August. “The Office of Attorney General is moving forward with steps to restore the public’s confidence in the work that we do and the way that we do it.”

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Kane admitted leaking information about the AG’s office investigation of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP—which took place years before she was elected and never led to any charges—for revenge against former state and Philly prosecutor Frank Fina.

Kane blamed Fina for leaking evidence to the Inquirer that she had shut down an undercover sting into political corruption in Harrisburg after she took office, even though the sting yielded taped incidents of elected officials accepting gifts in exchange for promised favors.

Fina was also one of the prosecutors whom Kane caught swapping pornographic and offensive emails on state email accounts. Kane released a massive batch of the emails in what became the so-called Porngate scandal. Fina later resigned from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office after multiple calls from women’s rights activists and Philadelphia city councilwomen for him to be fired.

Kane said the charges against her were the result of a conspiracy by a “good ole boys” club of Republican males angered that she discovered the Porngate emails.

She did not directly apologize for her actions during sentencing, but did apologize for the impact her actions had on citizens’ faith in the system, saying she “never intended to hurt anyone,” according to theInquirer.

The Philadelphia DA’s office later prosecuted those cases, which have mostly ended in convictions.

Kane was the first Democrat and first woman elected to the office of attorney general in Pennsylvania.