A few weeks ago, I was at a dinner party and the talk turned to the soap opera-like headlines surrounding our embattled attorney general Kathleen Kane. This was a civically engaged crowd; the people in attendance were readers of the New York Times and listeners of NPR. Yet, interestingly, nobody could quite summarize this tawdry tale. Key words and phrases filled the air: “leaking grand jury testimony,” “porn” and “misogyny” among them. Hazily, the prevailing media picture emerged: Our chief law enforcement officer was kinda loopy, an embittered woman threatening to reveal her enemies’ pornographic emails in an “if I go down, we all go down” narrative. Despite the fact that many were talking about Kathleen Kane as the political equivalent of the deranged Glenn Close character in the film Fatal Attraction, nobody could really take a step back and describe the story. Why had a duly elected attorney general been charged with crimes and had her license to practice law revoked by an overstepping Supreme Court? And what does that have to do with all these porn emails we keep hearing about?

Hell, I was among the confused. I’ve been having a tough time keeping it all straight. But last night, the Inquirer broke a story about emails sent in 2013 by Sandusky grand jury Judge Barry Feudale to Inquirer reporters Angela Couloumbis and Craig McCoy. Suddenly, things became a lot clearer. In these emails, Feudale was reportedly critical of Kane while heaping lavish praise on then-prosecutor Frank Fina, the man behind the Sandusky prosecution and Kane’s nemesis. “Fina is the real deal,” the judge wrote. “Brilliant mind, photographic memory, fierce but ethical advocate.” The Inquirer quotes an unnamed source as describing the emails as documenting “a conspiracy between Feudale and Fina” to leak information to the Inquirer. Just based on last night’s Inquirer story, the relationship between Feudale and Fina—a judge and a prosecutor—does seem especially cozy and, potentially, a kind of confirmation of one of the things Kathleen Kane has long maintained: That there is an ol’ boys’ network at play in the Commonwealth, and it’s one with which she has had to contend since the day she took office.

I’ve been going back and reading the daily drumbeat of the Kane stories for weeks now. I am by no means an expert on this case; in fact, the further you dive in, the more inexpert you feel. It’s like being lost in a John Grisham novel, if John Grisham wrote about middle-aged state employees who shared raunchy porn via their work computers.

But what emerges from the totality of the record is this likely conclusion: As has become conventional wisdom, Kathleen Kane was undoubtedly in over her head after her improbable rise from county prosecutor to the state’s top law enforcement official in her first run for political office in 2012. After a first year of glowing headlines, Kane’s inexperience caught up with her. She has been exposed as politically challenged and lacking in judgment. And, as her blood feud with Fina at the heart of this story deepened, she has seemed blinded by seeking revenge—without possessing the political sleight-of-hand talents to deftly perform the act.

Diving into Porngate is like being lost in a John Grisham novel, if John Grisham wrote about middle-aged state employees who shared raunchy porn via their work computers.

But what also seems clear is that, at the same time, Kane has been targeted by an old boys’ network that may have been bent on destroying her. Both things, in other words, can be true: Kane wasn’t ready to serve…and a cabal of enemies were dedicated to seeing that she didn’t.

Here are the pertinent facts to keep in mind that, taken together, lead to such a conclusion:

Kane ran against the office she sought to lead. As a candidate, Kane charged that the previous attorney general, then-Governor Tom Corbett, had dragged his feet on the case against child molester Jerry Sandusky due to political concerns. She promised to “investigate” the office’s investigation of Sandusky. A month after being sworn in, she did just that, hiring former prosecutor H. Geoffrey Moulton to look into why the Sandusky probe had taken more than two years to complete.

It was star state prosecutor Fina who had led the Sandusky probe. It’s likely that Fina and others in the office—Kane inherited a staff of over 700 employees—weren’t thrilled at having their professionalism publicly questioned by someone campaigning to be their boss. Especially a woman who, by the way, didn’t have their level of experience; in fact, Kane had spent the last few years as a stay-at-home mom, not even practicing law. Now here she was, proclaiming the one thing that cuts true believer prosecutors to the quick: That, far from impartially seeking justice, they’d been playing politics.

Both things can be true: Kane wasn’t ready to serve…and a cabal of enemies were dedicated to seeing that she didn’t.

Kane signaled she was in possession of the porn. For a year, there was no word on Moulton’s investigation. Then, in February of 2014, Kane called a press conference to announce that Moulton’s work had been stalled because the attorney general’s IT department had been unable to find all the necessary emails covering the period of the Sandusky probe. But, she said, that was no longer the case. They had now recovered all emails sent and received by the prosecutors in her office, including while Corbett was AG.

Why is this significant? Kane might not have known it, but at that moment she raised a red flag: Countless insiders in the Harrisburg legal and political universe now knew that she had access to their porn emails.

That’s how it’s commonly referred to in the press: Porngate. Actually, by most accounts, the emails that a whole lot of judges, prosecutors and staffers had spent months and, in some cases, years sending to one another went far beyond mere porn. I’ve only read accounts of them, but words like “misogynistic” and “racist” have most often been attached. There are images of bestiality, and “jokes” about secretaries performing oral sex that seem straight out of the Mad Men era. Full disclosure: I like comedy that works blue, but the descriptions of this material offends even my comedic sensibilities. We rely on judges and prosecutors for their judgment, and they giggle like pimply teens over this stuff?

Once Kane announced she had all these emails, Fina and the other men who had spent so much time bonding over this material on the taxpayer dime had to know she had something on them. Within days, Fina requested and received a court order to prevent the release of any emails connected to the Sandusky review.

The empire strikes back? A few weeks later, the Inquirer ran a page one story detailing how, in the fall of 2013, Kane had refused to prosecute a sting operation Fina had run that included video of local and state officials taking bribes. It was a devastating story for Kane, making her look soft on political corruption. Many assumed that Fina was the source of the Inquirer story; Fina denies it.

But Kane was certain Fina was behind the Inquirer story about her. She maintains that he was motivated by a desire to destroy her so the porn emails in her possession would never surface. In the state’s criminal complaint against her, Kane’s political consultant, quotes her as saying, “This is war” against Fina. (Fina had by now left the AG’s office and was a prosecutor in Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams’ office.)

I know you are but what am I? In June, 2014, the state alleges, Kane attempted her revenge. The Daily News ran a story about a case in which it appeared that the state’s prosecutors—Fina, of course, and E. Marc Constanza—went soft on a criminal matter of their own, an investigation into the affairs of the late civil rights activist Jerry Mondesire. Only trouble was that this story—unlike the one about the sting case—required the leaking of grand jury information…which is a crime.

Kane denies that she instructed anyone on her staff to break the law. Was Kane so blinded by the need to exact revenge on Fina that the Commonwealth’s chief law enforcement official intentionally broke the law herself? Or did someone on her staff set her up? To this day, Kane is estranged from many of her employees—including even her first deputy, Bruce Beemer—who not only are not loyal to her, but actively dislike her for getting elected by essentially saying they sucked at their jobs. The criminal complaint makes clear that staffers of hers contend she told underlings to leak the story to the Daily News. But are they staffers with whom she’d been doing battle? Did they perhaps send the leak themselves, and let her take the blame?

And what about Fina? Could her arch enemy have brilliantly set a trap and lured Kane into a feud that eventually led her to break the law? After all, even before the Daily News story appeared, when reporters were merely making calls about the Mondesire case, it was Fina who went to Montgomery County judge William Carpenter, who oversees eastern Pennsylvania grand juries, and tipped him off that a grand jury leak had likely occurred. There would be nothing illegal about that on Fina’s part. “Well played, sir,” Machiavelli would say.

This is where the public record goes opaque. Ultimately, only a trial or a special prosecutor with subpoena power might be able to determine which scenario is most accurate.

Back to the porn. In September of 2014, six months after the Inquirer story chronicling Kane’s decision not to prosecute the corruption case, and three months after the Daily News’ Mondesire story, Kane released a sampling from the more than 1,000 sexually explicit emails and videos uncovered by Moulton’s investigation. There were two firings, two resignations and 23 attorney general employees reprimanded. Many others were swept away in Porngate, including Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery, state Secretary of Environmental Protection Chris Abruzzo, and state Police Commissioner Frank Noonan.

Last fall, the Supreme Court seemed to go back to old boys’ network central casting when it hired former Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Byer to examine the emails. When it came to the emails of Supreme Court Justice Michael Eakin, Byer found only one containing “offensive sexual content.” The Judicial Conduct Board also essentially cleared Eakin by declaring the emails then in question only “mildly pornographic.” A new batch of emails released by Kane, however, shows they were far raunchier and more inappropriate than that.

Last week, the Inky’s Couloumbis and McCoy wrote that, by continuing to release the sordid emails, Kane has “proved the merit of a well-worked political adage: when in trouble, change the subject.” They go on to write: “Her critics say the porn furor is irrelevant to her pending criminal trial.”

That’s sort of the animating question, isn’t it? Kane says the “porn furor” is far from irrelevant to the charges against her. She argues that a conspiracy against her stems from her opponents’ realization that they needed to destroy her before she could ruin their careers by releasing the offending emails. Given the sheer volume and breadth of these emails, and given just how many names in the statewide legal community are reportedly on them, and given the way judicial powers-that-be seem unwilling to police their own, is there are any doubt that an old boys’ network certainly exists in Harrisburg?

The Supreme Court went back to old boys’ network central casting when it hired former Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Byer to examine Justice Eakin’s emails and he found only one containing “offensive sexual content.”

Of course, it’s tougher to prove any coordinated effort to set Kane up. Because what is also undeniable is that…

Kane has been her opponents’ best ally. Time and again, Kane has made decisions that play right into her opponents’ hands. The examples of weirdness are too numerous to cover (like sending her twin sister as a decoy to court to distract the press), but here is just a sampling:

• At one point, she requested a meeting with the Inquirer brass, only to show up with the legendary lawyer (and frequent Inquirer foe) Richard Sprague in tow. She didn’t speak during the very meeting she had requested. It read like an amateur’s attempt at intimidation. Or, at the very least, the most tone deaf political move imaginable.
• She has called for the release of the porn emails when, apparently, it was in her power to release them all along, making it look like she favored transparency while still hoarding material from public view.
• In an odd juxtaposition for someone supposedly taking on a cabal of sexist men, Kane named Jonathan Duecker as her chief of staff despite the fact that her own human resources department wanted to fire him after two female coworkers accused him of sexual harassment.
• Finally, in a rambling public statement in August after she was charged, Kane awkwardly took the opportunity to address her young sons in a Knute Rockne-like pep talk that seemed either like a manipulative appeal to jury pool emotion or just tone deaf and weird. “If this is the way I have to communicate with my sons before I can see them tomorrow, then I’m going to do it,” she said, before addressing them. “…I know, I mean, you’re my sons and I know you have compassion for other people and that you feel it’s as much about justice as I do. And while no one would blame you if you bypass the fight, I hope that you stay in it because I am staying in it. I love you boys and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Of course, none of this means Kathleen Kane is guilty, or not guilty. She may just be weird, or she may have just come up against a much more skilled political player. Will we ever know? The flood of emails have made one thing clear: Whether Kathleen Kane is guilty or not, the old boys’ network is vast and healthy throughout the Commonwealth.

Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Ron Castille called this week for the Court to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Porngate. But after reading through the record, it’s hard to have confidence that the Pennsylvania judicial system will ultimately paint a definitive picture of this entire baffling story. That’s why the Obama Justice Department needs to appoint a special prosecutor to look at the whole enchilada: Kane, Fina, the leaks, the emails…everything but Kane’s kids, who emerge as the only normal people in the whole sordid story.

Header photo: Collage Dan Shepelavy