Democrat Kathleen Kane Needs to Name Names -- Or Fess Up to Lying

PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane, Democrat, scuttled a major corruption investigation soon after she took office. That investigation had snared a handful of Democrat officeholders accepting bribes. Kane smeared the investigation, claiming it was racist. When the Philly Inquirer reported on her actions, Kane pulled a Wendy Davis move and threatened to sue the newspaper. That threat is still in play.

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Kane has added to her racism smear, claiming that federal investigators had concluded that the investigation was too weak to prosecute. She and her staff even gamed the situation by prepping a case file for a Republican to review, a case file apparently stacked to make the case look impossible to prosecute.

Now Kane is being called out on claiming that prosecutors believed that the case was too weak, too. This is another Inquirer story; perhaps Kane will add it to the lawsuit she is threatening to bring against the paper.

Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia never deemed a sting operation that targeted public corruption as too weak to prosecute, according to District Attorney Seth Williams and law enforcement sources familiar with the brief federal review of the investigation.

The sources and Williams say the prosecutors never came to a judgment about the investigation one way or another before the state attorney general asked them to halt their review.

Their statements echo a declaration by the Philadelphia office of the FBI, which said it made no judgment about whether the case was suitable for prosecution.

Kane’s response: “Did too!” But she hasn’t named a single name.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane has said “federal authorities” endorsed her view that the sting was fatally damaged. She has declined to identity the federal officials involved, saying they had asked for anonymity.

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Much more at the link. The Inquirer contacted many of the officials who would have made the judgement that Kane is claiming, and none of them agree with her at all.

Kane will have to name a name. But it’s likely that there is no name to name. All the available evidence strongly suggests that Kane killed the investigation for purely partisan reasons. The investigation targeted Republicans and Democrats, but only Democrats were caught on tape accepting the bribes. The process of prosecuting them could damage the Democrat Party in Pennsylvania for years to come, turning a swing state at least a light shade of red. Kane could have mitigated that damage by standing up for the rule of law, and presiding over a fair prosecution of her fellow Democrats. But that isn’t the choice that Kane has made.

h/t First Street Journal

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