Revolving door in state AG's office

In 13 days, we have had three attorneys general, and a fourth will be taking office on Jan. 17, 2017.

Simmering in the background of this parade of officeholders is the unseemly issue of unreleased pornographic emails from hundreds of state officials and employees.

In an uncharacteristic display of unanimity, the Republican-controlled state Senate on Tuesday confirmed on a 44-0 vote Gov. Tom Wolf's nomination of Democrat Bruce Beemer to the top prosecutorial post, which he will hold for the next 140 days until his successor is sworn in.

Beemer was Kane's top deputy, but after he clashed with her publicly and provided testimony that helped convict her of leaking grand jury information, then lying about it, Kane brought in Republican Bruce Castor to make Beemer's position impotent and irrelevant.

That's what Kane did to her political enemies, and it was this vengeance-is-mine flaw that led to her eventual downfall. Vengeance may have been hers, but her political opponents and we taxpayers are getting the last laugh, as she was condemned to the ash-heap of state history.

Castor served for just 13 days. Beemer, in the meantime, left his post in the AG's office in July and became Wolf's inspector general, whose office, among other things, investigates misconduct in state agencies. Ironic, isn't it, that now he heads one of the agencies with misconduct galore.

Beemer will serve until the newly elected attorney general takes office in mid-January. It will be either Democratic Montgomery County Commissioner Josh Shapiro or Republican Montgomery County state Sen. John Rafferty.

One of the first things Beemer must deal with is the messy "porngate" caper. Just last Wednesday, the State Supreme Court released documents which showed how Kane played "gotcha" with Frank Fina and Marc Costanzo, two former employees of the AG's office who became political opponents.

The nearly 1,000 pages the high court unsealed give us insight into how Kane believed that these two had concocted a plan to have a grand jury investigation to discredit her handling and ultimate dismissal of a case against some Philadelphia bigwigs.

Kane, on the other hand, characterized the grand jury probe as a smoke screen to "protect two peddlers of depravity from public exposure." She said the two knew she had stumbled upon the pornographic emails and was threatening to release them to the public.

The unsealed documents also included 398 pages of emails and attachments, which included men and women engaged in sexual acts, close-ups of private body parts, sex toys, racially and sexually suggestive materials and some things I can't mention in a family newspaper.

It would be unusual for any of these disclosures to lead to criminal prosecution, because courts have ruled that pornography charges, unless they involve children, are difficult to sustain because of First Amendment considerations.

What they will do, however, is embarrass the bejesus out of the senders and probably lead to resignations, as happened when two former state Supreme Court justices were tied to some of the raunchy emails. J. Michael Eakin, a Republican, resigned in March, and Seamus McCaffery, a Democrat, resigned in October 2014, after being implicated in the scandal.

As for all of the other thousands of emails in question, we had been told they would be released early this year, but there has been postponement piled on top of postponement. Now, we are told that the release is "weeks away."

Douglas Gansler, the special prosecutor chosen by Kane to sift through all the emails then file a report, wants to do so in two steps. One would name 38 "high-volume senders," who have sent 50 emails or more. The other would include an appendix that would list several hundred others who sent fewer than 50. Gansler does not plan to name anyone who received unsolicited salacious emails.

Beemer favors permitting everyone named in the report to review the contents of the emails and issue comments before public disclosure, if they desire. This is the fair thing to do, but we also need to get to the bottom of this expensive and time-consuming process which has bogged down this important office for months.

Gansler and his team have spent close to $200,000 so far during the investigation. Kane told House members in February that she had budgeted between $750,000 and $2 million for the investigation. Is this the way we want our tax dollars to be spent when schools and agencies are begging for any dollars they can get their hands on? I think not.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com