Judge rules Kane can’t bring up pornography at trial

The Philadelphia Inquirer

After months of complaints from state Attorney General Kathleen Kane that her criminal case stemmed from her war on pornography, a judge on Thursday said the porn drama could play no role in her looming trial.

Montgomery County Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy forbade Ms. Kane from bringing up the porn as she defends herself against charges of perjury, official oppression and other crimes.

Ms. Kane’s lawyers had initially argued that the entire case against her should be dismissed, contending it was payback for her crusade about the swapping of pornographic and otherwise offensive emails by officials using government computers.

In June, Judge Demchick-Alloy rejected that argument, ruling after prosecutors derided Ms. Kane’s pitch as a red herring unrelated to the real issues in the case.

On Thursday, Judge Demchick-Alley rejected Ms. Kane’s fallback position.

In a complex argument, Ms. Kane had asked more narrowly to tell the jury about the porn to rebut the idea that she had illegally leaked confidential information to attack a critic, former state prosecutor Frank Fina.

Her lawyers wanted to argue that if she had wanted to harm Mr. Fina, she could have done so by tying him to the troubling emails. But the judge closed the door Thursday on that line of argument, too.

Ms. Kane is to go on trial Aug. 8. Prosecutors say she unlawfully leaked confidential documents to strike out at Mr. Fina and then lied about her actions under oath.

Ms. Kane has admitted approving the release of material involving Mr. Fina but said she did that in a lawful way and told the truth about it later.

A key witness against her is expected to be political consultant Josh Morrow, who passed along agency documents involving Mr. Fina to a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News.

Although Ms. Kane told a grand jury she provided Mr. Morrow with little information about the leak, Mr. Morrow testified otherwise, supporting a perjury charge against her.

According to prosecutors, Mr. Morrow also detailed Ms. Kane’s role in the leak in a contemporaneous phone conversation with a friend — a call taped by the FBI in an unrelated probe.

Ms. Kane has sought to bar the use of that tape at trial, but Judge Demchick-Alley rebuffed her on that, too.

Finally, in a last significant pretrial ruling, the judge refused Ms. Kane’s request to bar Mr. Morrow from telling jurors she had asked him to gather negative information on another political enemy, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams.