Former First Deputy Attorney General Bruce Beemer testified against his old boss in court today.
The heart of the matter was Kane’s reaction to the grand jury leak.
According to Laura McCrystal and Craig McCoy of the Inquirer, the AG wasn’t particularly concerned about the break.
“She said, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal, we have more important things to do’,” Beemer testified.
Beemer apparently took notes during his call with Kane and they were submitted into the record. Among them was the statement “Very troubling”.
The ex-First Deputy initially believed the information had come from the department’s Norristown office but eventually began to suspect Kane. He also confirmed an infamous remark from the Attorney General.
“Bruce, if I were taken out of here in handcuffs, what do you think my last act would be?” Kane told Beemer.
During cross-examination, Kane’s team asked why it took so long for Beemer to come forward. According to Wallace McKelvey of the Patriot-News, the AG’s defense attorney Doug Rosenblum showed video of Kane at a press conference with Beemer in the background.
Rosenblum wanted to know why didn’t he stop her.
“I don’t think anybody can stop the Attorney General from doing what she wants to do,” Beemer responded.
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39 Responses
so Peggy T ,with her infallible crystal ball opines.. ‘Beemer is not credible. Adrian King and Josh Morrow are flat out liars…
Peggy T must think that Josh Morrow enjoys wrecking his entire future PA PR career by turning on one of his biggest employers, Kane for AG. It’s no skin off Morrow’s teeth to stick to the cooked up story he fabricated with Kane — that Adrian King did the leak. Morrow’s reputation, and future political PR contracts would have been much safer had he lied and stuck to his fabricated story. Peggy T must also be ignoring all the text messages the prove morrow’s and King’s version of the facts. or maybe she’s kane’s sister????
Someone has a man-crush on HaHaHa.
Peggy, when an impartial jury of 12 disagrees with you, will you finally accept that your darling Kathleen did in fact commit crimes?
My license plate reads MSOJNST, but I hate that pussy Zappala the most.
Beemer is not credible. Adrian King and Josh Morrow are flat out liars.
Has Seth Williams been indicted by the Feds yet?
@whistleblower – is that Kane’s defense? Or just your theory? I have read that John”s brother, Kevin Dougherty, was involved in Porngate. Was that part of The motive to set up Kane?
more: At trial, Kane’s former aide and onetime beau lashes out
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20160811_Ex-first_deputy_AG__Kane_said_grand_jury_leak_was__not_a_big_deal_.html?nlid=9874452&
Kathleen Granahan and Adrian King dated when they were students at Temple Law School. They even lived together for a year or so. They parted as friends, and when she, now Kathleen G. Kane, became attorney general, she named King as her top aide.
On Wednesday, at Kane’s trial on perjury and obstruction charges, King accused the attorney general of “trying to frame” him.
An angry King leveled that charge during a grueling cross-examination by Kane’s legal team. He portrayed his former boss and friend as a thin-skinned public official who dodged questions from the media and ignored his warnings not to leak confidential investigative material.
Kane, 50, Pennsylvania’s first elected Democratic attorney general, sat quietly and nearly expressionless at the defense table, sometimes whispering to her lawyers. During King’s testimony, she turned her chair to face the witness stand and kept her eyes on her longtime friend, nodding along as her lawyer cross-examined him.
Like other witnesses before him – current or former Kane aides – King described her as incensed at a March 2014 Inquirer article reporting that she had secretly shut down a promising undercover investigation of Democratic officials in Philadelphia without bringing charges.
Kane is charged with leaking confidential grand jury documents – an illegal act that King contends she is attempting to pin on him.
Prosecutors say Kane released the documents to plant a news story to retaliate against a former state prosecutor who she believed was the source for the Inquirer story. She is also charged with lying about her actions to a grand jury.
“The defendant was extremely upset,” King said, referring to Kane’s response to the Inquirer story. “She took it as a personal attack on herself and also as an attack on the credibility of the office she was running.”
Four days after the story’s publication, Kane showed up for a meeting of the Inquirer Editorial Board but declined to answer questions, remaining silent while well-known Philadelphia lawyer Richard A. Sprague threatened a defamation suit.
“I was flabbergasted,” King, 48, told the jurors. “I think every elected official is answerable to the public and the press. And if you make decisions, you need to answer questions.”
With his relationship with Kane under growing strain, King also emailed her at one point to caution her against providing office investigative material to outsiders.
While Kane has admitted she wanted to provide the press with information about an old case, she has insisted that her goal was to do so in a lawful way, and said she left it to aides such as King to select the material shared with the Daily News for a June 2014 article.
The article suggested that a Kane critic, former state prosecutor Frank Fina, had failed to aggressively pursue a 2009 investigation of J. Whyatt Mondesire, the late Philadelphia civil rights leader.
Political consultant Josh Morrow and King acted as couriers to deliver material to the Daily News, though King has said he thought the envelope he ferried contained only benign campaign-related handouts.
Seth Farber, one of six members of Kane’s legal team surrounding her in court, mocked King during his cross-examination. He ridiculed him for everything from using the words egress and ingress (Farber said this showed that King was rehearsed) to agreeing to be a messenger in the first place. (“Does the attorney general of Pennsylvania have a FedEx account?” Farber asked.)
King, appearing to seethe on the stand, said he had deeply researched the case, examining his own phone records after concluding that Kane and Morrow were united in an attempt to falsely pin the leak on him.
While Morrow is now a prosecution witness testifying under immunity, he at one time told prosecutors that King had a bigger role in the leak and Kane a lesser one. He later recanted.
Earlier in the day, Bruce Beemer, who took over as first deputy after King left the office, said he had been shocked by the Daily News article and its quotes from grand jury material. So he called Kane to ask whether he could investigate it, he said.
“She said: ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal. We have more important things to do,’ ” he said.
David Peifer, an agent with the office who conducted a key interview that was later passed on to the Daily News, said that he too saw the story as based on an improper leak.
“I was pissed, to say the least,” he testified.
Peifer, who was granted immunity for cooperating with prosecutors, said he spoke with Kane to assure her he had not leaked the materials.
“Her response was, ‘I would never suspect you of leaking that document. Don’t worry about it.’ ”
Another witness, Michel Miletto, a veteran agent with the office, said on cross-examination by Kane’s lawyers that he had already received questions about the Mondesire probe from a different reporter – suggesting that a leak that fueled the Daily News story was not the first time the secrecy of that investigation had been penetrated.
Still, Peifer told the jury Wednesday, he had a clear mission from Kane when he met with Miletto: “Find out why Frank Fina shut this investigation down.”
The trial, before Montgomery County Court Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy, is to resume Thursday. Cross-examination of King by Kane’s lawyers will continue.
If only the cops or Feds could get s hold of Brennan’s mobile lol. All the calls and texts could be traced back to burner phones purchased by local 98!!! CRIMINALS!!!!!!
By the way in pre trial Brennan’s attorney wouldn’t or couldn’t show any actual paper document. (Kane’s lawyer wanted them tested for fingerprints ) So they were either destroyed or remain on Brennan’s mobile device or computer
Johnny Doc got the documents from Josh Morrow. Then he had his paid employee Chris unindicted coconspirator “Brennan leak it. Payback for embarrassing Seamus McCaffery. Bank on that .
FOUND GUILTY BY TUESDAY.
most sentient beings wait until all of the witnesses have testified before opining on the merits of a prosecution. to wit, let’s see : ..
“…Kane is accused of orchestrating the leak of those documents to her former first deputy, Adrian King who delivered them to a political consultant named Josh Morrow. Morrow allegedly gave the documents to then-Philadelphia Daily News reporter Chris Brennan…
so if King, Morrow and Brennan prove the chain of custody of the leaked documents, nd others verify that those documents were indeed grand jury sourced, kane.could very well be found guilty.
note the latest
http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/homepage-feature/item/96216-witness-my-heart-sank-when-ag-kane-asked-him-to-stop-leak-investigation?linktype=hp_impact&mc_cid=15258c0c76&mc_eid=74b2c5b05e
‘My heart sank’ when AG Kane asked him to stop leak investigation
[that posting was not authored by me]
Marie – you sound bizarre. Id prefer it if you didn’t talk to me anymore. Sorry. I had a bad experience here with an unsanctioned idiot. And you are reminding me of him.
Brandy, as I suspected, you couldn’t be specific. It is a bizarre (and, thank god, very small) cult following that believes Kane will avoid prison. You seem to be a member. Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.
She has a very strong defense. But she doesn’t really need one – because they have no evidence. They have only innuendo and the words of questionable characters.
Brandy, be specific. What’s lacking in this case? Kane even admitted leaking the materials. She has no defense except to try for jury nullification because of that “old boy network.”
Exactly. There is no real evidence. Just innuendo and more of the smear campaign.
Sorry Marie. You seem sweet. But you don’t know what you are talking about. I agree with the other Marie – who posted before you did. She thinks this case is a set-up.
It sure doesn’t seem like they have any strong evidence.
Ah, the old “Chris Martinez” gag. The very best humor that this Democrat blog has to offer.
I despise Democrats to the bottom of my cold dark heart, but this case is bullshit.
Oh wait, no it’s not. Kane blatantly violated the law and got caught.
Brandy, if they trace the hand-off of confidential GJ materials from Kane to the press, that’s sufficient evidence for a conviction. I get that you are a Kane-hugger (and, I assume a Joebot), but they don’t need video or DNA evidence for this case.
Kane was a lousy AG. And I hate all Democrats – especially the females.
But – this Kangaroo Court is BS. The Judge is tight with the special prosecutor and best friends with the DA who brought the charges.
She did nothing wrong. All this is he-said/she-said. They have no real proof. None. Just innuendo. Innuendo from highly questionable sources.
I have “guaranteed” nothing, but I felt Cruz was the ideal candidate; this perspective appears to have been borne-out during recent months.
Also, I felt–based upon statements from Dems–that the Senate would remove this political impediment; they may yet do so, provided enhanced provocation.
Yes, the TEA Party movement is alive and well; coalescence behind Cruz is manifest, for example, when it seems Carly [noting her deep involvement with CPAC] wants to become RNC-Chair.
Republican Voter, she was caught red-handed giving confidential grand jury materials to the press. Is she being prosecuted for something that others have done? Maybe. But she’s guilty as sin when it comes to these charges. It’s no defense that others may have broken the law in a similar way.
I don’t like Kane; but this case is bullshit.
They were out to get her to shut her up and/or discredit her. Everybody knows that by now.
I love it when gulag Pittsburgh, who was kicked out of the Pennsylvania bar, offers his assessment of what’s going to happen in legal proceedings.
Bucks makes a great point. Morrow (a close friend of Johnny Doc’s) totally changed his story to implicate Kane. I wonder why …. Hmmmm ….. Could it be because Johnny Doc’s brother was involved with Porngate?
Mental patient sklaroff has been wrong 2,432 straight times. He guaranteed Cruz would get nomination and that Senate would “remove” Kane. He is a TEA-guzzling idiot.
Beemer being “worried” about it to begin with is the real issue. Fina/ his buddies illegally leaked stuff on almost all their high-profile cases. Where was Beemer’soutrage then? He is a fraud.
Thank you Attorney Sklaroff for explaining to Mr. Diano this basic evidentiary concept. Forgive his ignorance, you see, Mr. Diano is still earning his law degree from the David’s Parents’ Basement School of Law, which is not an ABA accredited institution.
@ D2, gulag & Tim:
The case is based upon facts/evidence.
That contemporaneous notes were taken “to refresh recollections” is admissible and, indeed, they should provide the Defense an opportunity to impeach credibility [if this were truly possible].
Care to try to explain-away the notarized affidavit as an “honest error”???
Exactly, DD. This case is a total joke. It should have never been brought. And it will be reversed even if she gets convicted. Selective Enforcement is a form of corruption.
All of the notes and unanswered questions are hearsay and speculative. Not admissable. What happened to relevant factual testimony at trial? This show trial based on hearsay and speculation is as outrageous as the selective prosecution in the first place. Can the defense put on my notes from when I read this story when it first broke?
How are Beemer’s “notes” any different from he-said-she-said? He could write notes to cover for himself. If Kane had notes saying: “Beemer is in agreement that the leaks are legal and not a big deal.” would the prosecution give them the weight they are giving to Beemer’s notes? Maybe Beemer had two sets of notes, depending how things fell?
What does think Kane’s last act would be? Would it be to promote him for his “loyalty”? Would it be to grab her favorite mug? Would it be to grab a gun and die in a hail of bullets? Would it be to rat out the rats she uncovered?
Without an actual answer by Kane, the entire “question” is speculation and improper to have been allowed into the testimony.
If she had said, “How do you think I would murder your family?” then, that would be relevant. But, not this horsesh*t testimony.
Beemer became Fina’s stooge at some point. But, before that, he called Fina’s plea deal with Tyron Ali (the sting cooperator) “unjust.” And he said Fina targeting Blacks was “improper.”
Now he’s aligned with the people who want to tie Kane down.
The “star” witness – a John Dougherty guy – told investigators Kane had nothing to do with the leak. And then the “special prosecutor” got him to say the exact opposite.
This case has a nasty odor.