Another twist in the Kane grand jury investigation.
Special Prosecutor in the Kathleen Kane Trial, Thomas E. Carluccio, has subpoenaed two reporters from The Philadelphia Inquirer, Craig McCoy and Angela Couloumbis, in effort to learn the sources of a January 8th news article written for the paper regarding a grand jury’s recommendation for criminal charges against Kane.
The reporters will appear before a statewide grand jury in Norristown.
William K. Marimow, editor at The Inquirer, stated that the reporters would invoke Pennsylvania’s Shield Law, which is designed protect confidential sources from being named. He added that “the confidential sources who provided guidance to The Inquirer in these stories about public officials in their official duties are precisely those whom the Pennsylvania Shield Law was designed to protect from disclosure.”
These reports come two days after Kane’s lawyer, Lanny J. Davis said that his client had been subject to a “biased investigation.”
Regarding today’s news, Davis said that “there can be no doubt that the information leaked to The Philadelphia Inquirer was grand-jury protected information.”
“Now my question to the special prosecutor today – will he answer it?,” Davis asked. “Mr. Special Prosecutor, have you begun an investigation of that leak? And if not, why not?”
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7 Responses
I fear the real issue here is how everyone from the press to politicians plays to public perception.
Reporters should be protected! But the investigation itself is about leaks! Thus, reporters resorting to leaks to support the story doesn’t go toward exposing the full information to the public! This matter continues to create a circular form of logical conundrums. Especially, since it is he Inquirer that now becomes not only the exposer but the exposed.
The fact that those now being subjected to pressure is that they are Inquirer reporters muddies this subject further. The role of the newspaper in this is subject to some severe questioning also. Scandal or muckraking, reporting or just good business tactics to sell papers?
They have been selling many papers and doing a political expose series over this (alleged) scandal (crime?) and the leaks presented. But I don’t believe this to be objective. The use of new grand jury secrets seems to be a continuance of the initial hit (or not) on Kane.
A real discussion about the use of secret juries and protecting that secrecy after the juries have disbanded is a ripe subject for public debate.
I would urge the inquirer to do some soul searching about the failure to get into the greater story and take an editorial stand on how one person’s (Kane’s alleged allowing of gossip about a dead grand juries findings) has wound up with being daily coverage and political ego (as alleged) becomes a criminal act (according to the detail I have read of the leak Kane allegedly off handedly allowed an underling to publish dead information). Was her intent to commit a crime or was it ordinary political behavior? I guess it is up to DA Furman to deal with this now!
I do question a bandwagon of supporting criminal charges over the issue of grand jury secrecy that allows the (creepy) one sidedness of a leak to overshadow the basic issue of secrecy itself. The fairness of using secrecy as a means to protect the political exposure of some or all of the participants in itself is frightening to the peoples right to know and judge for themselves the degree of political theater going on in PA.
If it’s “newsworthy,” they can print it. Welcome to America.
The inequality is that journalists don’t find Joe Shmoe newsworthy. That’s the price of being a leader.
“Equal Justice Under Law” does not seem to mean what I thought it meant.
Apparently the possession of ill-gotten gains is not a crime if you are a journalist. Obviously, the two reporters knew that the documents were confidential and secret Grand Jury evidence and they, obviously, knew that it was a serious crime, a felony, in fact, to disclose it and yet….complicit enablers of a felon are, themselves, not felons? That seems odd. Does the Shield Law mean reporters can collude and conspire to disclose Grand Jury evidence as, obviously, they did. These reporters should be ashamed of themselves as should the felon who provided them with secret Grand Jury testimony. The source, in this case, as the reporters well knew, was breaking the law. I don’t get it. How can they not be guilty? oh well..I am sure people much smarter than I will explain it to me.
This seems like such an exercise in futility – no self-respecting journalist is going to give up a source, nor should he. The freedom and integrity of the press is one of the most fundamental protections of our Constitution and critical to the preservation of the Republic.
Wouldn’t it be great if Carlucci was the source and the journalists covered for him?
How would Fina know anything? He’s not a prosecutor, or a member of the GJ. Use your head for once. Observer, Fina is sorry about putting your Bonusgate criminal pals in prison. He was just doing His job.
This is just window dressing by Carluccio. Until he subpoenas the well-know sources of these leaks – Freakie Frankie Feena – he’s not serious. Carlucci KNOWS this is all coming from Fina, in a desperate attempt to silence those who know what was found on his work computer at the AG’s office.