HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The rest of the emails at the center of a scandal over pornography exchanges among former employees of the Pennsylvania attorney general were delivered Friday to Gov. Tom Corbett’s office.
Corbett had requested the documents as he weighed whether four men who previously worked for him when he was attorney general should keep the jobs they held in his administration. Two of them resigned on Thursday.
The scandal has forced Corbett, a Republican who was attorney general during the period in which the exchanges occurred, to defend his management of an agency he left nearly four years ago while at the same time he fights for his political survival one month before the Nov. 4 election.
Last week, Attorney General Kathleen Kane identified eight ex-employees who sent or received hundreds of pornographic images or videos in emails that were discovered during her review of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse prosecution.
Corbett is locked in an uphill campaign for re-election against Democratic challenger Tom Wolf. Kane took office last year, after becoming the first Democrat and the first woman to be elected attorney general.
All eight men worked under Corbett while he was attorney general from 2005 to 2011. Most of them went to work for Corbett as governor and four still did as of Wednesday.
Corbett requested details from Kane’s office as he weighed whether the four should keep their jobs. He said he was unaware of the pornography exchanges and called such activity “inexcusable.”
Two of the men resigned Thursday as Kane’s office delivered the first batch of emails Corbett requested: Environmental Protection Secretary Christopher Abruzzo and Glenn Parno, a top lawyer in the Department of Environmental Protection.
Another of the four – state police Commissioner Frank Noonan – did not open, originate, forward or reply to any of the emails, Corbett said.
“The information we have indicates that Noonan was not an active participant in this at all,” Corbett spokesman Jay Pagni said Friday.
Noonan, who has not commented, is directing the 3-week-old manhunt for a fugitive suspected of killing one state trooper and wounding another in an ambush at a state police barracks in northeastern Pennsylvania.
The emails of the fourth man – former agent Randy Feathers, whom Corbett appointed to the state Board of Probation and Parole -were expected to be released Friday along with those involving several men no longer on the state payroll.
Kane’s office has said that a larger number of current and former employees were involved in the exchanges, including about 30 current employees. Kane spokeswoman Renee Martin claimed union contracts and other restrictions prevent the disclosure of information about those employees but said the current employees are being disciplined.
Concerns about inappropriate office emails also have been raised in the state’s court system. State Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Castille demanded information on whether any judges were involved, warning that such exchanges could create a conflict of interest.
The emails released late Friday afternoon, like the first batch on Thursday, are bound in thick volumes. Most of the text has been heavily redacted, but it is mostly sexually suggestive comments about photographs that were originally attached to the emails but not released.
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