Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane was convicted on all charges today, including perjury and criminal conspiracy. A jury found her guilty of "leaking grand jury information, and then lying about it, in an effort to discredit a political rival," according to The New York Times. The decision was an ignominious conclusion to a remarkable career—and to a winding tale of intrigue at the highest levels of Pennsylvania state government. In February, Esquire published a detailed account of Kane's story and called it "The Great Pennsylvania Government Porn Caper." The first chapter of the story is below; you can read the full piece after the jump.

Kathleen Kane was stuck in her not-so-happy place. She preferred to avoid Pennsylvania's capital, the nerve center of its incestuous, dysfunctional political system. It seemed to change people, she thought, throwing their moral compass askew. But here she sat in her Harrisburg office in early 2014, a year into her tenure as the state's attention-grabbing attorney general, feeling the flawlessly arranged bookcases and canary-blue walls closing in.

A staffer marched into the office and beelined to Kane's desk, pressed into the corner of the room. Kane's steely blue eyes fell to a disc that was resting in the staffer's hand. "We're putting this on your computer because the information is important," he said bluntly. "But I recommend that you not look at these."

Why? Kane thought. It wasn't like the disc contained nuclear codes. All that was on there were old emails that had been sent and received by members of the attorney general's office before Kane occupied it.

So of course she opened up the files. She wasn't some wilting flower; she'd seen dead bodies and worked rape cases, and she prided herself on not being treated like the girl in the room. But when she started clicking, she was at first shocked, then repulsed, then a little—just a little—curious.

Kathleen Kane, Attorney General of Pennsylvania

Loads of pornography littered the exchanges between government officials like so much cow shit in an open field. Office-secretary porn. Sarah Palin-Photoshopped porn. Hardcore, objects-stuck-in-a-woman's-every-orifice porn. The more she clicked, the worse it got. Fat jokes. Gay jokes. Racist jokes. Domestic-violence jokes.The bulk of which were sent on state computers, on state time, from one state employee to another.

The emails on the disc were just the tip of the iceberg; the full scope wasn't immediately clear. In time, Kane and everyone else in the state would come to realize the emails were like strands of a spiderweb, stretching out in every possible direction, connecting small-town attorneys to big-name prosecutors to State Supreme Court Justices.

For now there were just the emails. They were an opportunity, a gift; digital dynamite, powerful and potentially destructive. And with them came an unspoken question: How should they be used?

The answer was easy: They should be made public. Kane had run for office as a tough-as-nails outsider who wanted to shake up the male-dominated world of Pennsylvania politics. She earned a staggering three million votes in the 2012 general election—more than even President Obama managed to attract in the state that year—and was the first woman and first Democrat to become state attorney general since the position was made an elected office in 1980. Expectations were high.

She was also a political newcomer, having never held elected office or been in charge of an operation as large and politically volatile as the attorney general's office. But she flourished from the very beginning, making headlines from coast to coast for refusing to defend the state's ban on same-sex marriages. She was a rising star in the Democratic party. "For about a year there, she really was the darling," says former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, who still wields enormous influence in the state's political circles. "There was talk that she'd run for governor or even president."

Kane might have stayed on that path, even thrived, strengthening relationships in the state's old-school, ossified circles of power. But these emails changed everything. Each piece of correspondence shattered her respect for the legal community just a bit more. One photo collection titled "Blonde Banana Split" contained more than 30 images of two women stuffing bananas inside each other's every hole. Another photo of a busty woman wearing a black-and-white veil was subtitled "Nuns: They have tits too." "Some pictures might be close enough to make those taste buds tingle!" read the introduction to another thread, containing close-ups of women's genitals.

Kane had run for office as a tough-as-nails outsider who wanted to shake up the male-dominated world of Pennsylvania politics.

The men—they were almost all men—exchanging these images were among the most prominent names in the state's judicial system. And they'd been doing it for years, with no fear of being reprimanded. No, Kane thought. This is wrong. All wrong. She had to blow the whistle, to show Pennsylvanians the true personas of men they could someday face inside a courtroom.

At first, Kane identified only a handful of top figures on then-Governor Tom Corbett's staff. Corbett condemned the exchanges and called on the participants to resign. But the list of the participants kept growing. And growing.

This should have been the beginning of a celebrated landmark achievement for the tenacious A.G. She was unraveling disgusting misbehavior at the very highest levels of Pennsylvania politics, proving that the good ol' boys network—"women haters," as Kane called them—truly did exist. She should have been the hero.

But Porngate, as the saga became known, was only getting started. By the time the scandal's scope was in full view, Kathleen Kane, the state's top legal official, no longer had the right to practice law in Pennsylvania by decree of the State Supreme Court.

Click here to continue reading the whole story.

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