AG Kane reveals X-rated emails

HARRISBURG - Some of Gov. Corbett's top deputies seemed to have been quite taken, while he was the state attorney general, with graphic images of unusual objects inserted into women's vaginas.

Explicit emails put on display for reporters yesterday by Attorney General Kathleen Kane - in perhaps the strangest political peep show in history - included videos of women masturbating by inserting a bowling pin and a lit cigar.

In another video, a man who looks like a race-car driver shakes a bottle of champagne, uncorks it and then inserts the spouting mouth of the bottle into a woman's vagina while others watch.

He then takes a big gulp of the bubbly. And not from the bottle.

The emails were recovered from the inboxes of eight Corbett deputies, including five who went on to high-profile public jobs when he became governor.

That includes State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan, Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Chris Abruzzo, former Secretary of Legislative Affairs Chris Carusone, former Press Secretary Kevin Harley, who is now an adviser to Corbett's re-election campaign, and Glenn Parno, who oversees oil and gas regulation for DEP.

Those Corbett deputies and others considered to be connected to the explicit emails did not respond to requests for comment.

Lynn Lawson, Corbett's communications director, said the images as described by the reporters who saw them "are unacceptable and have no place in the work environment."

Corbett has said he was told about "inappropriate" emails in May but has not seen them.

"We do not have the facts," Lawson added. "And we need proper context."

Reporters from across the state have filed several requests for the emails, since rumors spread that they were recovered during Kane's review of how Corbett's staff handled the investigation that sent former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky to prison for sexually abusing children.

Kane, through an outside law firm, this week declined to release the emails, declaring them to not be public records.

But then she partially reversed course, allowing reporters to visit her office across the street from the state Capitol to see some of them.

An armed agent showed the images on his laptop while another stood guard at the door. No pictures were allowed to be taken and Kane refused to release any of the images due to their "explicit nature."

Clout viewed 56 pictures and videos. They ran the gamut from pictures you'd find in Playboy to hard-core fetish material.

A series of porn parodies of office motivational posters were found in Noonan's former inbox.

Two show woman performing oral sex for a man at a desk.

One is captioned: "Devotion: making your boss happy is your only job." Another is captioned: "Performance: monthly performance evaluations are mandatory for all secretarial staff."

A third shows a woman having anal sex with a man at a desk, captioned: "Resourcefulness: Taking advantage of every opening."

In a statement on the records requests, Kane spokeswoman Renee George Martin told reporters: "Although we have determined that we cannot respond to all aspects and details of your request we can make certain disclosures, which we trust will satisfy most of your needs."

Martin's statement referred to "restrictions, upon which we cannot elaborate" which prompted some of the names on the email chains to be redacted.

One name that was not mentioned was that of Frank Fina, a former Corbett deputy who now works for Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, and has a complicated and controversial history with Kane.

She ran for office in 2012 by criticizing the pace of Corbett's investigation of Sandusky, who was prosecuted by Fina.

The Inquirer in March reported that Kane had dropped a case, previously led by Fina, in which a lobbyist taped conversations with four Philadelphia legislators and a Traffic Court judge as they accepted cash or gifts.

Fina on Aug. 28 sought to have Cambria County Court of Common Pleas Judge Norman Krumenacker III, who supervised the statewide grand jury in the Sandusky case, prohibit Kane from releasing the emails.

Krumenacker did so, but then lifted that ban last Friday.

Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas Judge William Carpenter, who also supervises a statewide grand jury, may have ordered some names redacted.

The Inquirer reported this month that Carpenter appointed a special prosecutor to look into how the Daily News acquired documents for a story in June about an investigation of former Philadelphia NAACP president J. Whyatt Mondesire.

The documents showed Kane has been examining why nothing happened at the Attorney General's Office after the case was given to Fina in 2009 by underlings who told him they found evidence of Mondesire allegedly misspending state funds.

Sources have described Fina as one of the primary originators of the explicit emails while he worked for Corbett. Those sources also said Marc Costanzo, who also now works for Williams, was among the people who sent or received the explicit images.

Another person who seemed quite active in the exchange of emails was Randy Feathers, a former top aide appointed by Corbett in 2012 to serve on the state Board of Probation and Parole.

Kane's staff broke down the explicit email traffic this way:

*  Feathers received 436 and sent 40 of them.

* Abruzzo received 46 and sent eight.

* Carusone received 52 and sent three.

* Noonan received 338 but sent none.

* Parno received 178 and sent 10.

Kane's staff could not offer email statistics yesterday for Harley or two other former Corbett aides, Patrick Blessington and Richard Sheetz Jr. Blessington now works in Philly for Williams. Sheetz works for the Lancaster District Attorney's Office.

Phone: 215-854-5973

On Twitter: @ChrisBrennanDN

Blog: ph.ly/phillyclout