Former state prosecutors sue AG Kane in federal court

Four former top officials in the Attorney General's Office and a former head of the state police sued Kathleen Kane on Thursday, contending that she planted a negative news story about them, tarred them with lies, and singled them out for public embarrassment.

The staffers, who include Frank Fina, once the office's top corruption prosecutor, allege in the federal lawsuit that the attorney general violated their civil rights in her zeal to blacken their reputations.

"Kane continuously abused and misdirected the power of her office, and its publicly funded resources, for personal and unconstitutional purposes through a pattern of intimidation, attempted blackmail, and vindictive retaliation," Mark Tanner, the men's lawyer, said in a statement.

Kane spokesman Chuck Ardo said she had not seen the suit but would defend herself vigorously against it.

Since taking office, Kane has been highly critical of Fina, suggesting that he had mishandled a string of high-stakes cases. She has also portrayed him as a ringleader in the sharing of pornography among state officials - a characterization Fina has rejected as false.

Fina and his fellow plaintiffs, including former state Police Commissioner Frank Noonan, were identified by Kane over the last year as among those who had exchanged pornography on state time on state computers.

While acknowledging that some of the emails were "offensive, irreverent and in bad taste," the men said in the suit that the material was not illegal - and that Kane had arbitrarily targeted them for public exposure. In fact, the suit said, more than 100 people were involved in the email chains, and Kane has never publicly identified most of them.

Along with Fina and Noonan, the plaintiffs in the suit against Kane are Randy Feathers, a former top investigator for the office who was key in building the case against sex offender Jerry Sandusky; and two former top prosecutors, Richard A. Sheetz and E. Marc Costanzo.

Feathers was forced out of a $116,000-a-year seat on the state parole board once the scandal broke. Sheetz lost his job as a prosecutor in Lancaster County.

Noonan hung on. Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, though he forced out others with ties to the porn, stood by Noonan, saying there was no evidence he had opened or sent any of the offensive emails.

In the 58-page lawsuit, the five men put their spin on the controversies that have dogged Kane over the last year and a half, ever since The Inquirer reported that she had shut down an undercover sting investigation that had caught elected officials from Philadelphia on tape taking payoffs. All were Democrats, like Kane.

In shutting down the investigation, Kane called it "half-assed," poorly managed, and possibly tainted by racial targeting.

In response to a dare from Kane, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams picked up the case and brought corruption charges against six officials. Four have pleaded guilty; the others are awaiting trial.

Williams has publicly rejected Kane's suggestion that race played a role in the sting. In their suit, Fina and the others say Kane and her top aides "wholly fabricated" that allegation.

As the lawsuit notes, prosecutors in a pending criminal case against Kane say she blamed Fina, who supervised the sting, for leaking information about the shuttered investigation to The Inquirer.

In revenge, prosecutors say, Kane gave confidential grand jury information to the Philadelphia Daily News for a story critical of Fina.

Kane, who has denied any wrongdoing, is awaiting trial on charges of perjury, conspiracy, and other crimes in connection with that leak. She has pleaded not guilty.

The Daily News story quoted an investigator with the Attorney General's Office as saying Fina had mishandled the case in question, a 2009 investigation into the finances of a prominent civil rights leader.

The suit names that investigator, veteran agent Michael Melitto, as a defendant. It also names the Daily News and its parent company, Philadelphia Media Network, and the reporter who wrote the story, Chris Brennan, who is now an Inquirer staff writer.

Amy Buckman, a spokeswoman for PMN, said the company would have no comment.

The suit says Kane was so "illogical and desperate" to defame Fina that she simultaneously maintained that he had gone easy on a black civil rights leader, even as he "pursued a racist investigation" in the sting case.

Fina also guided the investigation that led to the conviction of Sandusky, the serial molester of boys in the Penn State community.

The suit notes that at a June 2014 news conference, Kane asserted that Fina had failed to bring charges on behalf of at least one victim of Sandusky's. The next day, her staff admitted that was not true. In fact, the victim had testified in court.

In November 2014, the suit says, Kane appeared on CNN and said her crackdown on porn had turned up "hardcore, graphic, sometimes violent emails that had a string of videos and pictures depicting sometimes children."

During the broadcast, pictures of Fina, Noonan, and Feathers appeared on the screen, the suit notes.

The day after the CNN story, Kane's office said she had not meant to suggest that the emails had included any child pornography.

All of this, the suit said, reflected Kane's "pattern of falsehoods, distractions and retaliation" as she pursued a "personal and political vendetta" against Fina and the others.

acouloumbis@phillynews.com

717-787-5934 @AngelasInk