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Corbett stands by one of his appointees in porn scandal, wants another to resign

Probation & Parole board member resists call to stand down, demands to see the porn attributed to him.

GOV. CORBETT is standing by one state law-enforcement official caught up in a porn scandal, but has asked another to resign.

Corbett says information released this week by state Attorney General Kathleen Kane does not show that State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan opened any of the more than 300 explicit emails he received while working as a top deputy to Corbett when the governor served as attorney general.

Noonan has told the governor he did not look at the files, a Corbett spokeswoman said.

A source familiar with the porn scandal said Randy Feathers, another top deputy when Corbett was attorney general, is resisting for now the governor's request to resign his post on the state Board of Probation and Parole.

Feathers, in a letter to Corbett yesterday, said he has asked Kane to allow him to have "an independent forensic expert review the information which she has publicly attributed to me."

Feathers writes that he is skeptical of Kane's claims but will consider resigning if his behavior is found to be unprofessional.

Kane's spokeswoman, Renee George Martin, yesterday said she was "not aware of any communications from Mr. Feathers."

The state Senate in October 2012 approved Corbett's nomination of Feathers to the board.

By law, a member can be removed "for cause by the governor, by and with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the members of the Senate." Corbett can also suspend Feathers while the Senate is in recess.

Feathers was one of several of Corbett's top deputies whose actions were reviewed when Kane took office, after running on a pledge to investigate how Corbett and his staff handled the child sex abuse case that sent former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky to prison.

In his letter, he calls the review a "politically motivated" attack.

Kane's staff, while recovering deleted Attorney General's Office emails to conduct that review, discovered the stash of porn.

Kane has refused to release the email attachments, which include hard-core pictures and videos, but put a selection on display for the media last week.

In Feathers' archived inbox, there were pictures of a woman contorting herself to bend over backward while performing oral sex on a man. There were also videos of a woman inserting a bowling pin into her vagina and of a man shoving a spouting bottle of champagne into a woman's vagina.

Kane's staff said Feathers received 436 of the emails and sent or forwarded 40 of them.

Kane on Thursday released the first batch of emails, without the attachments, to the media while responding to a request from Corbett for copies to review.

Two former Corbett deputies, Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Chris Abruzzo and Glenn Parno, DEP's chief counsel, resigned as their archived inboxes went public.

Kane today released the rest of the emails, including files for Kevin Harley, who was Corbett's press secretary in the Attorney General's Office and in the Governor's Office and now is an adviser to Corbett's campaign.