Timeline: Kane's troubled tenure as attorney general

Nov. 6: By a landslide vote, Kathleen G. Kane becomes the first woman and first Democrat to be elected Pennsylvania attorney general.

Feb. 8: Kane ends the "Florida loophole" through which Pennsylvania residents could legally carry a concealed weapon using a Florida permit.

Feb. 13: Kane opposes Gov. Tom Corbett's bid to privatize the Pennsylvania Lottery, saying the deal usurps the legislature's powers and runs afoul of state gaming regulations.

July 11: Kane announces that she will not defend the state law banning same-sex marriage from a legal challenge in federal court.

March 16: The Inquirer reports that Kane shut down a sting investigation, begun by her Republican predecessors, that caught six Philadelphia public officials, all Democrats, accepting money or gifts from an undercover operative. Kane said the investigation was poorly handled and marred by possible racial profiling.

March 23: Frank Fina, the former state prosecutor who oversaw the sting, criticizes Kane in an Inquirer op-ed article, calling for a televised public forum at which he and Kane could debate the merits of the investigation. In a separate opinion article, his new boss, Democratic Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, writes that he was offended by Kane's suggestion that racism had tainted the probe.

April 9: Kane challenges Williams to take over the sting case. Soon afterward, Williams accepts. (To date, five of the six defendants have been convicted.)

May 29: Montgomery County Court Judge William R. Carpenter appoints a special prosecutor to investigate a potential leak of grand jury information from the Attorney General's Office. Carpenter is acting on a complaint from Fina and other prosecutors, made after a Daily News reporter contacted them.

June 6: The Daily News publishes a story about a five-year-old grand jury investigation of a Philadelphia civil rights leader that led to no criminal charges. The article quotes an agent as saying Fina failed to aggressively pursue the case. (Fina has denied that.)

Oct. 2: News reports say that state Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery had forwarded sexually explicit messages from his personal email account to an agent in the Attorney General's Office, who then circulated them to dozens of other government employees. McCaffery resigns by the end of the month.

Oct. 23: Williams announces the first criminal charges in the previously aborted sting. He brings charges against five additional defendants in the weeks to come.

Nov. 17: Kane testifies before the grand jury investigating the leak, and says in a statement that she authorized the release of information to the Daily News and that it was legal.

Dec. 18: The grand jury recommends that Kane be charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, false swearing, official oppression, and contempt of court.

Jan. 22: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court bars the filing of criminal charges in the leak probe while considering Kane's claims that the special prosecutor had no legal authority to conduct the investigation.

March 31: The Supreme Court denies Kane's appeal by a 4-1 vote.

April 8: Kane fires James Barker, a top aide who had testified before the grand jury. An aide calls his dismissal part of a restructuring of the office's criminal division.

April 27: The grand jury report is made public. The panel concluded that Kane orchestrated the leak and later lied about it under oath.

June 24: Kane fires another aide, George Moore, after he recommended that she fire Jonathan Duecker, her chief of staff. Moore made the suggestion after learning that two women in the Attorney General's Office had reported that Duecker had sexually harassed them.

Aug. 6: Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman charges Kane with perjury, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, official oppression, and false swearing.

Aug. 26: In court documents, Kane says Fina and another former state prosecutor "corruptly manufactured" the criminal case against her to cover up the fact that they had viewed pornography on state computers. Prosecutors say Kane's porn allegations have nothing to do with the case against her.

Sept. 21: The state Supreme Court unanimously votes to temporarily suspend Kane's law license until her trial.

Oct. 1: Kane says Supreme Court Justice J. Michael Eakin sent and received "racial, misogynistic pornography" on state computers. On the same day, Montgomery County prosecutors charge Kane with a second count of perjury for denying that she signed an oath of secrecy that barred her from releasing confidential investigative material. Detectives later found the signed oath in her offices.

Oct. 22: On the day the suspension of her law license takes effect, Kane releases 48 of Eakin's emails that contain offensive jokes and pictures of naked women.

Nov. 9: A seven-member bipartisan state Senate panel begins hearings on whether Kane can continue serving as attorney general with a suspended law license.

Dec. 7: The panel unanimously votes to allow the full Senate to vote on Kane's possible removal from office. In a statement, Kane argues that the only legal way to remove her is impeachment, and that she had been targeted because of her attempt to expose the pornographic emails. "Seldom do the machinations of the 'old boys' network' become so public," she writes.

Dec. 16: Under pressure, Kane reveals that her twin sister, Ellen Granahan, a top prosecutor on her staff, had sent emails that mocked African Americans and Asians, and included photos of scantily clad men and women. She says her sister, unlike others in the office who swapped offensive messages, will not be disciplined.

Feb. 10: Kane survives a vote in the state Senate to potentially remove her from office, when the Republican majority fails to secure enough Democratic votes for her ouster.

Feb. 16: Kane announces that she will not seek reelection.