Pennsylvania is receiving some unexpected shine this holiday season in the form of the aptly dubbed "porngate" scandal, which is somehow much stranger and more complicated than you probably think. Though the political scandal has been playing out on the local stage for quite some time, a recent Washington Post piece captured the eyes and ears of the nation thanks to some seemingly ridiculous details.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane has been steadily releasing previously private emails from state officials that reportedly include a variety of "pornographic, racist and misogynistic messages," which are of course three key ingredients in a political scandal.
According to the Post, a sampling of these leaked emails contains baffling displays of dumbness like a photo of a "pantsless woman" performing oral sex on a man alongside the caption "Making your boss happy is your only job." Another alleged email includes a photo of a white man fighting off two black men with the predictably racist caption "BRAVERY At Its Finest," despite the fact that it is most certainly about to be the year 2016 and one would assume society had moved beyond nonsense like this.
Though Fusion reports that the seemingly endless amount of offensive emails have already resulted in the disciplining of 60 people in Kane's department, the real twist lies in the fact that Kane's own twin sister is among those who reportedly engaged in the offensiveness. As if that weren't enough, Bloomberg reports that the Attorney General herself is also currently under indictment:
Kane, 49, is accused of leaking documents about a 2009 grand-jury investigation—led by her [Republican electoral] rival, Frank Fina, the chief deputy attorney general at the time—into the finances of a Philadelphia civil rights leader. She says she wasn’t bound by the rules of secrecy governing the grand jury proceedings because she had left the D.A.’s office in 2007. The leak followed criticism of her decision to shut down a three-year undercover sting operation led by Fina that caught several Democratic Philadelphia legislators on tape accepting bribes and that she said was flawed.
Of course, Kane argues that the indictment is merely in response to the leaked emails. At any rate, Pennsylvania's fascinatingly complicated porngate scandal doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon.
