Former Pa. AG Kathleen Kane sent to treatment after probation violation

NORRISTOWN — Pennsylvania’s former top law enforcement officer, who served jail time for leaking secret investigative files and lying about it, admitted Monday that she violated her probation when she was arrested for drunken driving in March.

Kathleen Kane, the first woman and first Democrat to be elected attorney general in the state, was sentenced to two months to a year of jail on the probation violation, but was given credit for time already served and was scheduled to be paroled directly to a residential treatment center for alcohol use.

Kane appeared before the same judge who sentenced her in the original leak case.

“I was not anticipating seeing you again, and I was hopeful we would not see you again in Montgomery County, but that’s been your choice, not mine,” Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy told Kane in court.

Kane took the stand briefly and answered a series of routine questions. She did not comment outside court.

Once a rising star in Pennsylvania politics, Kane resigned as attorney general after being convicted in 2016 of perjury, obstruction and other counts for leaking grand jury material to embarrass a rival prosecutor. She served eight months of a 10-to-23-month sentence before being released in 2019.

On March 12, police in Scranton were called to the scene of a two-car crash and said they found Kane behind the wheel of an Audi.

Kane told responding officers she was a designated driver, but surveillance video showed Kane herself had been drinking alcohol at a Scranton restaurant shortly before the crash, according to an affidavit.

Kane had watery, bloodshot eyes and slurred her words — police said she had trouble saying the word “designated” — and failed a field sobriety test, the documents said.

Kane was charged with drunken driving and careless driving. Four days later, a Montgomery County judge issued a bench warrant for her arrest on the alleged probation violation. Kane is on probation until October 2025.

Kane, 55, has been jailed at Montgomery County Correctional Facility outside Philadelphia since April 29.