New twists and turns in the Kathleen Kane scandal after the Pennsylvania State Senate voted on whether to remove her from office the same day that the State House voted on whether to begin impeachment proceedings.
On Wednesday morning, Kane barely dodged being removed from her role as Pennsylvania attorney general after the state Senate voted against ejecting her. The majority of the Senate’s Republican-controlled members voted to remove Kane by using what the New York Times called "an arcane constitutional procedure not invoked in Pennsylvania since 1891." But the Republicans fell four votes short of the required two-thirds vote. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:
In urging her removal, almost every Republican - and one Democrat - said the state Supreme Court's suspension of her law license last year meant Kane could no longer effectively serve as the state's top law enforcement official.
But Democrats dismissed the push to remove her as politically motivated, arguing that voting to overturn her election to office would set a dangerous precedent. They said that Kane's duties were primarily managerial, and that she did not need to be a lawyer in good standing to perform her principal duties.
Democrats in the Senate also argued that the correct method of removal is impeachment, rather than removal by "direct address, … a provision [that] has been used successfully only a handful of times, in the 1880s, to remove officials who were mentally or physically incapacitated."
Immediately after Kane won the Senate battle, though, she lost another in the House. The New York Times reports that later on Wednesday the Pennsylvania House voted "overwhelmingly" to start impeachment proceedings against Kane.
The House vote, 170 to 12, was bipartisan. It authorizes lawmakers to investigate whether Ms. Kane — the first woman and first Democrat ever elected attorney general in Pennsylvania — should face impeachment charges. A House impeachment vote would be followed by a Senate trial, a process that could take months. […]
In the House, State Representative Todd Stephens, a Republican who will lead the impeachment inquiry, promised a bipartisan effort and said in an interview that his work would be different from the Senate’s.
“[The Senate's vote] was sort of forward looking — can she continue to perform the duties of her job?” said Mr. Stephens.[…] “Ours is backward looking: Has she misbehaved such that the Constitution requires us to impeach her? It’s a totally different question.
Kane still faces criminal charges, including perjury and obstruction, after it was discovered that she leaked protected grand jury information. The State Supreme Court has suspended her law license. She has stated that she is running for re-election this fall although she has not yet filed papers.