Oh, the drip, drip of the Kane case

OK, SO NOW we know more details about the Kathleen Kane leak case.

And I mean more than we knew after someone leaked details about the leak case in a leak to the Inquirer back in January.

Some of the new stuff is juicy.

Some of it adds to the great tangled train wreck Kane's tenure's become.

And there's a confounding question about leaks in general.

But first the news.

We now know Kane seemed fixated on leaking info on a "dead case" about former Philly NAACP boss Jerry Mondesire to the Daily News last year.

This is likely because she was P.O.'ed at the Inky for reporting on leaks that she punted on a sting case involving Philly public officials.

Oh, and because she was furious at a fellow prosecutor she believed leaked the sting case and wanted, you know, payback.

Democrat Kane, you may recall, called the sting "half-assed." But since it caught folks on tape taking cash, it later led to charges brought by District Attorney Seth Williams against five state lawmakers and a former city traffic judge, all Democrats.

Anyway and in a nutshell, Kane faces multiple charges related to leaking grand-jury info, and a new investigation related to her firing an underling.

A grand-jury report released yesterday says Kane schemed to embarrass fellow prosecutor Frank Fina by leaking info on a 2009 probe he managed against Mondesire (who was never charged) and then lying about it to another grand jury.

I should note in all of this that Mondesire gets the you-know-what end of the stick.

Fina used to work in the Attorney General's Office and now works for D.A. Williams.

Fina and Kane have been Punch and Judy since Kane took office in 2013, feuding over cases involving Jerry Sandusky, the sting and (though Fina was never named) the porn-at-work fun that led to people losing jobs and ended the career of former state Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery.

I know, I know, just take a breath.

The Inky reported in January that a grand jury was recommending charges against Kane, including perjury.

That grand-jury report was released yesterday. It confirms Inky reporting and adds obstruction and other charges.

The new details say Kane ignored advice of top advisers, including then-top aide Adrian King. (The two dated at Temple Law, which I only mention as a salacious aside in case you find this legal stuff too dry.)

King, now in private practice, told the grand jury that he walked into a meeting in March of last year about leaking stuff on the Mondesire case (which, again, was old and dead) in apparent retaliation for leaks on the sting case.

In testimony, King described the atmosphere as "paranoid" and said Kane "appears to be taking advice from her driver, and the person she just installed as communications director [who] has absolutely no experience, and they are literally sitting there just nodding their heads in agreement . . . and my reaction to that was 'this is nuts; I don't want anything to do with it.' "

So King advised Kane in writing of "legal and ethical prohibitions" against releasing material on Mondesire.

But Kane told the grand jury that she and King agreed the stuff should "go out into the press." It did. And Kane then claimed it really wasn't info covered by grand-jury secrecy, despite the opinion of senior staff.

So now, Montco D.A. Risa Vetri Ferman (who's running for judge and would rather be campaigning) has the case. And yesterday, a three-judge panel in Norristown tossed her another bouquet.

Ferman also gets to decide whether Kane's recent firing of Chief Deputy Attorney General James Barker - who testified that the Mondesire material was indeed grand-jury information - was retaliatory.

Kane claims it was not. Kane claims she's done nothing wrong. And her seventh spokesman in two years, Chuck Ardo, yesterday said she's being "railroaded."

Which gets to the confounding question mentioned earlier.

All this is about leaks, of which there are many, including of the grand-jury report recommending charges against Kane. That report was sealed in December, leaked to the Inky, which reported it in January, then unsealed only yesterday.

When I ask Ardo about investigating that leak, he says: "She's in an untenable position when it comes to leaks. She would be seen as seeking retribution."

Of course. And she wouldn't want to be in an untenable position.

Blog: ph.ly/BaerGrowls

Columns: ph.ly/JohnBaer