Convicted former Pennsylvania AG Kathleen Kane to host new ‘Through the HurriKane’ podcast
“Have you ever looked down and seen the pieces of your life on the floor and wondered what happened?" Kane says in a promotion for the podcast, called Through the HurriKANE.
Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, who was convicted and imprisoned for illegally leaking secret grand jury information and later lying about it, will host a podcast about “resilience, healing, and finding hope in the storm.”
Called Through the HurriKANE, the podcast will launch next Tuesday on Spotify.
Kane, 59, was the first Democrat and first woman to become Pennsylvania attorney general when she was elected in 2012. Once a rising star in the party, the top state law enforcement official-turned-felon had a tumultuous tenure before her career ended in disgrace.
She was convicted in 2016 of perjury, obstruction of justice, and related crimes for leaking confidential grand jurymaterial in a bid to embarrass a political enemy — then falsely denying that.
She served eight months behind bars before she was released from the Montgomery County jail in Eagleville in the summer of 2019 on five years’ probation.
In March 2022, Kane was charged with DUI and violating her probation after a car crash in Scranton, near her hometown of Clarks Summit. No one was injured. She refused to take a blood-alcohol test. The arresting officer said she had slurred speech, smelled of alcohol, and swayed when asked to stand on one foot. She told police her identical twin had been driving the car, authorities said.
She was jailed briefly and, nine months later, was found not guilty in a nonjury trial.
Drawing on these events, Kane says in a recorded preview of her podcast: “Have you ever looked down and seen the pieces of your life on the floor and wondered what happened? … You haven’t just been through a storm, you’ve been through a hurricane. Through the HurriKane will teach you … the power of love and resilience. … Let’s walk through this storm together.”
In an interview Wednesday evening, Kane said her biweekly podcasts will center on conversations with people “with real, raw stories of grief, addiction, loss. We will highlight all the things that take people down, and it’ll resonate with others.”
But, she added, all of her guests will also be able to demonstrate how they turned tragedy into something positive, discovering a new way through life “and finding hope.”
Kane said that during the first four episodes, she will discuss her own difficulties. “I become the interviewee,” Kane added, “telling my story to show that nobody is immune from the storm in life.”
Asked how she will describe her experience, Kane demurred, inviting the curious to “tune in.” She promises, she said, “that you’ll hear all of it.”
Kane’s political downfall began when she inherited an undercover investigation that caught five legislators from Philadelphia and a Traffic Court judge on tape accepting money or gifts from a cooperating witness. Instead of prosecuting those crimes, Kane secretly shut down the case.
When news of her decision was revealed by The Inquirer in March 2014, she blamed a top state prosecutor, Frank Fina, who had supervised the sting. Kane then leaked confidential grand jury information to the Daily News to fuel a story that she believed would reflect badly on him.
She was criminally charged in August 2015 but did not resign from office until after she was convicted by a jury the following year.
As she stood before a judge at sentencing, Kane wept and pleaded for leniency.
Montgomery County Court Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy was unmoved.
“The case is about ego, ego of a politician consumed by her image from Day One,” she told Kane. “And instead of focusing solely on the business of fighting crime, the focus was battling these perceived enemies ... and utilizing and exploiting her position to do it.”
Kane will revisit the moments in her podcast, which she’ll be conducting at her home in a town she wouldn’t name.
“The most important part,” she added, “was how I felt about it all, and how I held my head above the water.”
Asked if she believes that listeners can relate to the fall of a political star who lost her way, Kane said, “It doesn’t matter what you went through. It only matters how you weather it.
Staff writer Ryan Briggs contributed to this article.