Pa. AG Reveals State Officials Who Exchanged Pornographic Emails

As a general rule, one shouldn't send porn through a work email account during work hours. As a more specific rule, one shouldn't do that if one is a state official, and as an even more specific rule, the head of the state police really shouldn't be doing that at all.

And yet, here we are. The Pennsylvania state attorney general's office last week named eight current and former high-ranking state officials who were part of an investigation into state officials' sending and receiving pornographic emails on state email accounts on state computers.

How High-Ranking Could They Possibly Be?

The emails were discovered as part of an internal investigation into the state's handling of the Jerry Sandusky investigation. The named recipients of the emails included:

• Frank Noonan, the current state police commissioner;
• E. Christopher Abruzzo, the state's secretary of the department of environmental protection;
• Kevin Harley, a former spokesman for Gov. Tom Corbett;
• Patrick Blessington, now a prosecutor with the Philadelphia District Attorney's office;
• Glen Parno, now with the state's Department of Environmental Protection;
• Chris Carusone, Gov. Corbett's former liaison to the state legislature;
• Richard A. Sheetz, a former deputy attorney general; and
• Randy Feathers, currently serving on the state parole board.

The common link among all eight people? They all worked in the state justice department when Corbett was the attorney general. The emails date from between 2008 and 2012; Corbett was attorney general until 2011.

Current Attorney General Kathleen Kane released these eight names after repeated requests by reporters. But more than 30 additional people exchanged pornographic emails, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, including "top jurists" and "current employees of Kane's office."

At Least It Can't Make Things Worse

As if that isn't enough, Kane is a Democrat and Corbett, a Republican, is up for re-election this year. Corbett's poll numbers are, as The Washington Post phrased it, "epically bad." He was 25 points behind his challenger, Democrat Tom Wolf -- and that was a month ago, well before news leaked that men in Corbett's office exchanged pornographic emails under his nose.

On the plus side -- if there is a plus side -- no one announced that there was child pornography involved. That would have been just what an embattled governor needed while his former subordinates were being investigated for problems with their case against Penn State's most notorious pedophile.

Related Resources:

• Corbett, Chief Justice Want Kane to Turn Over Sexually Explicit Emails Uncovered in Jerry Sandusky Review (The Morning Call)
• Three Things We Learned Reading the New Report on the Jerry Sandusky Investigation (The Washington Post)
• N.J. Sup. Ct.: Sex Offender Ankle Monitor Is Ex Post Facto Punishment (FindLaw's U.S. Third Circuit Blog)
• N.J. Judge Who Played Prosecutor, Denied Counsel Gets No Immunity (FindLaw's U.S. Third Circuit Blog)