DING! YOU GOT RESIGNATIONS!

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary E. Christopher Abruzzo and DEP Deputy Chief Counsel Glenn Parno both abruptly resigned on Thursday Oct. 3, 2014 amid the “P-Mail” scandal.

Pennsylvania Attorney General, Kathleen Kane revealed the previous week that her office had discovered hundreds of pornographic emails sent or received hundreds of sexually explicit photos, videos, and messages from state e-mail accounts between 2008 and 2012.

PA Governor Tom Corbett followed Kane’s revelation by requesting records of interoffice emails containing pornography. Corbett had said he wasn’t aware of the email exchange while he was Attorney General or Governor during that time period.

An Office of Attorney General policy signed by then Attorney General Corbett in 2006 prohibits using office technology to view or store “any sexually suggestive, pornographic or obscene material.” It says an employee who violates the rules would be subject to “corrective action,” including the possibility of being fired or facing legal action.”

Including Abruzzo and Parno, Kane had named 6 others in the P-Mail exchange:

Frank Noonan, the current state police commissioner
Kevin Harley who had been Corbett’s top spokesman both when Corbett was attorney general and after he became governor.
Former ranking prosecutors Patrick Blessington, who now works with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office
Chris Carusone, who played a key role in corruption prosecutions of state legislators and was Corbett’s former liaison to the legislature
Richard A. Sheetz, former executive deputy attorney general in the office’s Criminal Law division
Retired agent Randy Feathers, the onetime regional director of the office’s Bureau of Narcotics Investigations. He was appointed by Corbett to the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole. Feathers also oversaw the Sandusky case.

A spokeswoman for Kane could not immediately say whether there are more current or former employees who received the P-mails. This leads one to believe there are indeed more current and former employees yet to be named.

More Names Dropping

Like a computer virus, the P-Mail scandal has spread to include state’s most prominent judges, Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery.

The Allentown Call on Thursday reported current state Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery used his personal email account to send explicit emails to OAG employees on their government accounts. They then shared McCaffery’s emails with other state workers, according to the newspaper.

Chief Justice Ron Castille has also demanded that Kane provide them copies of all emails that are part of her review so they can check for any involvement by anyone in their respective branches of government.

In statements made Monday during a phone interview with reporters, Castille said a judge should not be fraternizing too closely with either prosecutors or defense attorneys by sending personal emails of any kind. Defense attorneys can seek to have a judge removed from a case involving the attorney general’s office if the judge’s name is in the sexually explicit emails.

“The requirement is to be a neutral arbitrator of cases,” he said. “You cannot be sending pornographic emails to another agency.”

Also Monday, Castille said his request deals with jurists who might have received or sent the emails. The request is based on Philadelphia Inquirer reports hinting at judges who have possibly been part of the email exchanges, he said.

A judge could be in violation of judicial rules of conduct for sending pornographic emails on government-owned computers or personal computers, Castille said.

Castille did not mention any justice by name.

Important to note: McCaffery used his PERSONAL e-mail account, while others named used STATE e-mail accounts.

McCaffery told that newspaper: “Not only do I not have any comment, since when does the news media pry into personal e-mails?”

In a statement issued later Thursday, McCaffery’s lawyer, Dion Rassias, said: “I just wonder why a half-dozen private e-mails, allegedly from Justice McCaffery’s personal computer, are front-page news, or is it just a wild coincidence that he’s the only one who has filed a lawsuit against The Inquirer for invasion of privacy and defamation? I’m guessing that there’s a really long list of extremely uncomfortable people out there, but Justice McCaffery isn’t one of them.”

Justice McCaffery and his wife, Lise Rapaport, filed suit against the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News in March 2014 alleging that he was smeared in a series of stories and an editorial cartoon revolving around reports that he failed to disclose referral fees Rapaport had received from firms involved in 11 Supreme Court appeals he’d deliberated on.

Governor’s Race

Corbett is up for reelection this year. In mid-September Quinnipiac Poll stated Corbett is down 24 percentage points to Wolf, according to a Quinnipiac University Poll of 1,161 likely voters.

Corbett has virtually no chance of closing the gap that shows 59 percent of voters support Wolf, compared with 35 percent of voters who support Corbett, said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll.

“He is dead man walking,” Malloy said.

While the P-Mail scandal certainly does not help Corbett’s chances of reelection, voters are most upset with his cuts to education funding, health care, increases in Pennsylvania’s Gasoline Tax, and issues surrounding Natural Gas Drilling.

Although the poll numbers do not show a nail biter race, it’s not over until it’s over if the 2010 Governor’s race is any indication.

The mysterious July 2010 gift of $1.5 million from the Republican Governor’s Association (RGA) Wisconsin PAC came to Corbett just in time. The candidate had suffered a month of bad press after criticizing the state’s jobless for relying on unemployment benefits.

The contribution helped launch the Corbett campaign’s first ads and a bus tour, which shifted the focus away from the gaffe. By the end of August, his lead in the polls was again more than 10 points, and he was on the road to victory.

In the three weeks before the vote, the RGA would send about $3.6 million more to Corbett to help seal the 2010 victory.

We’ll have to wait until the poll close on November 4, 2014 to see if Corbett’s OUTGOING e-mail includes Ding! You Got Concession Speech.