Embattled Frank Fina leaves Philly DA’s office for private practice

One of the key figures in the porngate scandal has resigned from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.

Longtime prosecutor Frank Fina’s departure follows calls from for him, and two others ensnared in the email scandal, to be removed from the DA’s office.

Fina was formerly in the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, where he led the prosecution of Jerry Sandusky for child molestation and went after corrupt state lawmakers.

But when he moved to Philadelphia’s DA’s Office, it was revealed that he sent and received offensive and pornographic emails to colleagues while at the AG’s office and that he clashed with Kathleen Kane once she took over that office.  It was Kane who brought Fina’s involvement in porngate to light.

Women’s advocacy groups, City Council members and others called on Fina to be fired as a city prosecutor, but DA Seth Williams has said that the email exchanges were indicative of the the culture of AG’s office, not his.

Fina told the Legal Intelligencer that he plans to move into private practice. He did not return a request for comment. 

Two other city prosecutors who were linked to the porngate scandal, Marc Costanzo and Patrick Blessington, are still city prosecutors.

DA spokesman Cameron Kline said they’re neither supervisors nor “exercising prosecutorial judgment.”