Former Pa. Attorney General Kathleen Kane is disbarred

Updated: 4:19 p.m.

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Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane is losing her law license, a few months after she began a jail sentence for perjury, obstruction and other counts.

The Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania issued a disbarment order Friday, based on paperwork voluntarily submitted and signed by Kane.

She is in Montgomery County’s prison, serving a 10- to 23-month term.

Kane, 52, was convicted in 2016 for leaking information about a grand jury investigation to a Philadelphia newspaper and lying about it. She resigned shortly afterward, and remained out on bail while she pursued appeals.

The Scranton native was a little-known former assistant county prosecutor when she was elected attorney general in a landslide in 2012, becoming the first woman and first Democrat to win the office.

Democrats embraced her as a rising star.

However, she was charged in 2015 after former prosecutors with the attorney general’s office complained that a Philadelphia Daily News story had contained information from a grand jury investigation that was protected by secrecy laws.

Prosecutors contended that Kane leaked the information to smear two former state prosecutors, who she believed had provided information for an earlier story in The Philadelphia Inquirer that revealed her decision not to pursue charges in a separate corruption case.

The court suspended Kane’s license after she was charged in 2015.