Philly DA reviewing lewd emails exchanged by former state prosecutors now working in his office

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office is reviewing pornographic and inappropriate e-mails exchanged by at least two of its current employees. The emails were part of a document dump by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Wednesday.

 

They were released along with other court filings in the case involving Attorney General Kathleen Kane.

The emails show that two former state prosecutors, Frank Fina and Marc Costanzo, sent or received pornographic and otherwise obscene emails while working in the state’s Office of Attorney General. Kane has singled out Fina and Costanzo as her fiercest critics, according to findings by the grand jury that investigated her and recommended charges against her.

Fina and Costanzo now work for Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams. In a statement Wednesday afternoon, the office pledged to review the emails and other court filings for any conduct that violates office policies.

According to one filing released Wednesday, Kane argued last November that Fina and Costanzo should be “investigated and possibly prosecuted” for participating in the smutty email exchange on state computers.

But the emails show many other participants remain on the payroll at Kane’s office.

Chuck Ardo, a spokesman for Kane’s office, said current employees caught up in the emails have agreed to stop exchanging inappropriate messages.

“There were any number of people who were sanctioned by the office in a variety of ways,” Ardo said Wednesday. “The people who continued to either send or receive banned emails were the ones that were let go.”

Kane faces trial on charges of leaking secret investigative material and lying about it. She has said she will fight the charges, saying they stem from her efforts to expose the lewd emails. She has not explained how the presence of an effort by Fina and Costanzo to suppress the emails would exonerate her.