Man who took girlfriend from hospital waives extradition

2 teens accused of shooting at police ordered to stand trial

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania's acting attorney general told employees Friday he has no immediate plans to release a report into the exchange of lewd and objectionable emails captured on office computers. Acting Attorney General Bruce Castor made public an office-wide email that said the report is on hold at least until a procedure is in place for people named in the report to make "informed responses." "I assure you that I am acutely aware of the damage this information could do, however unwarranted, to many of your reputations," Castor wrote. "I am proceeding with extreme caution during my few remaining days with this agency, and the men and women that are part of it that I have come to admire and respect." Castor has run the office since Kathleen Kane resigned Aug. 17, two days after she was convicted of perjury and other offenses, but his tenure is almost over. The state Senate plans to vote Tuesday on whether to install Bruce Beemer, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's nominee to take the job for the next five months. Kane, a Democrat, hired Republican Castor in March and gave the former county prosecutor the newly created title of solicitor general. People around state government have been receiving letters seeking their response from a team of lawyers Kane hired to scour millions of emails for inappropriate content. The letters, sent to people at the attorney general's office and other state agencies, notified them they will be named in the report or included in an appendix that lists people who sent fewer than 50 inappropriate emails. Doug Gansler, a Democrat and former Maryland attorney general who headed up the review team, said they have fielded responses. "People don't want their names put in the report," he said in a phone interview late Friday. "Then they probably shouldn't have sent inappropriate emails." Also Friday, a union that represents the office's narcotics agents and an anonymous man filed a request with Commonwealth Court that sought to prevent the report's release. It argued that "full due process protections" should be in place before the report can be made public. The union's lawyer, Larry Moran, said after an afternoon call with the judge that Castor's announcement likely will result in him withdrawing the injunction request, as it is no longer needed. Kane's probe has roots in a separate investigation that she undertook based on a campaign promise to see if political considerations affected how the state prosecutor's office handled the Jerry Sandusky case under her predecessors. That investigation concluded there was no evidence of politically driven decisions, but it also revealed that high-ranking supervisors and others had been exchanging lewd and objectionable content on government computers. The partial disclosure of those emails that has already occurred caused the resignations of two state Supreme Court justices — Democrat Seamus McCaffery and Republican Michael Eakin — and led dozens of others on the public payroll to be disciplined or fired. Castor said Gansler's team, hired by Kane in December, has not been giving people enough information about the content that could lead them to be identified in the report. They were given until Monday to reply, but Castor said that deadline has been extended indefinitely. "In keeping with past office practice, and in my own judgment, (the office) should not require responses from people until those same people have had an opportunity to see what they are responding to: a simple matter of fairness," Castor wrote. Gansler declined to go into specifics about the report but said he was confident it will eventually be made public. He said his team has suggested that the agency black out the names of people who only received emails but did not send any. He estimated the cost of the report to the state will probably be close to $2 million.

AG tells staff he won't be releasing lewd email report soon