Pennsylvania State Attorney General Kathleen Kane is in legal trouble for allegedly leaking evidence that had been shown to a grand jury to a reporter. Whether she is ultimately found guilty or not, it seems pretty clear that her legal woes stem, at least in part, from a partisan political battle with roots going back to when former Gov. Tom Corbett was attorney general, with his eye on the governor’s office.

Critics at the time accused Corbett, a Republican, of dragging his feet in the investigation of Jerry Sandusky, an assistant coach at the Pennsylvania State University, who eventually left office in disgrace and went to prison in 2012 on charges of sexually abusing many young boys. The investigation that eventually brought Sandusky down was conducted by longtime state prosecutor Frank Fina.

Corbett became governor and a bit later, Kane, a Democrat, was voted into office as attorney general. One of her campaign promises was that she would look into Fina’s investigation of the Sandusky affair, which according to multiple reports, did not make Fina very happy. Further, Fina had built a corruption case against several high-profile Democrats in Philadelphia, and Kane decided not to prosecute the case, which further irritated Fina.

Against that backdrop, Kane investigated Fina’s Sandusky investigation, and as part of that probe she uncovered a number of emails that had been exchanged between high-ranking state officials that were sexually explicit or inappropriate. In the fall of 2014, Kane made public the names of former employees of the attorney general’s office whose email accounts had contained the sexually explicit material.

Those revelations sparked a number of resignations in October 2014, including those of Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery; Department of Environmental Preservation (DEP) Secretary Christopher Abruzzo; DEP attorney Glenn Parno; and a member of the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, Randy Feathers. It was well known at the time that there were names on the email list that remained unknown.

But before the release of those names, Fina and fellow prosecutor Marc Constanzo went to a county judge saying they had received information from a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News about a leak from a 2009 grand jury investigation. Fina and Costanza told the judge the reporter had information from the trial that was supposed to have been kept secret. It’s that leaked information, which is otherwise unremarkable, that is the basis of the criminal charges Kane is now facing; the charges include the allegation that she lied about it to cover it up.

But the latest act in the ongoing saga played out on August 26, when the Supreme Court released some 400 documents that had been previously entered as evidence in various motions. Some of the documents had Fina and Costanza’s names on them, at least as recipients, and they contained graphic sexual images, pictures of semi-clothed men and woman, off-color jokes and racist images.

At a court appearance, Kane’s attorney charged that the reason that Fina and Costanza were trying to get Kane kicked out of office and possibly locked up in prison is because they knew their names were on those embarrassing emails that Kane had uncovered. In fact, they had earlier convinced a judge to issue a ruling that Kane interpreted to mean she should not release the emails, though the judge quickly said it was not his intent to block the release of emails that would be of interest to the public.

According to statements to the press, Fina and Costanzo, who are assistant district attorneys in the Philadelphia DA’s office, may face a new investigation about their connection to the objectionable emails.

It is still not clear exactly how many names of state employees are associated with the sexually explicit emails, but there are said to be hundreds more that have yet to be made public.

It’s hard to know how this will all play out. Kane was once a rising star in the Democratic party, the first woman in the history of the state to be elected to the attorney general’s office. Now, influential Democrats, including Gov. Tom Wolf are saying she should step down. She insists that she is innocent and has vowed to fight to the finish, and it’s not clear if that means more government employees will lose their jobs before it’s all over.

Whether or not a jury finds that Kane leaked secret grand jury information to a reporter—and it’s not clear whether that reporter will be as anxious to testify in court as he was to talk to the prosecutors last year—it seems reasonable to assume that in bringing charges against Kane, Fina and Costanza were not just interested in maintaining the sanctity of grand jury evidence; they may have been more interested in maintaining their positions as prosecutors.

Sadly, it may be too much to expect that high-level law enforcement people would set an example for the rest of us, but right now the bar is so low, any tiny effort at improvement would be welcomed.