Noah Feldman, Columnist

The Troubling Case of an Attorney General Who Lied

George Washington warned us about this.

August 16, 2016 at 6:38 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Why would Kathleen Kane lie under oath?
Photographer: Clem Murray/Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS via Getty Images

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It’s never the wrongdoing -- it’s the lying about it. Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, who announced her resignation Tuesday in the face of a possible 14-year sentence for her conviction on perjury charges, proves the truth of that adage for public corruption cases. Leaking grand jury proceedings to embarrass a political rival would not have gotten her sent to prison. But lying about it under oath could and will.

How could a state’s top law enforcement official be so dumb? Why are perjury charges so serious? And why don’t people, even lawyers, realize it?