Pennsylvania's top prosecutor has been charged with violating grand jury secrecy laws and lying about her actions under oath.

Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman reported criminal charges against Attorney General Kathleen Kane at a press conference this morning in Norristown. Ferman has been investigating the Scranton native since April for perjury and other offenses related to a grand jury investigation of her.Kane leaked information to a political operative to pass to the news media "in hopes of embarrassing and harming former state prosecutors she believed, without evidence, made her look bad," Ferman said.Kane, the first woman and first Democrat elected attorney general in Pennsylvania, was charged with perjury, obstruction and abuse of office.She is the second state attorney general to face criminal charges this week.Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was charged Monday with securities fraud.Criminal charges mark a new low in Kane's tumultuous three-year tenure, further weakening her shaky hold on an office that has seen an exodus of top aides, fumbled corruption cases, feuds with former prosecutors and misstatements she later had to retract.The investigation centered on allegations that a June 2014 Philadelphia Daily News article about a former Philadelphia NAACP official's alleged misuse of state job-training grants contained confidential information from a grand jury case.A statewide grand jury investigating the allegations recommended Kane be charged with criminal contempt, perjury, obstruction, false swearing and official oppression.The grand jury judge, William Carpenter, referred the matter to the county district attorney's office in January, along with a later allegation that she fired a staff prosecutor whose testimony helped build the leak case against her.The 49-year-old Kane has acknowledged giving information to the Daily News but denied it was bound by secrecy laws and said she hasn't broken any laws. She also contended the prosecutor was fired for job-related performance, not revenge.Kane has vowed to run for office again in 2016. She has accused her critics and investigators of trying to undermine her because she had dared to take on a corrupt, old-boy law enforcement network. Newspaper editorial boards across the state have called for her to resign.Relying heavily on her trucking magnate husband's wealth, the Scranton native campaigned as a disrupter of the status quo and pledged to investigate whether politics played a role in the three years it took to investigate and charge former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky with child sex abuse crimes.At first, Democrats lauded the former Lackawanna County prosecutor as a rising political star. They cheered her for refusing to defend Pennsylvania's law banning recognition of gay marriage and rejecting then-Republican Gov. Tom Corbett's contract with a private firm to run the Pennsylvania Lottery. Some Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, accused her of playing politics and raised talk of impeachment.Kane didn't immediately comment on the charges. A top aide said Thursday morning she was aware of news reports that she faces criminal charges and "has no reason to doubt them."