Sarah Palin Unlawfully Abused Her Power

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failin.jpgBipartisan vote to release this, 12-0.

Report is here.

The findings:

1. For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violated Alaska Statue 39/52/110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides

The legislature reaffirms that every public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.

 2. I find that, although Walt Monegan’s refusal to fire Trooper Michael Wooter was not the sole reason he was fired by Governor Sarah Palin, it was likely a contributing factor to his termination as Commissioner of Public Safety. In spite of that, Governor Palin’s firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.

3. Harbor Adjustment Service of Anchorage, and its owner Ms. Murleen Wilkes, handled Trooper Michael Wooten’s workers’ compensation claim properly and in the normal course of business like any other claim process by Harbor Adjustment Service and Ms. Wilkes. Further, Trooper Wooten received all the workers’ compensation benefits to which he was entitled.

4. The Attorney General’s office has failed to substantially comply with my August 6, 2008 written request to Governor Sarah Palin for information about the case in the form of emails. 

JimWhite gets to the guts of the abuse of power argument.

The meat of the abuse charge, from page 66:

Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired. She had the authority and power to require Mr. Palin to case contacting subordinates, but she failed to act.

Such impermissible and repeated contacts create conflicts of interests for subordinate employees who must choose to either please a superior or run the risk of facing that superior’s displeasure and the possible consequences of such displeasure. This was one of the very reasons the Ethics Act was promulgated by the Legislature.

TrooperGate Tidbits, While We Wait

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clownspreview.jpg It sounds from the ADN coverage like this TrooperGate report–if it is released today–will be a Friday evening document dump for us lower 48ers. Lyda Green has stuck her head out of the meeting twice to tell everyone it’ll be a long wait.

Senate President Lyda Green, a Wasilla Republican, and Rep. Peggy Wilson of Wrangell said the session is moving slowly.

How slow? Wilson was asked.

"Slooowwww," she said.

And later:

Update 11:50 p.m.: It may be a while. Green just stepped outside again and reports they’re now on page 20 of the 200-plus page document.

(As a reminder, 11:50 AM–the PM was a typo–is 3:50 ET; there has been an update since saying it’ll be at least another hour before the meeting is done.)

Meanwhile, the McCain team has taken a page from the Brooks Brother riots in 2000, and had a bunch of volunteers dressed as clowns show up outside the meeting to insinuate that this–rather than the report written by McCain’s own campaign staffers–is a kangaroo court.

Understand what they’re trying to achieve. The legislative council that first authorized this report must vote to release it. That means at least four of the 10 Republicans on the council (there are 4 Dems) must vote to release the report. That, I suspect, is the reason the meeting is taking so long: everyone in there knows this will be released eventually, so I suspect Republicans are really challenging the quality of Branchflower’s report, while weighing the long-term impact of punting a report that shows clear abuse of power (if, in fact it does) until after the election.

In the meantime, I wanted to point out one more tidbit from last night’s NYT story. 

First, there’s the evidence that the Palins continued to obsess over Mike Wooten, even after they ousted Monegan. They actually brought up Wooten during Kopp’s job interview!!

Nor did that interest end with Mr. Monegan, the examination shows. His successor, Chuck Kopp, recalled that in an exploratory phone call and then a job interview, Ms. Palin’s aides mentioned the governor’s concerns about Mr. Wooten. None of the 280 other troopers were discussed, Mr. Kopp said.

[snip]

Mr. Monegan’s successor, Mr. Kopp, said that when the trooper came up in his pre-employment conversations with Palin aides, “it was raised within the context of one of the things that I needed to be aware of, but there was no direction to take any job action.”

Read more →

Bipartisan Concern about the Dangers of McPalin’s Hate-Mongering

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Former McCain Campaign Chair John Weaver:

 John Weaver, McCain’s former top strategist, said top Republicans have a responsibility to temper this behavior.

“People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, the differences with Sen. Obama are ideological, based on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to Sen. McCain,” Weaver said. “And from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive.” 

“Sen. Obama is a classic liberal with an outdated economic agenda. We should take that agenda on in a robust manner. As a party we should not and must not stand by as the small amount of haters in our society question whether he is as American as the rest of us. Shame on them and shame on us if we allow this to take hold.”

Republican advisor David Gergen:

COOPER: There’s also the question of ruling after this, and bringing the country together. It’s going to be all the more harder to do that whoever wins with all this anger out there.

GERGEN: This—I think one of the most striking things we’ve seen now in the last few day. We’ve seen it in a Palin rally. We saw it at the McCain rally today. And we saw it to a considerable degree during the rescue package legislation. There is this free floating sort of whipping around anger that could really lead to some violence. I think we’re not far from that.

COOPER: Really?

GERGEN: I think it’s so—well, I really worry when we get people—when you get the kind of rhetoric that you’re getting at these rallies now. I think it’s really imperative that the candidates try to calm people down. And that’s why I’ve argued not only because of the question of the ugliness of it.

Republican Frank Schaeffer:

John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as "not one of us," I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.

Read more →

McCain Sez: the Guy with the Erratic Behavior Is a Menace

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You’ve heard, no doubt, that McCain’s campaign staffers have written a report exonerating Sarah Palin of abuse of power in the firing of Walt Monegan.

But did you know they rationalized their concern by describing Mike Wooten’s–Sarah’s former bro-in-law–"long history of unstable and erratic behavior"?

Although the report describes Wooten as a separate issue, the McCain campaign goes into great detail about the "rogue" trooper and his "long history of unstable and erratic behavior."

So in case you’re wondering, the McCain camp agrees that the guy with the long history of unstable and erratic behavior is a menace to society.

Either Todd Palin or Walt Monegan Didn’t Tell the Truth

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Two details of this detailed NYT article on TrooperGate stick out to me (h/t lemondloulou). In this post I’ll look at how Walt Monegan’s testimony contradicts the First Dude’s. Here’s what First Dude had to say in his affidavit.

I was not aware of the Grimes report until July 2008, after Monegan left the government. The DPS never informed me or my wife that Wooten had been disciplined. 

[snip]

Monegan never informed me about the substance of any investigation that had been done.  I was told no details could be released. I assumed nothing had been done or that whatever was done internally must have been a slap on the wrist. Col. Grimes never told me and Monegan never told  me.

[snip]

Not until Wooten released, and then the ADN posted, his personnel records in July 2008 did I learn that there was a completed internal review by Col. Grimes and what was done. (3, 23)

Here’s what Monegan told the NYT (which I assume matches his testimony to Branchflower).

On Jan. 4, 2007, a month into the Palin administration and his tenure as public safety commissioner, Mr. Monegan was called to the governor’s Anchorage office to meet Todd Palin. Mr. Palin was seated at a conference table with three stacks of personnel files. That, Mr. Monegan recalled, was the first time he heard the name Mike Wooten.

“He conveyed to me that he and Sarah did not think the investigation into Wooten had been done well enough and that they were not happy with the punishment,” Mr. Monegan said. “Todd was clearly frustrated.”

That is, not only did Monegan tell Todd the investigation was completed–but he told Todd what the punishment was. (See Halcro for his point on this earlier today.)

There’s a reason Todd repeats the claim that he didn’t learn of the results of the Grimes investigation until after Monegan was fired. Because so long as he can claim he didn’t know the results of the investigation, then he can (sort of) claim to have had a reason to nag Monegan so much–because he still believed it was an outstanding issue.

The question, of course, is whether or not Branchflower has proof that Monegan had already told Todd the results of the investigation. Read more →

John McCain’s Secrets

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Under the premise that Obama has not been fully forthcoming, John McCain is raising on Bill Ayers every chance he gets (except to Obama’s face).

GIBSON: Do you think the relationship with Ayers is a critical issue in this campaign or factor in this campaign?

MCCAIN: I think it’s a factor about Sen. Obama’s candor and truthfulness with the American people. That’s what I think it’s about. As I say, I don’t care about Mr. Ayers who on Sept. 11, 2001 said he wished he’d have bombed more. I don’t care about that. I care about him being truthful about his relationship with him. And Americans will care.

But here are some of the things that John McCain hasn’t been forthcoming about himself.

There’s his own relationship with terrorists–McCain didn’t disclose his ties to the Contra-funding US Council for World Freedom.

As a freshman congressman in the early 1980s, John McCain did not disclose his connections to a controversial group that was implicated in a secretive plot to supply arms to Nicaraguan militia groups during the Iran-Contra affair.

McCain did not list his service on the board of the U.S. Council for World Freedom on mandatory congressional disclosure forms asking about positions he held outside government.

McCain’s aides said he wasn’t required to report the affiliation.

[snip]

McCain joined the board of the U.S. Council soon after Singlaub founded it in McCain’s adopted hometown of Phoenix in November 1981 as the U.S. branch of the World Anti-Communist League. The league billed itself as a supporter of "pro-Democratic resistance movements fighting communist totalitarianism," but it had also been branded by critics as a haven for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.

[snip]

A review of the personal financial disclosure forms McCain filed after his election to the U.S. House in 1982 show that he did not list the group in the section of his 1982, 1983 and 1984 reports in which he was required to disclose all positions he held outside of government.

The instructions on the form require filers to report "the identity of all positions held on or before the date of the filing during the current calendar year as an officer, director, trustee, partner, proprietor, representative, employee, or consultant of any corporation, firm, partnership, or other business enterprise, any nonprofit organization, any labor organization, or any educational or other institution." [my emphasis]

And despite his noted big money gambling habit, McCain has never reported any gambling winnings on his Senate disclosure reports. 

Today, CREW filed a complaint against Senator John McCain (R-AZ) with the Senate Ethics Committee.  Read more →

TrooperGate Tomorrow

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I wonder if the hate rallies will mind if Steve Branchflower concludes that Sarah Palin and her creepy sidekick "Dude" abused the public trust to pursue a personal vendetta, now that Republican efforts to squelch his investigation have failed?

The Alaska Supreme Court today rejected an attempt by a group of six Republican legislators to shut down the Legislature’s investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin.

The ruling means that Steve Branchflower, the investigator hired by the Legislative Council, will release his report as scheduled on Friday.

I doubt it.

As I understand it, Branchflower presents his report to the legislature at 9AM Alaska time, so an early Friday afternoon document dump for those of us in the East. 

Update: Opinion here.

Meet the Bloggers: Pitchforks and Congressional Hearings

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Watch Meet the Bloggers

I just finished taping tomorrow’s edition of Meet the Bloggers, which shows at 1PM ET. John Cusack was on to talk about the DVD release of his movie, War Inc. We talked some about Congressional hearings–both regarding war profiteering and regarding finance companies who use their bailout money to send executives on a boondoggle.

Which got me thinking … There’s been some righteous anger directed at all the fat-cats on Wall Street since the bailout, though less so directed at the folks getting rich off our war of choice in Iraq. 

How do we capitalize and focus that righteous anger?

Now that people are so fed up, how do we channel it into a positive application of pitchforks and prevent it from becoming really ugly?

Make Them Own Any Post-Election Violence

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I just had a check-up this morning with a doctor who doesn’t know me well. She and I were talking about what I do, and I said I was really looking forward to the election being over. She said she was too–that people seemed really wound up this year. She speculated that maybe it was because more people were involved. I pointed out that in our area, that’s not really true, lots of people were involved in 2004 as well. And that, given that McCain hadn’t really excited the crowds until he picked Palin, there was actually less involvement across both parties until September.

But then I said, no, things are not going to be less wound up after the election.  If, as is probably going to happen, Obama is elected–at this point she sort of disagreed, which leads me to believe she has no clue what the polls are showing, perhaps even no clue that McCain has pulled out of MI–then you’re going to have to deal with the aftermath of a month of rallies in which McCain and (especially) Palin have incited anger by calling Obama a terrorist. Digby is (go figure) absolutely right when she points to where this is headed.

This is the kind of thing that really makes me fear for Obama. They are already screaming "terrorist" at Palin’s rallies and shouting "kill him." The whole "Obama is a muslim" thing is bizarre, but with his name and childhood spent partly in a Muslim country — and the fact that he’s black, which makes everyone flash on Louis Farrakhan — the collective right wing lizard brain twitches uncontrollably. They will use this, I have no doubt. There is an entire wingnut industry devoted to stirring up tensions in the middle east and another on devoted to character assassination of Democrats. Obama brings them together in serendipitous loathing and paranoia. It’s going to be ugly.

When I said things were headed to some serious ugliness, on account of the fact that the McCain campaign was deliberately stoking violent anger as an attempt to delegitimize the guy most likely to be President, the doctor got a bit squirmy. She didn’t want to hear this. I’m guessing she’s a moderate in love with the untainted McCain myth of 2000, and she simply doesn’t want to think about her guy fostering this dangerous energy.

Read more →

Todd’s 52-Page Affidavit

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Looks like someone liberated the 52-page affidavit Todd Palin submitted in TrooperGate today. Unfortunately, it was liberated to the AP, which tends not to be forthcoming with details of liberated documents.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s husband defended his role as a close adviser to his wife Wednesday but was adamant that he didn’t meddle in her administration to try to settle a family dispute.

[snip]

"I have heard criticism that I am too involved in my wife’s administration," Todd Palin wrote in an affidavit Wednesday that was provided to The Associated Press. "My wife and I are very close. We are each other’s best friend. I have helped her in her career the best I can, and she has helped me."

[snip]

He answered the questions and provided his first detailed views on how the Monegan case was handled. He also expanded on his complaints about his former brother-in-law.

It’d be nice, don’t you think, if the AP had identified whether or not the information in said affidavit was in contradiction with any known facts? Or, at the very least, if the article made it a little more clear why the document got liberated today, when–most observers believe–we’ll have a report in our grubby little hands on Friday?

As it is, all this tells us is that Todd Palin still believes this is a battle over whether or not Mike Wooten is a creep or not–and not whether he, Todd Palin, is a creep for having Monegan fired for following the rules.