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Stampede to Come Clean in Alaska

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Rut roh. Looks like Steve Branchflower will have a busy week, between now and when he releases his report on Friday.

Seven Alaska state employees have reversed course and agreed to testify in an abuse-of-power investigation against Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

[snip]

Lawmakers subpoenaed seven state employees to testify in the inquiry but they challenged those subpoenas. A judge rejected that challenge last week. Because of that ruling, Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg says the employees have decide to testify.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, the AK Supreme Court agreed to take the appeal of the Republicans trying to bury this. But local observers think the chance that the Supreme Court will rule in favor of a Palin cover-up is slim.

The Supreme Court only agreed to take this case due to public interest and establishing a precedent so the next time the lawmakers want to sue themselves they won’t burden the court.

What is the most absurd about this whole process of wasting time and money is the lawsuit was filed by some of the same Republican lawmakers like Fred Dyson who have long berated Alaskan judges for legislating from the bench.

The Supreme Court will toss this out and then Branchflower will put his report out.

So there seems to be a stampede of staffers attempting to look like they didn’t ignore a proper subpoena. 

Remind me–around Thursday, say, to start asking how the McPalin’s campaigns efforts to cover up these results prove their awareness there was a problem there? Thanks.

Two Tidbits on TrooperGate

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You’ve no doubt heard that the terrorism prosecutor brought in to cover-up TrooperGate lied when he claimed that Walt Monegan was going "rogue" when he went to DC to try to secure funds to prosecute rape.

An internal government document obtained by ABC News appears to contradict Sarah Palin’s most recent explanation for why she fired her public safety chief, the move which prompted the now-contested state probe into "Troopergate."

Fighting back against allegations she may have fired her then-Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, for refusing to go along with a personal vendetta, Palin on Monday argued in a legal filing that she fired Monegan because he had a "rogue mentality" and was bucking her administration’s directives.

"The last straw," her lawyer argued, came when he planned a trip to Washington, D.C., to seek federal funds for an aggressive anti-sexual-violence program. The project, expected to cost from $10 million to $20 million a year for five years, would have been the first of its kind in Alaska, which leads the nation in reported forcible rape.

The McCain-Palin campaign echoed the charge in a press release it distributed Monday, concurrent with Palin’s legal filing. "Mr. Monegan persisted in planning to make the unauthorized lobbying trip to D.C.," the release stated.

But the governor’s staff authorized the trip, according to an internal travel document from the Department of Public Safety, released Friday in response to an open records request.

The document, a state travel authorization form, shows that Palin’s chief of staff, Mike Nizich, approved Monegan’s trip to Washington D.C. "to attend meeting with Senator Murkowski." The date next to Nizich’s signature reads June 18.

But we knew that was going to happen. This is Vindictive Firing 2, the Farcical Sequel. And we’re moving into the phase where they try to throw lie on top of lie to cover up their original abuse of power. 

I’m more interested, frankly, in the news from Andrew Halcro that Murlene Wilkes did not blow off her subpoena. 

French stated that of the fourteen subpoenas that were issued, six were served and seven were not and the last was for cell phone records for Frank Bailey that had been turned over to the special investigator Steve Branchflower by the cell phone company.

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