CNN: Todd Palin Acted as “Second Governor” of Alaska (Video)

Troopergate Op-Ed: Rachel Maddow Calls Gov. Palin A Liar!

October 13, 2008:  Rachel Maddow responds to Gov. Sarah Palin’s denial of any wrongdoing on her part in the Troopergate ethics investigation.

October 11, 2008:  MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow comments on the findings of the Stephen Branchflower Troopergate ethics report, as well as an interview with former Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.

Palin Too Close for Comfort in this Presidential Race

Number One Observatory Circle in Washington, D.C. is the official residence of the Vice President of the United States.

Today in the Washington Post Opinions section Colbert King considers the REAL possibility of a Vice President Sarah Palin.  Given what we know of Gov. Palin’s governing style in Alaska, imagine what she and her husband Todd Palin could do with access to the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon at her (and his!) beck and call?

It’s time to start taking Sarah Palin seriously.

Though the latest polls show the Obama-Biden ticket ahead, the Alaska governor is still uncomfortably close to becoming vice president of the United States. The thought should concentrate the mind of every American who remembers the abuse of executive power by the administration of Richard Nixon. Just look at what Palin has done, in a short time, with the authority delegated to her by Alaskans.

The “Troopergate” report, conducted by an independent investigator and released Friday by a bipartisan legislative committee, tells the tale. It documents the campaign that Palin and her husband Todd waged to get her former brother-in-law fired from the Alaska state troopers.

Palin did, indeed, have the authority to dismiss the state’s public safety commissioner, the report says. But she violated a state law, the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act, which prohibits state officials from taking actions that benefit personal interest. According to the report: Palin abused her power as governor when she “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.”

I shudder to think of the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon at her beck and call.

The role played by Todd in carrying out his wife’s vendetta was highly unusual. He had no official duties in government. He acknowledged, however, that he made numerous calls to state officials to press his case against the governor’s ex-brother-in-law.

It’s been well reported that Todd Palin’s involvement in his wife’s official business unsettled some Alaskans. He has been known to sit in on the governor’s meetings, use her office for his own meetings and intervene in state business using his status as “First Gentleman.” Clearly, he’s a man with a lot of time on his hands.

What if he assumed the same role in Washington? Imagine Todd in a town that has no use for snow machines (which he loves to ride) or work for commercial fishermen (of which he is one, during the summer months). What would he do? Would he follow the vice president to her White House office? Join her meetings in the Situation Room? Sit in on her daily national security briefings?

Where does Todd Palin stand on America anyway? Neither he nor Sarah Palin ever explained his seven-year membership in the Alaska Independence Party, a group that seeks a vote on secession from America. “I’m an Alaskan, not an American” was the slogan of the party’s founder, Joe Vogler, who also said “I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions” and “I won’t be buried under their damned flag.” What made Todd Palin hitch his wagon to that anti-American train when Alaska offered the Democratic and Republican parties?

Troopergate shows the Palins to be small-bore people unable to distinguish selfish personal interests from official responsibilities. Imagine the power of the U.S. government at their disposal.

The prospect of Vice President Sarah Palin is no laughing matter.

Palin Too Close for Comfort

Local Alaska ABC News Coverage of Gov. Palin and the Troopergate Findings (Video)

Palin Prefers Secret “Troopergate” Probe: Palin Chooses To Cooperate With Confidential Inquiry That Can Last Up To Two Years

Alaska state senator Hollis French, who is running an investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin, says the McCain campaign is using stall tactics to prevent him from releasing his final report by Oct. 31st.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is choosing to drag out the Troopergate ethics investigation, with the possible culmination sometime in the future, with a timeline of up to two years from now.  In the latest CBS News report of September 24, 2008, Gov. Palin plans to cooperate with the private inquiry by the state personnel board filled with her political appointees.

Of the two Alaska investigations into abuse-of-power allegations against Sarah Palin, the governor has chosen to cooperate with just one: The one that guarantees secrecy, can last for years and which she could conceivably dismiss.

The Alaska Legislature in August began its inquiry into whether Palin abused her office when she fired Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, which he claims happened when he didn’t fire a state trooper whom Palin’s sister had divorced.

Palin initially pledged cooperation with that probe, which was unanimously approved by eight Republicans and four Democrats, saying, “Hold me accountable.” After she became Sen. John McCain’s running mate on Aug. 29, she backed off, claiming that those behind the probe were biased and manipulating the report’s outcome and timing.

Around the time she was announced on the McCain ticket, she filed a complaint against herself with the Alaska State Personnel Board, the body that investigates ethics complaints against executive branch employees. Her attorney asked the Anchorage prosecutor hired by the Legislature to step aside in favor of the personnel board investigation.

Palin, through the McCain campaign, says the personnel board has jurisdiction over the matter and that she won’t cooperate with the legislative probe. The campaign accuses the Democratic lawmaker overseeing the investigation, state Sen. Hollis French, of planning to use the investigation as an “October surprise” before Election Day. Palin’s husband and nearly a dozen state workers either subpoenaed or asked to testify before lawmakers have refused to do so.

Palin’s preferred probe the one she filed with the state personnel board is nonpartisan and will be fair, McCain spokeswoman Meg Stapleton said Tuesday. The campaign is now working to schedule interviews with the investigator for Sarah and Todd Palin, she said.

But that investigation, unlike the more public legislative one, would require the investigation to be conducted in complete confidentiality. Under Alaska law, those who are part of such an investigation are unable to acknowledge even its existence until the personnel board decides there’s enough evidence to hold a hearing.

If the complaint is dismissed, the probe and all the information related to it would remain confidential.

Palin can waive confidentiality. The McCain campaign which is fielding all questions about Troopergate on the Palins’ behalf on Tuesday said the governor originally did so, but then the independent investigator, Anchorage attorney Timothy Petumenos, requested she not speak publicly.

McCain spokesman Ed O’Callaghan later acknowledged that the state’s confidentiality laws still apply.

Alaska law also allows a personnel board investigation to last for up to two years. It’s unknown how long Petumenos will need, but given the lengthy process involved, it seems unlikely to be completed by Election Day.

The Legislature’s investigator, Stephen Branchflower, plans to submit a report on Troopergate by Oct. 10, with or without the subpoenaed witnesses’ testimony, French has said.

Also, Palin may be able to have the complaint dismissed simply by refusing to cooperate. State law says that if the person who filed a complaint is unwilling to assist in the investigation, that can justify the probe’s termination.

O’Callaghan said he did not know whether that interpretation of the law was correct, but Palin intended to cooperate fully with the personnel board investigation.

An e-mail request for comment to the three members of the state personnel board was not answered on Tuesday.

Palin Prefers Secret “Troopergate” Probe

Sarah Palin Ethics Probe has Parallels to 2000 Florida Recount Fight

Former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris

Shades of the 2000 presidential election fiasco are once again with us.  In David Espo’s thoughtful examination of the currently stalled Troopergate ethics investigation of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Espo contends that the tactics of GOP presidential candidate John McCain and his staff are taken directly from the Karl Rove/Dick Cheney/George Bush playbook.  We may not have “hanging chads” and Secretary Of State Katherine Harris, as we did in Florida, but the spin doctors are hard at work up in Alaska in major damage control mode.  Published by AP on September 23, 2008, the article begs the question, are we Americans going to let the Republican Party control events by their dragging out the investigation until after the November 4^th presidential election?

This time, there are no hanging chads.

Yet the Republicans’ drive to derail an abuse of power investigation against Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential candidate, reflects the same determination and many of the same methods employed in shutting down the 2000 presidential recount in Florida.

Now, as then, the playbook includes lawsuits, the exercise of power by sympathetic state officials, and appeals to the court of public opinion – all in an operation directed by out-of-state Republicans.

“Hold me accountable,” Palin said when the Republican-controlled legislature launched the investigation in mid-August.

Now John McCain’s running mate, she declines to cooperate. She calls the investigation tainted, her husband won’t honor a subpoena to testify, and Republican lawmakers are in court with a pair of lawsuits challenging the legitimacy of the probe.

Republican lawyers, researchers and public relations specialists have been dispatched to Alaska. The Anchorage lawyer originally hired by the state to represent Palin is no longer paid by taxpayers and instead is part of the McCain-Palin campaign’s legal team.

Former prosecutor Ed O’Callaghan, from New York, is the team’s leading voice. “The investigation is no longer a legitimate investigation because it has been subjected to complete partisanship and does not operate with the authority that it had at the time of its initial authorization,” he told reporters earlier in the week.

Even though lawmakers announced plans for new subpoenas on Friday, there appears little chance that investigator Stephen Branchflower will receive testimony from all the witnesses he seeks before his Oct. 10 target date for completion.

That’s nearly four weeks before Election Day, the date by which Troopergate, as it is known, can no longer affect McCain’s chances of winning the White House.

And Democrats are not without their own maneuvers – casting Palin in an unfavorable light with allegations that Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his party are playing politics with the issue.

“The Republican presidential campaign is doing everything it can to stall and smear,” says Patti Higgins, chairwoman of the Alaska Democratic Party.

So far, the struggle has been largely one-sided. Advantage: Republicans and Palin, the governor whose firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan triggered the controversy this summer.

Critics say Monegan was fired because he refused to dismiss a state trooper who had gone through a difficult divorce with the governor’s sister. Palin says she acted in response to a disagreement with Monegan over state spending.

Whatever her motivation, Republicans have acted as though they could not afford to allow Branchflower to complete his probe before the election.

One Republican veteran of the Florida recount, attorney Ben Ginsberg, said comparing that case to the one in Alaska was like mixing apples and oranges.

“If you won the election once, why would you ever have a recount?” he said. And in the case of an investigation, “there’s always one side that tries to shut it down and another side that wants to keep it going.”

The similarities to the contested Florida recount of 2000 are striking, if imprecise – the uncertain outcome of a complete manual recount then, the unpredictability of a full accounting of the Monegan firing now.

Then, Bush clung to a slender lead in Florida over Al Gore after a statewide machine recount. Democrats sought a follow-up manual re-tally by hand in four counties, and Republicans determined to block them.

Given a margin of a few hundred votes out of millions cast, it was impossible to tell who had truly won the state. There were numerous disputed paper ballots – including those with partially-punched out holes that became instantly known by the phrase “hanging chads.

Republicans also were fearful of forfeiting their advantage in the public relations battle. Their man was ahead, and any reduction in his lead could only undermine his claim on the White House.

Lawsuits tumbled on top of one another, eventually involving Florida’s highest court and U.S. Supreme Court.

Katherine Harris, the Republican secretary of state, was stopped by court order from certifying the results once – a ruling issued by seven judges appointed by Democrats, Republicans noted.

One county canvassing board, besieged by Republican protesters, shut down the recount Democrats sought. Harris refused to accept results from another county, submitted 90 minutes past the court-imposed deadline of 5 p.m. on Nov. 26.

That day, she certified Bush the winner of Florida by 537 votes – and the tally stood despite days of additional lawyering and hand-counting.

The stakes are not nearly as large this time, and Democrats have appeared slow off the mark, unwilling or unable to dispatch their own crew to Alaska to counter the Republicans.

And while there is no direct equivalent of Harris, Alaska’s Republican attorney general, Talis Colberg, has played a pivotal, if quiet, role in trying to bottle up the investigation of the woman who appointed him.

When Branchflower sought to subpoena 10 employees of Palin’s administration, Colberg responded with a letter that said they had been placed in a untenable position.

“As state employees, our clients have taken an oath to uphold the Alaska Constitution,” he wrote.

Yet, he added, “our clients are also loyal employees subject to the supervision of the Governor” whom he said has stated that the subpoenas were of questionable validity.

“We respectfully ask that you withdraw the subpoenas directed to our clients and thereby relieve them from the circumstance of having to choose where their loyalties lie,” he added.

Palin probe has parallels to 2000 recount fight

McCain campaign clamps down on questions in Alaska

Anne Sutton, writing for the Associated Press, in an article published September 17, 2008 by the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner examines “an ambitious Republican strategy to limit any embarrassing disclosures and carefully shape her [Alaska Governor Sarah Palin] image for voters in the rest of the country.”  ~ Sarah Palin Truth Squad

Republican efforts include dispatching a former top U.S. terrorism prosecutor from New York, Ed O’Callaghan, to assist Palin’s personal lawyer working to derail or delay a pending ethics investigation in Alaska. The probe, known as “Troopergate,” is examining whether the governor abused her power by trying to remove her former brother-in-law as a state trooper.

O’Callaghan is just part of a cadre of high-powered operatives patrolling Alaska as reporters and Democrats scrutinize every detail of Palin’s tenure in government, plus her family and friends. One strategy: Carefully coordinate any information that’s released. The McCain campaign is demanding that it becomes the de facto source for answers about the operations of Alaska’s government during the past 20 months.

Palin’s normal press secretary, for example, now turns away inquiries from any reporter who isn’t permanently based in Alaska, referring questions to the presidential campaign. Trouble is, some of McCain operatives only recently have arrived in Alaska and struggle to explain Palin’s positions on arcane state issues.

O’Callaghan, who helped prosecute terrorism and national security cases for the Justice Department until a few weeks ago, was sent to Alaska to handle “legal issues that are affecting the political dynamic of the campaign,” said Taylor Griffin, a former Treasury Department spokesman in the Bush administration. O’Callaghan is expected to leave after this week.

Translation: O’Callaghan is helping ratchet up the heat on the Troopergate investigation, a probe with which Palin once promised to cooperate. O’Callaghan was the one who threw down the gauntlet during a news conference this week: Palin herself was unlikely to talk to the Alaska Legislature’s investigator.

McCain’s campaign has sent at least one dozen researchers and lawyers to Alaska to pore over Palin’s background, ready to respond to questions about her tenure as governor and mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. Griffin has been leading the team in Alaska, which includes operatives of the Republican National Committee.

Former top U.S. terrorism prosecutor from New York, Ed O'Callaghan