Alaska Personal Board Clears Plain Of Wrong Doing In “Troopergate”

New report from the Alaska Personal Board has cleared Governor Sarah Palin in the firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. The report prepared by independent investigator Timothy Petumenos, goes on to say the investigator hired by the Legislature was wrong to conclude that Palin abused her power by allowing aides and her husband to pressure Monegan to dismiss her former brother-in-law.

From the Anchorage Daily News:

A new report, released just hours before the polls open on Election Day, exonerates Gov. Sarah Palin in the “Troopergate” controversy.

The state Personnel Board-sanctioned investigation is the second into whether Palin violated state ethics law in firing her public safety commissioner earlier this year, and it contradicts the earlier findings by a special counsel hired by the state Legislature. The board is set up in state law as an independent agency to hear complaints of violations of state ethics law brought against executive branch employees. Members are appointed by the governor, though Palin only had a role in appointing one of the three members.

Both investigations found that Palin was within her rights to fire Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. But the new report says the Legislature’s investigator was wrong to conclude that Palin abused her power by allowing aides and her husband, Todd, to pressure Monegan and others to dismiss her ex-brother-in-law, Trooper Mike Wooten. Palin was accused of firing Monegan because Wooten stayed on the job.

For the first time, the report says Palin specifically denies Monegan’s versions of events; specifically, she says two conversations that Monegan described having with her about Wooten never happened. Both Monegan and Palin made their statements under oath. Read the rest…

Democrats will of course call the Personal Board’s investigation biased but to anyone who has followed this case closely, the personal board’s finding isn’t at all surprising.

Troopergate Report Says Palin “Abused Power”

MataHarely and Ed Morrissey have complete analysis’s of Troopergate Investigator Stephen Branchflower’s report.

The bottom line on the report is that Gov. Palin had the constitutional and statutory authority fire Commissioner Monegan. Branchflower, however, believes that Sarah Palin abused her power by not stopping her husband, Todd, from talking to state officials about her former brother in law Trooper Mike Wooten.

She knowingly, as that term is defined in the above cited statutes, permitted Todd Palin to use the Governor’s office and the resources of the Governor’s office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired. Her conduct violated AS 39.52.110(a) of the Ethics Act. That statute provides that:

“the legislature reaffirms that each 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”.

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 cease contacting subordinates, but she failed to act.

I don’t know about you but I can’t fault Todd Palin for his actions… I would have moved heaven and earth to protect my family from some who had tasered his 10-year-old stepson, and threatened to murder his estranged wife’s father.