14 posts tagged “investigation”
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin marked the Independence Day holiday by firing back at "false and defamatory allegations" made over the past twenty-four hours; noting limits on the "right of free speech"; and issuing threats of potential legal action against a number of journalists and media outlets.
Through her private attorney, Thomas Van Flein, Palin issued a statement on Saturday in response to stories concerning suggestions of a federal investigation into the contracting and building of her house on Lake Lucille in Wasilla and the Wasilla Sports Complex, both constructed during her tenure as Mayor of the small town.
The four page response [posted in full at the end of this article] rebuts allegations as discussed on this blog and other news sites on Friday following the former Republican Vice Presidential nominee's surprise announcement that she would be resigning from office with a year and a half still remaining in her first term as Governor.
The defiant statement includes a warning "to provide notice" to journalists and media outlets that she "will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation."
The statement opens by charging that following her stunning, and often beguiling, hastily called press conference at the beginning of the holiday weekend, "several unscrupulous people have asserted false and defamatory allegations that the 'real' reasons for Governor Palin's resignation stem from an alleged criminal investigation pertaining to the construction of the Wasilla Sports Complex."
Also, late tonight, the Los Angeles Times has filed a short article featuring a response from an FBI spokesperson in Alaska who denies that the agency is investigating the Palins on those matters...
The Van Flein/Palin statement describes allegations of impropriety and possible indictments as a "canard ... first floated by Democrat operatives in September 2008 during the national campaign and followed up by sympathetic Democratic writers." The attorney describes the charges as "one of many fabrications about Sarah Palin."
"The Sports Complex was built in 2002. It is now 2009," Van Flein writes on Palin's behalf. "While the Federal Government has a process to follow, and that process sometimes takes time, we can categorically state that we are not aware of any 'federal investigation' that has been 'pending' for the last seven years. We are aware of no subpoenas on SBS [Spenard Builders Supply] regarding the Palins."
The statement makes liberal use of direct quotes, such as "federal investigation" and "pending", as seen in the above, but fails to attribute them to anybody in particular. The comment about SBS subpoenas would seem to be in reply to a report at The Daily Beast on Friday by Max Blumenthal (which we linked to and quoted in a late update to our own coverage) asking "Did a Scandal Sink the U.S.S. Palin?" Blumenthal, however, is not named directly in the letter, nor is Daily Beast, nor did he use the word "pending"
Though the words "fact" and "under federal investigation" are quoted directly, Van Flein does not cite the sources of those quotations.
Moore briefly spoke on Saturday night, she was preparing to host her radio show within minutes, on which, she said, she would likely be discussing Palin's statement. At the same time we were preparing to head out for family festivities for the evening, in celebration of the Independence Day holiday. In our brief conversation, truncated due to both commitments, she expressed concerns about attempts at censorship and intimidation against journalists by a public official, as read in Palin's response. No doubt, if she hasn't already, she will be replying to Palin's statement herself directly, in some form, in the days ahead.
Palin pre-empts state report, clears self
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Trying to head off a potentially embarrassing state ethics report on GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, campaign officials released their own report Thursday that clears her of any wrongdoing.
Sen. John McCain's running mate is the subject of a legislative investigation into whether she abused her power as governor by firing her public safety commissioner. The commissioner, Walter Monegan, says he was dismissed in July for resisting pressure from Palin's husband, Todd Palin, and numerous top aides to fire state trooper Mike Wooten, Palin's former brother-in-law.
The move came hours after the state Supreme Court refused to halt the ethics investigation.
Lawmakers were expected to release their own findings Friday. Campaign officials have yet to see that report — the result of an investigation that began before she was tapped as McCain's running mate — but said the investigation has falsely portrayed a legitimate policy dispute between a governor and her commissioner as something inappropriate.
"The following document will prove Walt Monegan's dismissal was a result of his insubordination and budgetary clashes with Governor Palin and her administration," campaign officials wrote. "Trooper Wooten is a separate issue."
Monegan said Thursday that he doesn't know what to expect from the legislative panel's own report.
"I just hope that the truth is figured out," Monegan told The Associated Press on Thursday. "That the governor did want me to fire him, and I chose to not. You just can't walk up to someone and say, 'I fire you.' He didn't do anything under my watch to result in termination."
Palin's critics say that shows she used her office to settle family affairs.
"When you're the governor, you leave your household hat at home and you become governor," said state Senate President Lyda Green, a Republican who has frequently clashed with Palin.
Campaign blames former opponent
The campaign's report instead blames former campaign opponent, Andrew Halcro, who has a blog, of conspiring with Wooten to pin Monegan's dismissal on the family's dispute with Wooten. Three days after Monegan was fired, they say, Wooten told his ex-wife, Palin's sister, that: "You guys are going down. Get ready for the show."
Two days after that confrontation, they say, Halcro and Wooten met at a hotel bar in Anchorage for more than three hours — and that evening, Halcro posted the first accusations on his blog that Monegan had been fired because of a vendetta against Wooten by the Palin family.
"It is tragic that a false story hatched by a blogger after drinks with Trooper Wooten led the legislature to allocate over $100,000 of public money to be spent in what has become a politically driven investigation," the 21-page report concludes.
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." The campaign describes allegations of violence, including threatening Palin's family and shooting his stepson with a stun gun.
The report also includes allegations that Wooten cheated the workers' compensation system. Todd Palin has said he had numerous conversations with government officials about why Wooten was allowed to stay on the job.
"The Palins make no apologies for wanting to protect their family and wanting to bring attention to the injustice of a violent trooper keeping his badge and abusing the workers' compensation system."
But Todd Palin said he never pressured anyone, including his wife.
The McCain campaign says the investigation has become "muddied with innuendo, rumor and partisan politics."
Some GOP Alaska state legislators are blaming Obama for Palin's "Abuse of Power" Probe
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska Republicans are asking the state's highest court to block an abuse-of-power investigation into vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's firing of a state commissioner before a potentially embarrassing report on the matter is released.
Five GOP state lawmakers, in a brief filed Monday, say the inquiry has exceeded its authority and is too political.
Palin is the focus of a legislative investigation into allegations she abused her power by firing her public safety commissioner. The commissioner says he was pressured to dismiss a state trooper who was involved in a messy divorce with Palin's sister.
Investigators are scheduled to submit a report on the investigation Friday. Oral arguments are scheduled for Wednesday.
The parody "rockumentary" This Is Spinal Tap features a scene in which a fictional rock band's manager defends a particularly idiotic decision by pointing out that he was merely following the instructions of Nigel Tufnel, the band's profoundly clueless lead guitarist.
Lead singer David St. Hubbins replies, "But you're not as confused as him, are you? I mean it's not your job to be as confused as Nigel."
The latest in a string of revelations about the depths of Sarah Palin's ignorance - a Sept. 29 blog post by Politico.com's Jonathan Martin that she's apparently incapable of naming any Supreme Court opinion other than Roe v. Wade - is a reminder that it's not the job of someone who could be a heartbeat away from the presidency to be as confused as the average American.
John McCain's nomination of Palin has turned out to be what can be called an attempt to pull off the Full Nixon. Forty years ago, Richard Nixon figured out that there were a lot of votes to be won by tapping into widespread resentment of "arrogant elites," who thought they were smarter and better informed than their fellow Americans.
For months now, McCain has been hammering away at this theme in regard to Barack Obama, whose Ivy League education is supposed to have infused him with the arrogance and elitism that makes him contemptuous of ordinary folk like, for example, Sarah Palin.
Palin has spent almost her whole life in a very small town in a sparsely populated and extremely isolated state. For reasons that remain obscure, she attended five colleges in six years where, if her public performance to date is any indication, she seems to have learned nothing.
If Palin knows anything at all about national politics or foreign affairs or history or economics or almost anything else one would want a president to know something about, she has till now kept that fact remarkably well hidden.
She is, in other words, the ultimate representative of a kind of out-of-control populism. In its more extreme forms, populist resentment of elites flows from the belief that any ordinary person knows enough to be a good political leader, since political leadership is all about having the right values, and good character, and a pure heart.
This is of course nonsense. It makes about as much sense as saying that performing open-heart surgery or piloting a jumbo jet is all about having the right values.
McCain and his advisers know this, which is why they've spent the last month trying to stuff Sarah Palin full of plausible sound bites of information, so she can at least pretend to know what she's talking about when she's asked questions about the federal government or foreign policy or economics or history, etc.
It's a cynical and incredibly reckless strategy, especially given McCain's age and precarious health. (McCain's odds of dying of natural causes in the next four years are, conservatively speaking, at least one in seven).
It's a sign of how successfully political know-nothingism has been exploited in America that it's even necessary to say this: To do a decent job, the president of the United States needs to be vastly more educated and knowledgeable than the average American.
This is a necessary, though far from sufficient, requirement. And, as Palin's cringe-inducing performance on the national stage illustrates, there are plenty of politicians who are no more qualified to be president than I am to be an NBA power forward.
Consider that the most recent of Tina Fey's hilarious yet horrifying Saturday Night Live parodies of Palin included merely repeating, word for word, one of Palin's rambling and nonsensical answers to CBS interviewer Katie Couric's questions.
That fact by itself ought to disqualify John McCain from the office he seeks.
Here is another example of dishonesty, hypocrisy, and incompetence coming from McCain/Pa_in campaign. McCain somehow received the questions for VP debate on 10/2. Sarah must be quite inadequate to make a strong performance. At the debate look for Sarah to be inconspicuous, you'll hardly notice when she reads the correct answers off her hand. Where is the honor in these people? So, Sarah debates up a storm, she's just a smiling, she uses her sarcastic attitude, but she answers all the questions smooth as silk. She even has real content, not just nonsense. SO WHAT! Does this one event pivot on whether she is competent or NOT? Will that make this women more credible? It has been painfully clear that Sarah has very little, useful knowledge. Will she boost America's confidence in the economy, energy situation, housing, jobs? SaRAH is soo exciting! Who cares what she says or what she knows? She's not running for vice president or anything. Oh yeah, she is.....
BTW Sarah Palin is still under investigation for "Abuse of Power" as the governor of Alaska. The McCain Camp is presently trying to do everything they can to have it and the state process discredited and dismissed.
Calls rise among Republicans for Sarah Palin to step down from GOP ticket
Sunday, September 28th 2008, 11:31 AM
Platt/Getty
As the economy worsens, so does Palin in the eyes of fellow Republicans.
Sarah Palin faces the biggest test of her month-old candidacy with this Thursday's vice presidential debate, but many Republicans are already convinced the Alaska governor is not ready for prime time - and may never be.
"It was fun while it lasted," conservative National Review columnist Kathleen Parker regretfully concluded last week. "But circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey mom with lipstick."
RELATED: VIDEO: TINA FEY REPRISES HER ROLE AS BUMBLING, 'ADORABLE' PALIN ON 'SNL'
Those "circumstances," Parker and others are now saying, include not just the Wall Street meltdown - a crisis that seems to cry out for seasoned leadership - but also Palin's choppy, tenuous, even unintelligible answers to the few questions she has fielded on her own.
Palin's interview last week with CBS' Katie Couric is Exhibit A - a frightening glimpse, say fans and critics alike, into what happens when Palin is allowed to speak without a script.
"It's very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia," she told Couric in explaining why being able to see Russia from Alaska should count as foreign policy experience on her résumé. "It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right next to, they are right next to our state."
RELATED: 1984 PALIN SWIMSUIT VIDEO FROM PAGEANT SURFACES
On the Wall Street meltdown and polls showing Republican nominee John McCain slipping, she added, "What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who's more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who's actually done it."
It made some GOP veterans yearn for Dan Quayle.
RELATED: PLANNED PARENTHOOD PROFITS NICELY FROM PALIN ADS
"You needed the Jaws of Life to pry a coherent sentence out," moaned one Republican operative.
Palin's uneven answers may help to explain why her handlers have let her grant only a handful of media interviews so far.
It may also explain why her poll numbers have started to slip, as in a Fox News poll last week that showed her favorable ratings dipping to 47% from 54%.
Republican guru Ed Rollins believes Team McCain did Palin a disservice by keeping her so walled off from the press.
Palin was thrust straight into the big leagues with ABC's Charlie Gibson and Couric (and a softball toss with conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity).
"They put her in storage," said Rollins, "and it broke her confidence."
Sunday papers
SEPTEMBER 21, 2008 - 7:39 AM
From David Hulen in Anchorage --
> Alaskans angered that Palin is off-limits (Los Angeles Times)
...The sudden intrusion of a political campaign into so many corners of state government -- not to mention Wasilla, where a dozen or more campaign researchers and lawyers have also begun overseeing the release of any information about Palin's years as mayor -- has touched a raw nerve. McCain staffers have even been assigned to answer calls for Palin's family members, who have been instructed not to talk.
> Lawmakers: Politics 'hijacked' Alaska (Juneau Empire)
"The state of Alaska and the Alaska Attorney General's Office don't need any help from a national campaign," said Sen. President Lyda Green, R-Wasilla...
"National politics have absolutely hijacked the state government, it's really disturbing to see from the governor," said Rep. Beth Kerttula, D-Juneau.
> Pact on Debates Will Let McCain and Obama Spar (New York Times)
At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.
McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.
...Alaska's need for an elected attorney general
IF EVER THERE were an argument for an elected attorney general in this state, the Troopergate clown car emptying out in Juneau must take the cake. It is, politely, an embarrassment for the state when neither the governor nor the attorney general seem to have a clue about what they are doing. As it stands now, under the state constitution, Attorney General Talis Colberg represents Gov. Sarah Palin, not the people of Alaska.Alaska’s Constitution was crafted so that a strong executive branch could get things going in the new state, with minimal interference. Having an appointed attorney general who was the governor’s mouthpiece just made sense. It fit the time; it fit the circumstance. But that was then; this is now. A quick look at Juneau nowadays should tip you off that something has changed. Palin — now a vice presidential candidate — is under investigation by the Legislature to determine whether she misused her office in firing former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. He said he felt pressured by the governor, along with her family and staff to dismiss a trooper who was involved in a nasty divorce and child custody battle with Palin’s sister. The Legislature has issued 13 subpoenaes, including one for Todd Palin, the governor’s husband. Colberg has gone to far as to recommend those summoned refuse to appear, in violation of Alaska law. The attorney general — who himself, unbelievably, once called Monegan about the trooper in question — instead of looking out for the interests of ordinary Alaskans and getting to the bottom of this mess which borders on a constitutional crisis, has decided he and his Department of Law will join the governor, the McCain-Palin campaign and anybody else in stalling and thwarting the Legislature’s investigation. Instead of allowing the Legislature to do its job, he says the investigation should be handled by the state Personnel Board, which is controlled by Palin. In essence, it would have Sarah Palin investigating herself. It is always comical to listen to those opposed to an elected attorney general. Oh, me, oh, my, they say. It would introduce politics into the mix; it would invite political ambition. Are you kidding us? Take a look around. The governor can hire her own lawyer, leaving this question: Who, exactly, is looking out for Alaskans?
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TODD PALIN TO IGNORE SUBPOENA IN TROOPERGATE PROBE.... If I didn't know better, I might think Sarah Palin's gubernatorial administration has something to hide.
Gov. Sarah Palin's husband has refused to testify in the investigation of his wife's alleged abuse of power, and a key lawmaker said today that uncooperative witnesses are effectively sidetracking the probe until after Election Day.
Todd Palin, who participates in state business in person or by e-mail, was among 13 people subpoenaed by the Alaska Legislature. McCain-Palin presidential campaign spokesman Ed O'Callaghan announced today that Todd Palin would not appear, because he no longer believes the Legislature's investigation is legitimate.
Sarah Palin initially welcomed the investigation of accusations that she dismissed the state's public safety commissioner because he refused to fire her ex-brother-in-law, a state trooper. "Hold me accountable," she said.
But she has increasingly opposed it since Republican presidential candidate John McCain tapped her as his running mate. The McCain campaign dispatched a legal team to Alaska including O'Callaghan, a former top U.S. terrorism prosecutor from New York to bolster Palin's local lawyer.
At the risk of belaboring the point, let's not lose sight of the extent to which Palin has broken her word here. She vowed total cooperation, and the investigation enjoyed broad, bipartisan support. Since the McCain campaign got involved, Palin has decided she won't answer questions, subpoenaed state employees won't answer questions, and Palin's subpoenaed husband won't answer questions. Five Republicans in the Alaskan legislature, who never had a problem with the probe before, have even filed a lawsuit, asking a state judge to end the probe altogether.
This didn't stop Palin from boasting to voters this week, "We're going to make everything more open, and more accountable, and more attractive to those who want to serve." (There's no word on whether she was able to say the line with a straight face.)
State lawmakers will next decide how to respond to those who've blown off their subpoenas. Stay tuned.
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