Sarah Palin cleared of state trooper charges

November 4, 2008 by 9 Comments

In case this was keeping you from voting McCain/Palin, you should know that Report clears Palin in Alaska’s Troopergate probe:

This time, Gov. Sarah Palin can claim vindication against allegations that she abused her power in office by firing her public safety commissioner.

Palin – running mate of Republican presidential candidate John McCain – violated no ethics laws, according to a report released by the state personnel board on the eve of Election Day. An earlier, separate investigation by the Legislature found that Palin had abused her office.
“There is no probable cause to believe that the governor, or any other state official, violated the Alaska Executive Ethics Act in connection with these matters,” the personnel board’s report said.

Filed Under: Politics 9 Comments
About Gene Veith

I am a retired English professor and college administrator. I have written over 20 books on different facets of Christianity & Culture.

  • FW

    the previous legislative report had some pretty strong evidence that palin´s circle of family and allies placed alot of pressure on the public safety commissioner to fire her ex-brother-in-law. IF true, this would not be proper,even if it did not technically violate any rules.

    the facts are probably that palin, like bill clinton when he was governor of a small state, could do alot of questionable things at a state level that don´t look so great under whithering national press attention.

    so we have two reports that seem to disagree. It would be interesting to see which group appears to be more independent of the governor.

    It would have been great for Palin to set an example by following through on cooperation with the legislature´s investigation, but maybe then she knew something we don´t and had grounds to think they would not be impartial. if she stood up to the republican establishment there, it is not unreasonable to think people have axes to grind…and it would be great if all of us would not assume we get to pass judgement but rather leave matters to officials carrying out their duty, and not be too quick to assign partisan bias. and good for public officials like Palin to set an example here as well I might add!

    Interesting that Palin also claimed to be fully vindicated by the first report as well. what did you make of that at the time Dr Veith?

  • http://www.geneveith.com Veith

    The first investigation was made by a single legislator, as I recall, someone of the opposite party. He was even bragging to Democrats that he would give them an “October surprise.” So it seemed pretty biased on the face of it, and I didn’t take it too seriously, just more politics of personal destruction. But I did worry about the effects this might have on her and her office. This investigation seems to be more official and definitive.

  • http://www.toddstadler.com/ tODD

    Veith (@2), that’s a rather odd way to characterize the first report. Here’s PolitiFact’s analysis of Palin’s earlier claim at vindication:

    Alaska’s 12-member Legislative Council — which has a Republican majority — decided to look into the matter, and in early August, they tapped independent investigator Stephen Branchflower to lead the probe.

    Branchflower’s report, released Oct. 10, concluded that while Palin was within her rights to fire Monegan, she “abused her power” and ran afoul of state ethics laws in seeking to settle a score with Wooten.

    The Palin camp predictably lambasted the report as a partisan smear.

    Less predictable was the reaction from Palin herself. “The truth was revealed there in that report that showed there was no unlawful or unethical activity on my part,” Palin told reporters on Oct. 11.

    Except that’s not what the report showed.

    The investigator himself may have been biased, but he was appointed by a majority-Republican body. Odd of them to intentionally create such a partisan circus (though FW hinted at possible reasons it could have happened @1).

    Further reason for a biased guy like me to question this report is found in the last sentence of the AP article you link to: “Personnel board members are appointed by the governor, who can fire members for cause.”

    I don’t think it’s too hard to see that, regardless of their conclusions, the former report was less potentially biased, given that it was from the legislature and bipartisan, while the latter report was from a body controlled by the person under investigation.

    Then, too, there is the question of timing. If someone said something about an “October surprise” in the former report, what are we to make of an exonerating report released the day before the election?

    Coincidentally, the same day Palin’s doctor released a letter instead of the continually refused medical records.

  • Anon

    The investigation of Palin was a political operation by a Democrat who promised “an October surprise”

    The brother-in-law tasered his own junior-high aged son. He was a crook, so were a lot of other troopers, and this political appointee whom Palin fired wouldn’t clean up the corruption.

    But of course, the Dems will spin anything to try to gain power, their sumum bonum.

    Alaska is a small State that would extend from Florida to California, from International Falls, Minnesota to Texas.

    tODD,
    Where is Obama’s actual birth certificate? Oath of loyalty? Name change back to Barack Hussein Obama? Where are his medical records? Where are his college and grad school records? He has withheld them all. Why did his records concerning his working for Ayers at the Annenberg Challenge have to be released by court order?

    Why do you hold him to a different standard than you do Governor Palin?

  • http://www.toddstadler.com/ tODD

    Anon (@4), I am not so delusional to think that I can convince you, given that the facts are out there and easy to find. If you’d wanted to find them by now, you would have. But you have bought into the stories peddled by people with an agenda, and I doubt that I can sway you from that, given how often you’ve accused me of being not only a person with an agenda myself (I do have a bias, of course), but also a “troll”, an Alinskyite, and/or an agent of the Obama campaign.

    But I am a glutton for punishment, so I will respond to you, anyhow.

    “Where is Obama’s actual birth certificate?” You know exactly where it is. I googled for [Obama birth certificate] and found results at the Web sites of the LA Times, Snopes.com, PolitiFact.com, and FactCheck.org, who — bless them — are still responding to this story, including a recent link to an AP article that says:

    Health Department Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said Friday she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama’s original birth certificate.

    Fukino says that no state official, including Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, ever instructed that Obama’s certificate be handled differently.

    She says state law bars release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest.

    But you could have found all that in the days, weeks, and months before now. You have decided that none of those sources are trustworthy, for whatever reason, and you won’t listen to them, preferring to listen to the lies spun by bloggers who share your politics.

    “Oath of loyalty”? I have no idea what you’re talking about. Is this something required of citizens of the United States who run for office, before they’re sworn in?

    “Name change back to Barack Hussein Obama?” Again, if you’d actually bother to look at his birth certificate, you’d see that was his name when he was born. That he may have gone by a different name when he was a child living in another country has no bearing on his legal name given at birth. But you won’t listen to that argument, because you saw something on a blog somewhere.

    “Where are his medical records?” Indeed. Where are they? He only released a doctor’s summary, as well, best I can find. Of course, he did so six months ago, as opposed to Palin’s holding out until the day before the election.

    “Where are his college and grad school records?” I don’t know. I don’t believe I’ve seen such records from any of the candidates. Are you asking about them for the people you support?

    Oh, and speaking of “different standards”, where is Palin’s birth certificate? I can find mention of McCain’s at liberally-biased MSM sources, but I haven’t yet found any bloggers who can verify McCain’s birth certificate’s authority. Or how about Palin’s and McCain’s oaths of loyalty? Do you have documentation of Palin’s name change?

    And you’ve rather missed the point about the attempted-trooper-firing investigation. It’s not about whether he’s a good trooper or not, it’s about whether Palin abused her power or not.

  • http://www.toddstadler.com/ tODD

    Oh, and Anon, is there a reason you still haven’t come up with any proof or defense of your claim that Palin “has done more negotiating with foreign governments than any of the other three” candidates, over at the “The Republican captivity of the church” entry?

    Or the more specific (and more easily proven by you, if it were true!) claim that “Governor Palin has negotiated with the governments of the Russian Federation, Canada, Iceland and Denmark as the chief executive of her State”?

    I won’t bother to dig further back to find other times I’ve asked you to prove your wild assertions, only to hear nothing in return from you. But they’re there.