Palin abused power, Alaska ‘Troopergate’ probe finds
Saturday, October 11th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Gov. Sarah Palin abused the powers of her office by pressuring subordinates to try to get her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired, an investigation by the Alaska Legislature has concluded. She was within her right, however, to dismiss her public safety commissioner, the trooper’s boss, the inquiry found.
A 236-page report released by lawmakers in Alaska on Friday, found that Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, had herself exerted pressure to get Trooper Michael Wooten dismissed, as well as allowed her husband and subordinates to press for his firing, as a result of a messy divorce between him and Ms. Palin’s sister.
“Such impermissible and repeated contacts create conflicts of interests for subordinate employees who must choose to either please a superior or run the risk of facing that superior’s displeasure and the possible consequences of that displeasure,” the report states. It concludes that such action was a violation of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.
It was not immediately clear what actions the legislature would take in light of the findings. Ms. Palin could be censured or the legislature could choose not to act at all.
Ms. Palin, who was elected governor in 2006, was tapped as Senator John McCain’s running mate in August, several weeks after an inquiry was opened into her firing of Mr. Monegan.
In the report, the independent investigator, Stephen E. Branchflower, a former prosecutor in Anchorage, said that Ms. Palin wrongfully allowed her husband, Todd, to use state resources as part of the effort to have Trooper Wooten dismissed.
The report says she knowingly “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.”
Further, it says, she “knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda.”
In 2005, Trooper Wooten and the governor’s sister, Molly McCann, were locked in a harsh divorce and child-custody battle that further turned the Palin family against him. The couple divorced in January 2006.
The report was released after Alaska lawmakers emerged from a private session in Anchorage where they spent in excess of six hours discussing whether to release the ethics report into the politically charged scandal.
Mr. Branchflower based his finding of abuse of power on Alaska’s Executive Branch Ethics Act, which was established to “discourage executive branch employees from acting upon personal interest in the performance of their public responsibilities and to avoid conflicts of interest in the performance of duty,” the report says.
But the document concludes that Ms. Palin both acted upon her public interest in seeking the firing of Trooper Wooten and created a conflict of interest by forcing subordinate employees to choose between doing her bidding and or not.
It says, however, that “Governor Palin’s firing of Commissioner Walt Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.” It cites the Alaska Constitution, which says “the governor may discharge department heads without cause” and that department heads “serve at the pleasure of the governor.”
“In light of this constitutional and statutory authority, it is clear that Governor Palin could fire Commissioner Walt Monegan at will, for almost any reason, or no reason at all.”
The report states that, while there is no doubt that Mr. Monegan’s “failure to fire Trooper Wooten was a substantial factor in his own firing, the evidence suggest it was not the sole reason.”
Ms. Palin has provided various reasons for terminating Mr. Monegan on July 11. Initially the governor said through a spokeswoman that Mr. Monegan’s firing had nothing to do with a “personality conflict.” Since then, her explanations have evolved, from saying that he was falling short on filling trooper vacancies and attacking alcohol-abuse problems in rural Alaska to showing an “intolerable pattern of insubordination” and a “rogue mentality” by resisting her authority and fiscal reforms.
Ms. Palin has denied that anyone told Mr. Monegan to dismiss Trooper Wooten, or that the commissioner’s ouster had anything to do with the trooper.
But Mr. Monegan has said that he believes he lost his job because he would not bend to pressure to dismiss Trooper Wooten. On July 28, the Legislative Council, a bipartisan body of House and Senate members who can convene to make decisions when the Legislature is not in session, approved an independent investigation into whether the governor abused the powers of her office to pursue a personal vendetta.
Mr. Monegan said in an interview Friday night that he felt relieved.
“I feel that my beliefs and opinions that Wooten was a significant factor, if not the factor, in my termination have been validated,” Mr. Monegan said.
He added, “I was resisting the governor from the very beginning on the Wooten matter to protect her from exactly what just happened to her here, being found to have acted inappropriately.”
The report chastised Ms. Palin for declining to be interviewed. “An interview would have assisted everyone to better understand her motives and perhaps help explain why she was so apparently intent upon getting Trooper Wooten fired in spite of the fact she knew he had been disciplined following the administrative investigation.”
Even as Ms. Palin drew large crowds and media attention as she campaigned across the United States, the issue was brewing in Alaska, as the inquiry moved forward. But the campaign repeatedly shrugged off the allegations, stating that they were not serious and that she was not guilty of any wrongdoing.
Still, the allegations undermined the campaign’s portrayal of Ms. Palin as a “maverick” who has taken on special interests in her state and fought for average residents.
The McCain campaign flew operatives into Alaska to wage a public relations campaign on Ms. Palin’s behalf and to mount legal challenges to the investigation.
Six Republican lawmakers in Alaska had sued to block the legislative report, saying the investigation was unfair and partisan. A lower court rejected the suit, and on Thursday, the Alaska Supreme Court batted down an emergency appeal, paving the way for the publication of the report.
Seeking to deflect some potential damage from the investigator’s report, the McCain campaign released its own report on the dismissal of Mr. Monegan. It concluded that Mr. Monegan was fired for “his insubordination and budgetary clashes with Governor Palin and her administration.”
Immediately after the legislative report was released on Friday, the Obama campaign sent an email to reporters, citing an Associated Press story and noting that Palin “unlawfully abused her authority.” (Nytimes)
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