Provost, Kathryn T (GOV)

From: Governor Sarah Palin (GOV sponsored)

Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 20082:17 PM
To: Provost, Kathryn T (GOV)
SUbject: FW: troopergate

-----Original Message-----
From: TR7 FAN [mailt04l~~~~~~~~~

Sent: Friday, September 12, 2008 8:39 PM

To: Governor Sarah Palin (GOV sponsored)
Subject: troopergate

On July 11, 2008, Walt Monegan, the public safety commissioner (or top
cop) for the state of Alaska, was fired. On the face of it, there was nothing wrong with
that. He was a Palin appointee, and she had the right to fire him. But at first with
prodding from his union, and then on his own, Monegan began telling people about the
persistent pressure he claimed to have felt, in the months leading up to his dismissal,
from the governor, her staff and her husband to get rid of a state trooper named Mike
Wooten. Wooten happened to be Palin's former brother-in-law and had been involved in a
bitter divorce and custody dispute with Sarah Palin's younger sister Molly McCann since
2005.
Monegan's refusal to remove Wooten was, he said, part of what led to his firing. If
Monegan's accusations are true, it would be a serious abuse of the power of the governor
-- not to mention a major blow to her image as a good-government reformer -- suggesting
that she used her office and the office of many of the state's top functionaries to settle
an old family score. On Friday, the retired Alaska prosecutor investigating whether Palin
abused the power of her office in the matter asked state lawmakers for the power to
subpoena 13 witnesses and the phone records of a key Palin aide. The request is expected
to be granted.

What does Pa~in have against Wooten?

Among other family entreaties, Palin had sent a long, angry e-mail to Colonel Julia
Grimes, the head of the Alaska state troopers, on Aug.
10, 2005, listing more than a dozen ccmplaints against Wooten, ranging from allegedly
making death threats against the family and Tasering his 10-year-old stepson to running
down and killing a wolf with his snow machine and trying to weasel out of a $5 fine at the
landfill.
The sources Palin cites include a private detective the family emplcyed to look into
Wooten's life. Court records from 2005 show that the judge in the divorce case was
concerned by the aggressiveness even then with which the family was trying to get Wooten
fired, saying from the bench that "the bitterness of whatever who did what to whom has
overridden good judgment."

Is Wooten that big of a menace?

He certainly seems like he was at one point, based on the incidents the Palin family
compiled. After all, who Tasers a 10-year-old boy, even if it was the boy's idea in the
first place, and even if the Taser was on a low setting? But the state troopers
investigated all the allegations and let Wooten off with just a 10-day sJspension (the
police union eventually got it down to five). As of this July, the custody case was still
unsettled. And the fact that Wooten served on the Alaskan equivalent of a SWAT team shows
~hat at least his immediate supervisors trusted him. He has served as a state trooper
without apparent incident for at least a couple of years since his suspension.

Was the governor's family ever in danger?

Wooten allegedly told McCann that Palin's father would "eat a f ing lead bullet", a
comment that Palin says she and her son overheard. But Palin's most consistent claim, that
her staff were just worried about her family's safety, rings hollow (as does, even more

14
so, the other argument she made -- that Wooten was such a lout that he would hurt trooper
recruitment). Several years had passed, and even though Wooten had a domestic violence
restraining order against him, he had never physically threatened the governor, her
husband Todd or their children.

Is Palin lying?

Hard to say. She has already issued a few seemingly contradictory statements about the
matter. Just after Monegan's firing, she said that "never was there any pressure put on
Commissioner Monegan to hire or fire anybody." A month later, though, she held a surprise
press conference, which revealed that key staffers and even her husband had made more than
two dozen contacts with Monegan about Wooten, contacts she insists she hadn't known about.
It turns out an increasingly wary state police had recorded one of those conversations,
which is fairly explicit in its intent. The call, from Palin ally Frank Bailey to a state
trooper, intimates that Palin was otherwise happy with Monegan except on the Wooten issue:
"I'm telling you honestly, you know, she really likes Walt a lot, but on this issue, she
feels like it's -- she doesn't know why th~ie is absolutely no action for a year on this
issue. It's very, very troubling to h~r and the family. I could definitely relay that,"
Bailey said.

Wasn't Monegan fired for poor performance?

Palin says so. She claimed in an Aug. 13 press conference that she was disappointed in
budget issues, recruitment and Monegan's handling of rural bootlegging. On this last
issue, however, there is a contradiction with statements she had made three weeks earlier,
when she told local television station KTVA that she thought Monegan would make a great
director of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board: "I recognize that Walt's interest in the
area certainly could be put to good use," she said, "as he could concentrate exclusively
on a couple of issues that were his interest, that being bootlegging and alcohol problems
in rural Alaska." Monegan has also been praised by Alaskan women's groups for his work
against domestic violence and violence against women, and at a conference in late April,
Palin herself lauded him for his work. "An indication of our commitment is the
participation here of my -- our -- Department of Public Safety commissioner Walt Monegan's
participation here and all of his hard work, and I want to publicly thank him," Palin
said, according to a videotape obtained by ABC News.

Is Palin cooperating with the investigation?

If she was before she was named John McCain's running mate, she doesn't seem to be now.
Only a few weeks ago, Palin had promised full cooperation with the legislature -- "Hold me
accountable," she told Alaskans -- including testifying in front of the inquiry, which is
also looking into allegations that her staff improperly accessed Wooten's personnel file.
She also requested that the state attorney general conduct his own investigation alongside
the legislature's probe. But Thomas Van Flein, the lawyer she had to hire because the
attorney general, Talis Colberg, also called Monegan about Wooten and therefore could be a
witness, had Palin take the unusual step this week of filing an ethics complaint --
against herself. Ethics complaints are heard by the three-member Personnel Board, whose
members are all Palin appointees, and Van Flein has claimed that the entire legislative
investigation should be stopped because it has become a partisan affair. The legislature,
however, has refused her calls to stop their investigation in lieu of the ethics
complaint. In the past week, seven witnesses from Palin's staff said through their lawyers
that they would back out of previously scheduled Senate depositions. The Anchorage Daily
News said in a recent Op-Ed that if Palin truly stands for transparency, then she should
tell her intensely loyal staffers they have to testify, or else. So far, there's no sign
that she'll do that. In fact, Palin's recent moves suggest that she is hoping to run out
the clock so that no report can be issued before Nov. 4. According to a Bloomberg News
story, Alaska senior assistant attorney general Michael Barnhill has threatened to try to
quash any such subpoenas, citing "a clause in the state's constitution that protects
individual reputations from McCarthy-like smear tactics."

Is the investigation just partisan politics?

The judicial committee that started looking into Troopergate is actually composed of eight
Republicans and four Democrats, though not all Republicans in Alaska are fans of Palin.
But the chairman, Hollis French, is a Democrat who made several ill-advised comments in
media interviews that suggested he had already concluded Palin was lying, including

15
mentioning an "October surprise" and using the word impeachment. So the McCain campaign
and Palin's attorney and allies in Alaska have been trying to paint the investigation as a
partisan witch hunt. French and his committee have tried to address those concerns -- he
says he didn't subpoena Palin because he believes she'll eventually cooperate and because
he wants to "de-escalate" the tension. The committee has also moved up the scheduled
release date of its report from Oct. 31 to Oct. 10, claiming it doesn't want any of its
findings to come out so close to Election Day.

What does this mean for the presidential race?

As they say, it's not the crime but the cover-up that could be most damaging. Wooten is
not a highly sympathetic character -- something Palin knows firsthand --- and the public
could perhaps understand why Palin wouldn't want him carrying a gun around. But Monegan is
the one who lost his job. And by initially denying that there was any pressure, only to
reveal that most of her senior staff, her husband and the attorney general had in fact
been pressuring Monegan, Palin did far more damage to her carefully cultivated maverick
image that is working so well in the campaign. If anything, Palin appears to be moving
even further away from transparency in the matter now that she's on the national ticket.
If the investigator's findings are anything short of a full exoneration for Palin --
assuming the findings do indeed come out before the election -- the McCain campaign will
continue to make the case that it's all just another partisan attack and just more
politics as usual.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0.8599.1840675,00.html?xid=rss-nation

16