Before proceeding, I mentioned in an early VP pick post that I thought McCain would pass on Sarah Palin because of the Troopergate issue. I also wrote a recent post urging McCain to dump Palin, suggesting that she cite Troopergate as a distraction from the campaign. [It should be noted that Sarah Palin calls it "Tasergate", making reference to former brother-in-law Mike Wooten's tasering her young nephew. Wooten denies tasering him, but insists the boy was asking to be tasered. Yeah, right, Wooten. Down here, in the lower 48, we call it "child abuse".]
That being said, the Troopergate investigation was, by any objective standard, a political witch-hunt. The fact that the Alaska Democratic state senator Hollis French, a declared Obama supporter, heading the legislative probe, promised an "October surprise" for the McCain campaign and findings "damaging" to the Palin Administration and did not recuse himself (and that the legislative council head, also a Democrat, Kim Elton, refused to replace French) constitutes a material breach of public ethics. What is also interesting is if you examine the record, you find that French is the person whom Monegan, the fired Commissioner party to the investigation, dealt with in working his budget request around the governor; not only was French's interests biased by his involvement with national politics, but he had an intrinsic conflict of interest.
Basic Investigator Findings
I do not expect the Obama campaign to focus on finding #2: "Governor Palin's firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads." It is true that the report empathizes with Monegan's sour-grapes smear of Governor Palin's motives, i.e., that Monegan had not terminated rogue state trooper Mike Wooten, Palin's former brother-in-law. (The investigator says he feels it was a factor, but he produces no evidence beyond incidents of complaints; however, it seems that complaints occurred over a period of time and were not clustered near the time of the termination.) However, Monegan himself admits that Governor Palin did not order him to fire Wooten.
There is a separate ethics finding which mostly has to do with whether Todd Palin, Sarah's husband, or others working for Palin complained about Wooten to Monegan or his aides a total of 30 times over 19 months, but that seems to be grasping at straws. In fact, Todd Palin had complained about Wooten during the prior administration and was not aware of any interim actions taken against Wooten. It seems at some point Sarah told Todd that she didn't want to discuss Wooten any more, and Todd and others were expressing their free speech rights on their own without Sarah's knowledge or consent.
What weakens this claim even further is the fact Monegan himself never filed an ethics complaint against Palin during his tenure or after his CPS dismissal. Todd Palin says Monegan never told him that he felt that he was feeling harassed or pressured, but when Monegan had made a decision not to move forward on a particular complaint, Todd was referred to an ombudsman or other party.
Wooten-Related Complaints
Here is a relevant excerpt on the Wooten story from the July 24 Anchorage Daily News:
"The record clearly indicates a serious and concentrated pattern of unacceptable and at times, illegal activity occurring over a lengthy period, which establishes a course of conduct totally at odds with the ethics of our profession," Col. Julia Grimes, then head of Alaska State Troopers, wrote in March 1, 2006, letter suspending Wooten for 10 days. After the union protested it, the suspension was reduced to five days.She warned that if he messed up again, he'd be fired."This discipline is meant to be a last chance to take corrective action," Grimes wrote. "You are hereby given notice that any further occurrences of these types of behaviors or incidents will not be tolerated and will result in your termination."[Todd Palin says in his affadavit that Col Grimes in the report notes that if anyone in the general public had engaged in similar activities, they would have been criminally charged, suggesting an unconscionable double standard.]
I suspect that most people would wonder why the quadruplicately divorced 35-year-old trooper, whom allegedly has threatened the life of Sarah's dad and promised to bring Sarah Palin down, is still on the job.
Todd Palin Affadavit
Todd Palin was never told about the Grimes' warning until after the Monegan termination [reassignment/resignation]. We know trooper Wooten was under a Domestic Violence Protective order in 2005 and early 2006, and various threats of violence were allegedly made by Wooten towards his ex-wife (Sarah's sister Molly), her son, her father (a death threat, if he got her a divorce lawyer) and Bristol Palin. Todd Palin asserts in his affadavit that Mike Wooten, following the 2006 divorce, ran up a number of large purchases just before declaring allegedly his second bankruptcy. [Many public servants, e.g., those in the military, are held up to a strict standard on running up bad debts.] Todd Palin notes that he photographed trooper Wooten in 2007, while drawing worker's comp under conditions listed as disabled and unable to work, actively driving a snowmachine and motorcycle. Todd Palin broadly mentions Wooten's threats against Sarah and their family after the 2006 election and early 2007. Trooper Wooten also staffed the governor's picnic in Wasilla where he allegedly confronted the governor and threatened to take her down. Todd also mentioned Wooten idling his car while on shift in front of his kids' schools for up to 45 minutes. [He does come across as somewhat obsessed about getting the system the evidence it needs to get rid of a bad apple, motivated out of concern for his extended family.]
In discussions relevant to Monegan, Todd Palin seemed frustrated that Monegan was quashing anything that was brought to his attention about Wooten, such as the fraudulent worker's comp claim. Todd Palin suggested some passive aggressive behavior on Monegan's part, e.g., the governor needed a King Air Turbo Prop, which was serviced out of DPS, to visit certain rural communities and for some reason she never seemed to be able to find one; Monegan was not filling certain trooper vacancies, especially chronic shortages in rural communities. Sarah Palin seemed disturbed that Monegan was not addressing disinformation spread by the PSEA (police union) regarding DPS budget cuts when in fact there had been an increase, that Monegan had clashed with Palin overall on budgets and publicly went over her head to the state and Congressional legislators. There was a snide comment from Monegan about an allegation Sarah was driving baby Trig around without an approved car seat; it seems the troublemaking complaint turned out to be based on Sarah holding Trig as a passenger during a farm tour riding on a big, slow-moving diesel truck on a private road.
There apparently have been threats by the PSEA to sue the Palins if they mentioned the death threat Mike Wooten made against Sarah's dad or to take Sarah and her own family down.
The Record and Timetable of Monegan from July 2008 Discharge as CPS
Monegan served for roughly 18 months in the Palin Administration. Monegan in a late August interview with the Anchorage Daily News admitted that he was never pressured by anyone, including Sarah or Todd Palin, to terminate Mike Wooten. In fact in the one email from the governor Monegan produced where Wooten was mentioned was dated a year before his actual discharge; the email included a discussion of a prospective law banning guns from people judged dangerous to public safety. Palin mentioned a double standard, that Mike Wooten was able to get away with threats to her and her family (they were reported but nothing ever came of it), and yet he was trusted with carrying around a gun. If Monegan perceived the email as a veiled threat to fire him unless he axed Wooten? Why would Palin wait a year to act on any such threat? It seems if there was a trigger to the firing, you would look to an event closer to the firing event, and if there was any such evidence, why didn't he present that vs. referring to a year-old email? Fortunately, we don't have to resort to tortuous interpretations of email to find a compelling reason for his termination.
Here is a chronology:
- 12/9/07: Monegan appears at an unauthorized press conference with Alaskan Democratic state senator Hollis French to discuss his department budget plan.
- 1/29/08: Monegan refuses to submit his budget requests like other members of the governor's cabinet so Palin's staff has to rework procedures around him
- 2/08: Monegan publicly endorses a project Palin vetoed.
- 6/26/08: Monegan, refusing to work through governor's office, directly contacted Alaska’s Congressional delegation for project funding.
By any objective analysis of events, Monegan was a loose cannon running his own agenda and overtly insubordinate. Just blackboxing the entire matter of Mike Wooten, I would have fired Monegan for cause on 12/9/07 and certainly would not have offered him another assignment. If anything, I think Sarah Palin should be criticized over why it took her another 7 months to fire this loser.
