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About that Sarah Palin investigation thing…

Lets crush the lies now.

By: Paul Seale (Diary)  |  August 30th, 2008 at 07:05 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I am sure some of us heard from various media outlets yesterday that Sarah Palin was under investigation by the Alaska state legislature, but few explained the why.

Just a quote note that Palin is a relative unknown, inexperienced and under investigation. Real fair and in-depth reporting, eh?

Here is the long and short of what is being talked about.

Governor Palin fired this July Public Safety Commissioner Monegan because of incompetence. Monegan, grabbing a straws, lied and decided to scream to the media that Palin abused her power. The Democrat led state legislature decided to then poke its head into situation.

Please note that the Public Safety Commissioner is a cabinet appointment in which Palin alone has the authority to hire and fire.

In any case, the accusation by Monegan centers on a lie in which he claims Sarah Palin’s husband Todd Pressured him to fire Wooten (estranged brother in law). In fact Monegan claims that Todd Palin was ordered by head of the Governor’s security detail, Special Agent Bob Cockrell to talk to Monegan about Wooten due to the threats made against the Alaskan First Family.

Of course the catch is, Cockrell denies any such order.

In fact, Cockrell is quoted as wanting to “set the record straight.”

“When made aware of the security concerns regarding a state trooper, I instructed the First Gentleman to contact the commissioner of Public Safety. It is standard protocol to ask every governor about any threats they perceive or have realized. “I will not hesitate to set the record straight in answering these false allegations by former Commissioner Monegan.”

At this point you might be asking exactly what Wooten did which caused all of the problems which are being discussed? Wooten tasered his step son, threatened to kill Palin’s father, and drank on the job among other things.

The important thing to note about all these situations is that the complaint regarding the threatening Palin’s father started in 2005 – not 2008.

There is a lot more to the story which I admittedly left out which can be read (including complete time line and news sources) over at Flopping aces. I would encourage anyone who has any questions to read so they can be educated on the subject. Odds are you wont get the complete story from most media outlets who are more concerned about preserving the narrative of this year’s election as a pose to providing unbiased and helpful information to voters.

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COMMENTS

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  • Achance

    I probably know more about it than anybody who wasn’t a party to it all. In fact, Wooten’s original discipline took place when I was still director of labor relations for Alaska, though it never got to my level before I retired. The Department of Public Safety kept it real close to the vest until after I left and I only knew who was really involved as the result of a very off the record conversation in a very seedy bar.

    Most anything you read in Alaska media is spin or comes from very self interested sources. I’ll try to get a precis written up in the next day or so and get it posted.

    Let me just say this much; as to the Com. Monegan part, if she did everything her worst enemies say she did, she still didn’t violate any laws or rules. That said, she’s got some people who work for her who have some ‘splainin’ to do.

  • SteveLA

    Achance

    I’ve never been to your fair state, but I have to say what the heck is the deal with a guy that batters his wife still carrying a gun?

    In the lower 48, you hit your wife and are a cop you are gone gone gone.

    The allegations in the divorce proceedings from Wooten should have set of some really big warnings, let alone the drinking and driving stuff.

    Help me out here and explain how stuff like this can go down, Palin or no Palin connection.

  • Rod_Patrick

    but it is the Alaskan Republican Establishment who are discounting John McCaine’s VP choice.

    That’s unacceptable.

  • c17wife

    has taken on some of the corrupt ones within that establishment and they don’t like that one bit.

  • Rod_Patrick

    The investigation was really initiated by Green, a woman and a Republican leader. She was first to oppose McCain’s decision using the arguments of the Democrats.

    They’re all against Palin because Palin has shakened up the “STATUS QUO” that Green and company have loved and enjoyed so much in the past. A group of republicans are really the reason for revising Ted Stevens’ senatorial carrier.

    Will someone write Green that the new Republican Party’s direction is all about REFORM?

  • Rod_Patrick

    Sorry for typos.

  • Achance

    By the time any of it came to anyone’s attention, it was already old, a year or more, came mostly from family members, and stemmed from a nasty divorce. All that conspired to make a tough investigation.

    The fact that it was a civilian complaint invokes the arcane processes of the Troopers’ Administrative Investigation provisions, a very formal process with the union involved at every step.

    Many of the allegations could not be sustained but three, I think, were, which led to a ten day suspension without pay. By the standards of the service, that much time off without pay is pretty severe discipline and it was accompanied by a formal written warning that any further misconduct would cost him his job. Actually, those that were sustained were sustained by his admission, not by any evidence that could be gathered. I think the discipline was too light and I would probably have wanted thirty days, he already had a record of discipline, which is the State’s typical discipline for misconduct just short of immediate dismissal. I DO NOT believe I could have sustained a dismissal before an arbitrator on the old civilian complaints where almost all witnesses had a personal involvement and the discipline was largely based on the grievant’s admissions.

    That said, I was still director of labor relations and nobody told me about it, at least not with enough specificity that I keyed on it or remember being told. My level was the last before it would go to an arbitrator and if it got to my level at all before I retired, it came over as a routine matter. I only learned about who the players were after I retired and it was resolved and then only in a very off the record conversation in a very seedy bar.

    I would not have resolved it down to a five day suspension I don’t think, but had we taken it to arbitration, an arbitrator might have reduced the suspension. The Department of Public Safety established a sorry record of very, very mild discipline during the Knowles Administration and all during my tenure we had a very difficult time breaking the pattern. We’d go to arbitration on a suspension and the union would trot out similar or worse conduct that got a lighter penalty, so the arbitrator would reduce the penalty.

    However, it is NOT coincidence that they waited until after I retired to bring it over to the Department of Administration and get it resolved; only Admin, specifically my successor or the Commissioner of Administration, has that authority. At minimum, I would have asked some very tough questions about why it should have been resolved and why the original penalty was so light. If for no other reason but by that time there was a reasonable likelihood that she was going to be Governor and you could see her asking some tough questions. It would have been my calculus that I would rather tell the Governor that an arbitrator reduced it than tell her that I had.

    What I think happened is that the DPS management bet wrong; they were thinking Knowles would win and they wanted to curry favor with the union, so they made them a deal and sold it to either my successor, a relative neophyte, or to the Commissioner of Administration, a thoroughly disgusting human being and the principal reason I retired when I did; some people you just don’t work for. I like how the Democrats here are being righteous about how he should have been fired; he’d have never been fired in a Democrat administration and probably wouldn’t have been disciplined at all unless the union said it was OK, something they almost never do if there is any time off without pay.

    To your fundamental question, there was never a DV writ, and if there had been it would have cost him his badge and gun and probably his job if it rose to assault. Alaska has a 20 day writ that is issued pro forma on the naked assertion of violence or even fear, so we rarely did anything to a LEO that got one of those unless s/he violated the writ. Those writs are so routinely abused, almost every complaint for divorce is accompanied by one, that they don’t have any credibility unless there is an assault charge, which there never was in this case.