Palin seeks truth from state agency with jurisdiction, refuses to cooperate with political hatchet job, in Tasergate non-scandal

A blogospheric friend sent me this link to an op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News, asking me for my thoughts on what a columnist there was describing as Gov. Palin "stonewalling" the state legislature's investigation into "Tasergate," a non-scandal I blogged about on the evening of August 29th, immediately after Sen. McCain's Veep choice was revealed. 

(I won't call it "Troopergate." For one thing, that's confusing, because there have been previous controversies called that, including one involving disgraced N.Y. ex-governor Eliot Spitzer. "Tasergate," however, properly reminds everyone that those who support the trooper in question, Mike Wooten, are necessarily lining up in favor of child abuse, commission of crimes with deadly weapons, cops drinking in their patrol cars, and cops making death threats. "Taser-Moose-Beer-Death-Threat-gate" would be better still, but it's just too long.)

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Before I respond, let's recap certain things that tend to get lost in the telling — at least as told by Palin opponents, by some odd coincidence — but that are indisputable:

The first complaints by the Palin family about trooper Mike Wooten were made, and an official investigation was begun, in April 2005 — at which time Gov. Palin was still a private citizen, having already resigned from the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, and long before she became a candidate for the 2006 gubernatorial race.

As a result of that investigation, Wooten was given only a slap on the hand as punishment — a ten-day suspension that was reduced to five days after Wooten's union protested. But the factual findings by Col. Julia Grimes, the then-Director of the Alaska State Troopers Division of the Alaska Department of Public Safety, were set out in a letter to Wooten dated March 1, 2006, which conclusively established certain factual findings that Wooten did not further challenge or appeal:

• As a Taser instructor, Wooten had been "well trained in the application and risks associated with use of the weapon on a child." Nevertheless, as Wooten admitted during the investigation, he had used his Department-issued Taser on his own 10-year-old stepson Payton, an act that Col. Grimes said "demonstrated extremely poor judgment and a conscious choice to violate the department's standards of conduct."

• As he eventually admitted (after first denying it), with full knowledge that his wife's hunting license was not transferable to himself, he illegally shot and killed a moose. "The fact that you are currently assigned as a wildlife crimes investigator," wrote Col. Grimes (italics hers), "exponentially exacerbates this violation as it is absolutely contrary to your current assignment." (So Wooten admitted to using a deadly weapon to commit a crime of the exact sort he was supposed to be preventing. I guess it's a good thing he wasn't then on assignment to any murder investigations, huh?)

• Independent witnesses confirmed to Col. Grimes that in June or July of 2004, Wooten had pulled his police cruiser into their driveway, helped himself to a beer from the refrigerator in their garage, drank it, and then got and opened another beer before driving away, beer still in hand. This, wrote Col. Grimes, "not only exposed the Department to [criminal and civil] liability, but further demonstrate[d Wooten's] lack of judgment and a profound disrespect for the responsibilities of a law enforcement officer," putting "the integrity of every other State Trooper" into question.

• Col. Grimes noted that Wooten's file already contained seven other documented instances of infractions of Department policies, ranging from "negligent damage to a state vehicle" to multiple dangerous violations of traffic laws to habitual tardiness and being absent without leave. "Your unacceptable conduct appears to have continued and even escalated," she wrote. This amounted to 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." Moreover, "[i]t is nearly certain," she wrote (boldface mine), "that a civilian investigated under similar circumstances would have received criminal sanctions."

According to a news report by Anchorage Daily News reporter Lisa Demer on July 27, 2008, the investigation also confirmed that in February 2005, Wooten had said in a telephone conversation with Sarah Palin's sister, Molly McCann — with Sarah Palin and her son Track also listening on a speakerphone — that if their father, Chuck Heath, helped Molly get a divorce lawyer, "he would eat a f**king lead bullet. I will shoot him." Demer's report goes on to say:

Wooten told troopers he never said anything like that about his father-in-law.

The investigation concluded he did. It wasn't a crime, because he didn't threaten Heath directly. But it did violate trooper policy, the investigation found.

Someone argued with me earlier that Trooper Wooten and Gov. Palin are both entitled to the "benefit of the doubt." That's incorrect. The allegations against Gov. Palin now are unproved claims made by Wooten (who we may reasonably presume is still angry at the Palin family), Walt Monegan (who lost his job as Alaska's Public Safety Commissioner), and Andrew Halcro (the rental car businessman who finished a distant third-place in 2006 behind Gov. Palin and former governor Tony Knowles, and who first raised on his blog, before Monegan had ever publicly suggested it, the possibility of a connection between Wooten and the Monegan firing). The facts about Wooten's misconduct as detailed in Col. Grimes' letter, by contrast, are beyond any dispute — and all that's left to wonder about is why in the hell this miscreant wasn't charged for the series of crimes to which he admitted, and why he is still carrying a badge and a gun!

But amazingly, Wooten still has his job. And if Gov. Palin somehow has conspired to fire him, she's done a damned poor job of it. Moreover, she's been amazingly lax as a vengeful conspirator, given that she waited until she was a year and a half into her term before making her decision to move Monegan to a different state agency.

[Update (Fri Sep 5 @ 6:00pm): A commenter reminded me to note that one of the emails from Gov. Palin to Monegan which supposedly "pressured" Monegan to fire Wooten was sent on February 7, 2007, not long after she'd spoken to Monegan of Wooten, for purposes of briefing her security detail, as being one person who might have grudges against her and who might intend her violence. Per a WaPo news report yesterday, the purpose of that email was to give Monegan permission to speak to the Alaska Legislature about a pending bill that would "require 99-year sentences for police officers found guilty of murder" — certainly relevant given that Wooten had made a death threat against Gov. Palin's father. The second email, sent on July 17, 2007, came "after the local newspaper publicized a legislative proposal that would keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill." According to that email, Gov. Palin's "first thought about the bill ... 'went to my ex-brother-in-law, the trooper, who threatened to kill my dad yet was not even reprimanded by his bosses and still to this day carries a gun, of course.'" Gov. Palin's opponents would now convert that into an executive command from Palin that Monegan fire Wooten, with a further threat that she would fire Monegan if he didn't. — Beldar]

But did she ever actually threaten, or tell others to threaten, Monegan with firing if he didn't fire Wooten? She says she did not. And even Walt Monegan has repeatedly admitted that she did not!

"For the record, no one ever said fire Wooten. Not the governor. Not Todd. Not any of the other staff," Monegan said Friday from Portland. "What they said directly was more along the lines of 'This isn't a person that we would want to be representing our state troopers.'"

(Boldface mine.) Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, even if you're terribly, terribly fond of poor, poor Trooper Wooten and want some child-abusing drinking-while-driving death-threateners just like him for your own home-state troopers, this admission from Monegan should be the end of the story!

So far there is no evidence whatsoever, nor even a credible allegation, that anyone ever — even without Gov. Palin's knowledge, much less her approval — transmitted an implied order to fire Trooper Wooten, much less that she made even an implied threat to fire Monegan if he didn't. Prodded along by Andrew Halcro — Gov. Palin's defeated, bitter, spiteful, and trouble-making political rival — Monegan merely leaped to that pyramid of speculative conclusions after he'd already refused Gov. Palin's offer of a transfer to another government job.

And no one disputes, or can dispute, that under Alaska law, Gov. Palin was entitled to fire Monegan with or without cause, even with no more reason than that she just didn't like him or have confidence in his abilities. He was a purely political appointee who served, quite literally, at her whim.

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So back to the question of the Alaska Legislature's committee investigation: On the same day the Alaska Legislature voted to authorize the investigation, Gov. Palin announced that she would cooperate without the necessity of a subpoena, and offered herself up for questioning as soon as that very same afternoon. Since then, however, Palin's foes in Alaska have turned this into a political witch hunt.

Democratic state senator Hollis French, who's managing the investigation, is already jumping to conclusions, muttering about "impeachment" to the press, and yet simultaneously he's short-circuited any kind of basic due process by refusing to share with Gov. Palin or her counsel the historical evidence (e.g., emails) that the Legislature's investigator is collecting to use against her! At least one Alaska legislator has already called for French to step down, citing his obvious bias. French has already boasted to ABC News of his desire to "release his final report by Oct. 31, four days before the November election," as an "October surprise" that's "likely to be damaging to the Governor's administration." Other legislators have since forced the deadline for the initial report to be moved up to October 10, but the investigator hired by committee is still pressing for legislative subpoenas to seven witnesses (not including Gov. Palin).

Gov. Palin has benefited from additional and better legal advice, and I suspect that she's now come to recognize that a show trial with the Legislature sitting as kangaroo court is not the appropriate place for an ethics violation to be investigated or resolved. She took the unusual step of filing a formal ethics complaint against herself! In her written statement explaining the filing, she explains that she has

initiated a proceeding before the state personnel board because that is the agency charged by law with addressing complaints about hiring and firing matters, and ethical issues in general, regarding the Governor. It is important to note that no one has actually filed a complaint against me, including Mr. Monegan, who would have had an obligation to notify the Personnel Board if he believed there had been misconduct in his replacement. Nevertheless, the people of Alaska — and of the nation — deserve to have a decision from the proper tribunal putting their minds at ease that suggestions of misconduct that have circulated on the Internet and in some media outlets are not true....

The private lawyer representing at least one supposedly key witness, suspended Palin aid Frank Bailey, has said that Bailey will cooperate with whoever ends up having jurisdiction over the investigation, but that he doesn't want his client to become a "political football." In that same September 4 news report, Gov. Palin's lawyer is quoted as saying that he's trying to get the jurisdictional question sorted out "this week" so that this doesn't end up delaying things past the November national election. And in case you wonder who's trying to advance the ball and who's trying to hide the ball, consider this paragraph from that same report (boldface mine):

Nicki Neal, director of the state Division of Personnel and Labor Relations, said Wednesday that the board will meet soon in executive session — closed to the public — to begin its work. Palin had asked for the ethics case to be open. Neal said she'll check into how that relates to the board meetings.

The McCain-Palin campaign has also put out a detailed four-page statement with their official position on this so-called "scandal."

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So is Gov. Palin, as the Anchorage op-ed writer claimed, "stone-walling"? Only if the stone wall is supposed to be part of an executioner's platform, on which her opponents expect her to stretch her neck meekly for a political hatchet job.

As Gov. Palin has insisted since Halcro's ridiculous charges about Monegan first surfaced, she has nothing to hide. But she does have an interest in having her side of the story thoroughly aired, and in having a chance to confront and respond fairly to her accusers. When and if the state personnel board finds some sort of misconduct on her part, then the state legislature can consider whether they have any grounds for censure or impeachment.