The Branchflower Report in .pdf format

"The evidence supports the conclusion that Governor Palin, at the least, engaged in 'official action' by her inaction if not her active participation or assistance to her husband in attempting to get Trooper Wooten fired [and there is evidence of her active participation]," he concluded.

"[Palin] knowingly ... permitted [husband] Todd Palin to use the Governor's office and the resources of the Governor's office ... in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired."

From ABC News report

if they're lucky, the whole thing will get buried in the market meltdown

McCain dossier aims to limit damage to Palin from Troopergate report

Guardian Online - John McCain's team Friday delivered a pre-emptive strike against the Troopergate investigation into Sarah Palin's alleged abuse of power in Alaska that could prove to be a costly distraction from his campaign.

With only weeks left until the election and trailing badly, McCain's team sought to minimise potential damage from the investigation due to be published last night by issuing a report of its own. The row is over an allegation that Palin, as governor of Alaska, sacked the head of the Alaskan police force, Walt Monegan, because he refused to dismiss her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, Mike Wooten.

McCain's dossier, setting out Palin's version of events, claims the sacking was over disagreements about policy and budget, not Wooten. It portrays the sacking as "a straightforward personnel decision" that has become "muddied with innuendo, rumour and partisan politics".

The McCain dossier says Wooten is a separate issue and goes on to say that the Palin family has good reason to be concerned about him. It accuses Wooten, who was involved in a messy divorce from Palin's younger sister, of having "a long history of unstable and erratic behaviour".

The row has the potential to swamp media coverage of the campaign over the weekend, eating into valuable time for McCain as he tries to turn round his campaign. It again raises questions about his judgment in choosing a running-mate who had an investigation hanging over her.

The McCain team's dossier comes after the failure of its repeated attempts to have publication of the official investigation delayed until after the election on November 4.

more at link

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}

Todd Palin spends 50% of his time working out of the governor's office. He uses her conference table and has access to the office any time she is away on business. He has the ability to call any employee and ask for information. He has access to three sets of files on his former brother-in-law, Michael Wooten, including the results of a private investigator's work that "they" hired - the they is presumed to be Todd Palin and his wife.

He gets Sarah to call the Troopers office, Monegan and others, to express her dissatisfaction with the "slap on the wrist" that Wooten received. He gets Sarah's chief of staff to have a private conversation with Monegan on the topic.

Todd Palin is constantly complaining that Mike Wooten has threatened the Palin family. But shortly after taking office, Sarah Palin decides to reduce her security detail from six to three guards, and use no security when visiting Juneau. The investigator finds the whole Wooten threat to be a fabrication, pointing out that if it were true, Wooten would be an even greater threat to the family if he were fired.

The interesting climax of this whole case occurs when Monegan or someone in the Public Safety area sends a photograph of a representative Trooper to Palin's office. The photograph is to be used for promotional material for the state Troopers, and the trooper deemed as representative of all the troopers is Michael Wooten. The governor expresses her surprise and displeasure and refuses to sign the photograph or attend the ceremony honoring the Troopers. Several days later Monegan is informed the governor wants a "change of leadership" in Public Security. Monegan notes that the use of Wooten in the photograph was entirely coincidental and he himself had no idea what the man looked like.

The investigator determines the governor is in her rights to fire Monegan, though Monegan's refusal to fire Wooten appears to be a contributing factor. However, the governor has violated the legislatively-mandated ethics standards by abusing her power in pursuing a dismissal of an employee simply for personal purposes.

No mention is made of the governor giving Todd Palin free run of her office, but the investigator did look at the work of previous First Ladies for Alaska and found nothing comparable in terms of power being shared with a spouse.

Palin comes off as someone completely unconcerned with the ethics of her position and responsibilities, and insensitive to the line that should be drawn between personal business and state business. Either she is a tool of her husband, or she is co-equal in running the government, allowing him to conduct state business in her name (it's not even clear what Todd Palin's job and livelihood might be, since he spends half his time in the governor's office).

Sarah Palin's role, however, is in the shadows. The state attorney general has refused to release pertinent emails from her about this case, so conceivably she could have been much more active in trying to get Wooten fired.

Between her and Todd Palin, there is a good deal of stupidity in how obvious they were in trying to fire Wooten, and how ridiculous some of their arguments appeared to others. Moreover, neither of them were willing to accept that due process and punishment had been meted out to Wooten, which is what Public Safety kept telling them. Instead, they pushed on and on to drag up more evidence against him over the months, none of which was pertinent to the original case which had already been closed. Their behavior was obviously in pursuit of a vendetta against Wooten.

Trooper in Palin probe tells his side

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

Does Palin pull the eject lever here?

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/6052272.html

By STEPHEN BRAUN, TOM HAMBURGER AND CHUCK NEUBAUER
Los Angeles Times
Oct. 10, 2008, 9:26PM

WASHINGTON — Big business was granted wide access to Sarah Palin's office during her first 20 months as Alaska governor, but she rarely met with labor, environmental or other groups pressing alternative views, her official calendar shows.

On at least three dozen occasions, the Republican vice presidential nominee spoke with executives and lobbyists working for a wide array of energy, mining and tourism enterprises with major investments in Alaska. Among those who visited Palin's Juneau office multiple times were the chief executives of ExxonMobil and Conoco Phillips, as well as several dozen other top oil and gas company officials.

"We have not had problems with access to Gov. Palin or her key department people," said Ashley Reed, a lobbyist who was on a team of natural gas officials who met with Palin in April 2007. Reed was working with Enstar, a gas company seeking to win approval for a natural gas "bullet" pipeline.

* * * * * * *

Still, Palin has held few meetings with groups that presented alternative views.

Her calendar showed that Palin met four times in those 20 months with labor union officials from the Teamsters, who endorsed her 2006 gubernatorial bid, and the AFL-CIO. She also held two sessions with members of a conservation group seeking state support in addressing climate change -- an issue Palin does not see eye-to-eye on with environmentalists.

"I don't think we've had the time we need to press the importance of our issues," said Kate Troll, executive director of the Alaska Conservation Alliance. Ever since a February 2007 meeting with the governor, said Peter Van Tuyn, an Alaska environmental lawyer, the activists have not been granted a follow-up "despite multiple requests."

`Two, maybe three'

In an August interview with National Public Radio before being named John McCain's running-mate, Palin declared that, "I've had about two lobbyists, two, maybe three lobbyists, who have snuck in (into her statehouse office) with a group of people. So I can't say they've never been in, but we don't invite lobbyists in."

According to her calendar, however, Palin has met with more than a dozen registered lobbyists since taking office in December 2006.

I don't care about Sarah meeting with lobbiests. But I do care, and Americans should care, about her relationship with them and whether she's being truthful and candid about it.

You can trust nothing that she says.

CNN insisted at first that she broke no laws, even though a cursory reading of the report's conclusions shows she violated the standard of conduct law, which has remedies such as firing and impeachment.

Drudge had nothing yesterday on the story, and today a little blurb about how the report "stings" Palin.

Where there is reporting about the breaking of the law, the focus seems to be on her firing of Walt Monegan, which is a side issue here. There is not much detail about how she and Todd spent months hounding various state officials to fire Michael Wooten even though there was no justification. There is no reporting on the terrible conflict of interest she was imposing on state employees by this pressure (which, Branchflower noted, was the very reason the legislature passed the code of conduct law in the first place). There is no reporting on the out-of-control Todd Palin and how he was allowed to usurp the governor's position and power. There is a much deeper and more interesting story here, and it's not over because the legislature has to decide what to do about her. I wouldn't take impeachment off the table because there seems to be enough Republicans who hate her. But censure seems more likely.

This is as much as story about Todd Palin as it is about Sarah Palin. But that is not being reported.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1849399,00.html

But the Branchflower report still makes for good reading, if only because it convincingly answers a question nobody had even thought to ask: Is the Palin administration shockingly amateurish? Yes, it is. Disturbingly so.

The 263 pages of the report show a co-ordinated application of pressure on Monegan so transparent and ham-handed that it was almost certain to end in public embarrassment for the governor. The only surprise is that Troopergate is national news, not just a sorry piece of political gristle to be chewed on by Alaska politicos over steaks at Anchorage's Club Paris.

A harsh verdict? Consider the report's findings. Not only did people at almost every level of the Palin administration engage in repeated inappropriate contact with Walt Monegan and other high-ranking officials at the Department of Public Safety, but Monegan and his peers constantly warned these Palin disciples that the contact was inappropriate and probably unlawful. Still, the emails and calls continued — in at least one instance on recorded state trooper phone lines.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/palin_troopergate

Stephen Branchflower, a retired prosecutor hired to conduct the investigation, said Monegan's firing was lawful. But the pressure Palin and her husband put on him, he said, was not.

Under Alaska law, it is up to the state's Personnel Board, not the Legislature, to decide whether Palin violated the ethics laws. If so, it must refer the matter to the Senate president for disciplinary action. Violations also carry a possible fine of up to $5,000.

By the time that investigation is over, however, the election will be over. If Palin is the vice president-elect, the results will hardly matter. If she loses, she'll have to address the board's findings at home. The national media will be long gone.

* * * * * *

Branchflower said Palin violated a statute of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Lawmakers don't have the authority to sanction her for such a violation and they gave no indication they would take any action against her.

NYT Article

Campaigning in Altoona on Saturday, Ms. Palin provided her own assessment of Mr. Branchflower’s findings, insisting that the investigation found “no unlawful or unethical activity on my part” and added that “there was no abuse of authority at all in trying to get Officer Wooten fired.”

“In fact, remember, Officer Wooten is still an Alaska state trooper, which is up to the commissioner and the personnel top brass in the Department of Public Safety,” she said. “If they think that Trooper Wooten is worthy of that, that’s their decision.”

But Mr. Branchflower, in his report, stated that Ms. Palin violated the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act by applying pressure to get Trooper Wooten dismissed, as well as allowing her husband and subordinates to press for his firing. Three years ago, the trooper had been ensnarled in a bitter divorce and child custody battle with Ms. Palin’s sister, Molly McCann, that resulted in ill will toward him from the Palin family.

Mr. Branchflower wrote that Ms. Palin “knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda.”

LA Times story

The 'first gentleman' also read official correspondence and went to closed Cabinet meetings, records and an investigation indicate.

By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 12, 2008

Barely two weeks after Sarah Palin had been sworn in as Alaska's governor, in December 2006, then-Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan's executive secretary got a confusing phone call from Palin's office: The first gentleman would like to schedule a meeting with her boss.

"I was not familiar with the term 'first gentleman,' or didn't hear her correctly, so I kept asking her, 'Who?' " the secretary, Cassandra Byrne, testified recently. "And she eventually said, 'Todd Palin.' "

The appointment was fixed, and Monegan arrived in the governor's office to find himself alone with the brawny, popular fisherman and snowmobile champion, who was sitting at a 12-foot-long conference table, surrounded by stacks of documents. One of the documents had the logo and letterhead of Monegan's own Department of Public Safety.

The subject, it turned out, was Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten, who had been involved in a messy divorce with the governor's sister. The Palins, Todd made clear, wanted Wooten fired for a long record of behavior they saw as inappropriate for a police officer.

"He kept using the term 'we.' 'We went to go talk to, we, we.' And so I assumed it was he and Sarah, of course," Monegan testified.

The meeting "made me a little uncomfortable," he said. "We're having it in the governor's office, and he's not the governor. I think he was trying to use state trappings to handle a personal issue."