Four Pinocchios for Palin

By Michael Dobbs



On the campaign trail.



"I'm very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that."

--Sarah Palin, phone interview with Alaska reporters, October 11, 2008.

Sarah Palin has insisted that a formal investigation into the "Troopergate" controversy in Alaska has exonerated her of "unlawful or unethical" activity. The Republican vice-presidential pick has told critics to read the report by an investigator appointed by the State Legislative Council to determine whether she had abused her power as Alaska governor to push for the firing of a state trooper formerly married to her sister. But the report's finding that Palin breached the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act is very clear.

The Facts

Within weeks of becoming governor of Alaska in November 2006, Sarah Palin began putting pressure on state officials to fire her former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, who was embroiled in a bitter child custody dispute with Palin's sister Molly. She made her wishes clear in e-mails to her newly installed public safety commissioner, Walter Monegan. Monegan resisted the pressure from Palin and her husband to fire Trooper Wooten, and was dismissed in July 2008 on the grounds of poor performance and not being "a team player."

On August 1, the Republican-dominated Alaska legislature hired an independent investigator, Stephen Branchflower, to look into the matter. The Branchflower report, published on Friday and available in full here, concluded that Palin had the legal right to fire Monegan. However, it also concluded that Palin had "abused her power by violating Section 39.52.119(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act," which is worded as follows:

The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.

The Branchflower report concludes that Palin "knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired." It adds that she and her husband Todd attempted "to get Trooper Wooten fired for personal family related reasons." Subordinates were placed in the situation where they had to choose whether to "please a superior or run the risk of facing that superior's displeasure," a clear conflict of interest.

According to Branchflower, the Palins declined to cooperate fully with his investigation. The governor's lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, has depicted the Branchflower report as a partisan attempt to "smear the governor by innuendo." Van Flein argues that Branchflower's findings are flawed because Palin received "no monetary benefit" from her actions.

The Pinocchio Test

Whether or not the Branchflower report -- which was launched by a bipartisan committee -- was a partisan smear job is debatable. What is not debatable is that the report clearly states that she violated the State Ethics Act. Palin has reasonable grounds for arguing that the report cleared her of "legal wrongdoing," since she did have the authority to fire Monegan. But it is the reverse of the truth to claim that she was cleared of "any hint of any kind of unethical activity."

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