Remember Troopergate? The news hasn’t covered it much, but the state ethics panel ruled that she did abuse her power, but that she did have pretty much unchecked to hire and fire, thus the only law broken was an ethics law.
Sarah Palin’s take on the ruling? She says it cleared her of all wrongdoing.
The report affirmed that, as governor, she had the constitutional right to hire and fire at will, and therefore her termination of Monegan was lawful.
However, the report found that Palin, her husband Todd, and her subordinates used pressure and intimidation to try to force the firing of Michael Wooten, beginning before her swearing-in ceremony took place, and therefore broke the law.
The investigation said she violated Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act, which states, “… 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.”
I’d sorta like a VP who doesn’t have the legislature conclude that she violated ethics law, and then turn around and declare, “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.” She also called the investigation, conducted by the majority-Republican legislature, “a partisan circus.”
Actually the head of the investigation was a Democrat who weeks ago talked opening about preparing an “October surprise” for the election. I don’t know all the details of this but I hear that the state trooper really should have been fired much earlier for official misconduct. But it also appears that Palin ran close enough to the line that she may very well have gone over. There is more to this story than I think we’ll ever get.