In the latest sign that Sarah Palin's promised cooperation with the Trooper-Gate investigation is failing to materialize, her lawyer is now demanding that the entire case be taken out of the hands of the independent prosecutor hired by Alaska lawmakers, and given over to a state personnel board -- whose three members were appointed by the governor herself.
In an unusual "ethics disclosure" filed last night, along with related documents, to the state Attorney General, Palin's lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, asked the personnel board to look into the firing of Walt Monegan, the former public safety commissioner at the center of the case. Van Flein also asked the legislature to drop its own investigation, contending that only the personnel board has jurisdiction over ethics. And he suggested that if the legislature didn't agree to hand the matter over to the personnel board, Palin would not be made available for a deposition.
Sen. Hollis French, the Anchorage Democrat in charge of the legislature's investigation, immediately told the Anchorage Daily News that the probe would go ahead as planned. French has said before that he is willing to issue subpoenas if necessary.
"We're going to proceed. If they want to proceed, that's perfectly within their right but it doesn't diminish our right to do so," he said.
The case concerns allegations that Palin improperly pressured Monegan to fire a state trooper who was embroiled in a family dispute with the Palin family, then fired Monegan when he refused to axe Wooten.
So Sarah Palin is refusing to cooperate in the investigation of her conduct in the firing of a state public safety official for refusing to fire an Alaskan state police officer involved in a messy divorce with Palin's sister. It appears that Palin is quickly learning the GOP's method in cooperating with ethics investigations--stall, delay, refuse to cooperate, and then demand that the investigation should be dropped. Gee, where have we seen this type of Republican cooperation take place before? How about the Valerie Plame scandal, the U.S. Attorney scandal, the Bush intelligence failures, Abu Ghraib Prison Torture, Cheney's Energy Taskforce, Bush domestic spying agenda, and the list goes on.
The problem for Sarah Palin here is that the longer Palin stalls in cooperating with this investigation, the longer this investigation gets dragged out to Election Day. Palin has demanded that this investigation should be dropped. The Alaskan state legislature has refused to drop this investigation, and are now threatening to subpoena Palin in order to answer questions regarding the firings. The last thing Palin, and the McCain campaign, would want is to have subpoenas issued against Palin near the end of October. This just brings up more scandals and Republican corruption to the American voters just before they are to step into the voting booths.
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