Alaska inquiry finds Palin abused power

Gov. Sarah Palin abused the powers of her office by pressuring subordinates to try to get her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired, an investigation by the Alaska Legislature has concluded. The inquiry found, however, that she was within her right to dismiss her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who was the trooper's boss.

A 236-page report released by lawmakers in Alaska on Friday found that Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, had herself exerted pressure to get state Trooper Michael Wooten dismissed, as well as allowed her husband and subordinates to press for Wooten's firing, as a result of a messy divorce proceeding between the trooper and Palin's sister in 2005.

"Such impermissible and repeated contacts," the report states, "create conflicts of interests for subordinate employees who must choose to either please a superior or run the risk of facing that superior's displeasure and the possible consequences of that displeasure." The report concludes that the action was a violation of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.

It was not immediately clear what actions the legislature would take in light of the findings. Palin could be censured or the legislature could choose not to act at all.

Palin, who was elected governor in 2006, was tapped as Sen. John McCain's running mate in August, about a month after an inquiry was opened into her firing of Monegan.

In the report, the independent investigator, Stephen Branchflower, a former prosecutor in Anchorage, said that Palin wrongfully allowed her husband, Todd, to use state resources as part of the effort to have Wooten dismissed.

The report says she knowingly "permitted Todd Palin to use the governor's office and the resources of the governor's office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired."

Further, it says, she "knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda."

Three years ago, Wooten and the governor's sister, Molly McCann, were locked in a harsh divorce and child-custody battle that further turned the Palin family against him. The couple divorced in January 2006.

As a result of several complaints against Wooten, he was suspended from the state police force for five days. However, Branchflower's report found numerous instances in which Palin, her husband and her subordinates tried to press for harsher punishment, even though Monegan and others told them they had gone as far as the law and civil service rules would allow. Palin has denied that anyone told Monegan to dismiss Wooten, or that the commissioner's ouster had anything to do with the trooper.

But Monegan has said that he believes he lost his job because he would not bend to pressure to dismiss Wooten. On July 28, the Legislative Council, a bipartisan body of House and Senate members who can convene to make decisions when the Legislature is not in session, approved an independent investigation to probe whether the governor abused the powers of her office to pursue a personal vendetta.

Monegan said in an interview Friday night that he felt relieved.

"I feel that my beliefs and opinions that Wooten was a significant factor, if not the factor, in my termination have been validated," Monegan said.

He added, "I was resisting the governor from the very beginning on the Wooten matter to protect her from exactly what just happened to her here, being found to have acted inappropriately."

The report was released after Alaska lawmakers emerged from a private session in Anchorage where they spent more than of six hours discussing the ethics report into the politically charged scandal and what portions should be made public. The legislative council ended up voting unanimously to make part of the overall report public.

At a news conference Friday evening, a local McCain-Palin campaign spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton said that Branchflower's abuse-of-power finding was the result of an "overreach" by the investigator who went beyond "the intent of the original" inquiry.

Stapleton added that the governor "feels absolutely vindicated" because the report concluded that Palin was acting within her legal authority when she "reassigned" Monegan. On July 28, he was told by the governor's acting chief of staff that Palin wanted him to head the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, and that she wanted to take the public safety agency in a new direction.

"She did not exert unlawful power," Stapleton said, contending that the report did not find that Todd Palin acted inappropriately.

A pre-emptive report on the investigation by the McCain-Palin campaign that was released late Thursday said that beginning in October 2007, the governor and members of her administration repeatedly clashed with Monegan over budgetary issues and the direction of his agency.

After months of "repeatedly ignoring the governor's budget priorities, making public statements that directly challenged the governor's policy agenda and taking numerous unilateral actions in conflict with the governor in support of his own policy agenda, his replacement in July 2008 should have come as no surprise," that report said.

Branchflower based his finding of abuse of power on Alaska's Executive Branch Ethics Act, which was established to "discourage executive branch employees from acting upon personal interest in the performance of their public responsibilities and to avoid conflicts of interest in the performance of duty," the report says.

But the document concludes that Palin both acted upon her public interest in seeking the firing of Wooten and created a conflict of interest by forcing subordinate employees to choose between doing her bidding or not.

The report states that, while there is no doubt that Monegan's "failure to fire Trooper Wooten was a substantial factor in his own firing, the evidence suggest it was not the sole reason."

Palin has provided various reasons for terminating Monegan on July 11. Initially the governor said through a spokeswoman that Monegan's firing had nothing to do with a "personality conflict."

Palin has denied that anyone told Monegan to dismiss Wooten, or that the commissioner's ouster had anything to do with the trooper.

The report chastised Palin for declining to be interviewed. "An interview would have assisted everyone to better understand her motives and perhaps help explain why she was so apparently intent upon getting Trooper Wooten fired in spite of the fact she knew he had been disciplined following the administrative investigation."

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.) Palin has pledged to cooperate with a separate investigation by the state Personnel Board.

Even as Palin drew large crowds and media attention as she campaigned across the United States, the issue was brewing in Alaska, as the inquiry moved forward. But the campaign repeatedly shrugged off the allegations, stating that they were not serious and that she was not guilty of any wrongdoing.

Still, the allegations undermined the campaign's portrayal of Palin as a "maverick" who has taken on special interests in her state and fought for average residents.

The McCain campaign flew operatives into Alaska to wage a public relations campaign on Palin's behalf and to mount legal challenges to the investigation.

Six Republican lawmakers in Alaska had sued to block the investigation, saying it was unfair and partisan. A lower court rejected the lawsuit, and on Thursday, the Alaska Supreme Court batted down an emergency appeal, paving the way for the publication of the report.