on Trooper’gate progress
Pretty self-explanatory here. If you’ve been reading the Trooper’gate series here, you’ll be familiar with the points made in the statement.
Two new developments… First, there is an independent investigator working on the Personnel Board inquiry. Haven’t caught his name clearly yet, and unlike Sen French and Steve Branchwater, he’s not out there making public comments… as is appropriate for the process.
Second, there’s a couple of Alaskan Senators ready to launch a lawsuit against the McCain campaign for what they feel is interference in the Legislative Council’s witch hunt. Will try to grab this if and when it happens.
In other news on the same subject, Senate President and Palin nemesis, Lyda Green, is “absolutely disgusted, embarrassed, and ashamed” by the “intervention” into the biased legislative investigation, and what she describes as “disheartening” attack on Walt Monegan.
As I said in a previous Trooper’gate post… Palin went the extra mile to avoid bringing her internal battles with Monegan into the public eye. However, with his persistent charges that he was terminated for not firing Wooten, she was forced into a corner. He brung it on himself…
And where’s the outrage for their unabashed smearing of Palin? Funny… must have missed that.
Vietnam era Navy wife, indy/conservative, and an official California escapee now residing as a red speck in the sea of Oregon blue.
Monegan the crap weasel publicly came out for spending on something Palin had made clear she did not. In fact, he did so in a press conference! It wasn’t the first or last time either.
Last I checked deliberately undercutting your boss is a good way to find employment opportunities elsewhere.
Why doesn’t anyone interview Monegan’s replacement? If Monegan was replaced to fire Wooten, then wouldn’t his replacement have AT LEAST been asked about Wooten.
We know the answer — there’s nothing there. QED.
his position is/was an “at will” position. she could have fired him for wearing ugly shoes, but that would have been bad form. the point is that she could have.
It seems the spin is turning on Troopergate. Dan Fagan, notorious Palin hater, wrote a column recently in the Anchorage Daily News suggesting that the real scandal is the alleged attempt to interfere with Wooten’s Workers Comp case. What that has to do with Monegan’s firing is never stated. MataHarley, what do you know about this? Branchwater brought it up to the legislature that he believes the governor’s office did try to interfere and has an employee from the insurance company on the record as saying so.
Not new, SAZMD. And all covered.
The legislative investigation started with the Wooten bit, and was also planning on snooping into the med records accusations. This is why they wanted to subpoena Todd Palin to bring documentation, I guess.
The real investigation per Alaskan law already has that as a separate ethics complaint, filed by John Cyr/PSEA (The AST trooper union who got Wooten’s suspension reduced).
They are two separate ethics charges. The Legislative investigation was trying to lump everything as one big mud pie, and the press picked up on what it all started with… Monegan’s dismissal over (supposedly) Wooten.
Rather than go over it, I suggest you go thru the Trooper’gate archive. (what I link on every one of these posts to make it easy…)
The back ground on Monegan’s firing only is in the oldest post on Aug 29th
On the 1st of September, a month after the Legislative Council had hired Branchwater (and nothing had been done by alot of media accusations by French… no testimonies in all that time), Palin filed the formal ethics complaint against herself for the Monegan firing charges. This got the ball rolling in the Personnel Board process, via Alaska’s Ethics law.
A couple of days later, John Cyr and the PSEA filed formal charges against Frank Bailey and some others (and/or including Palins) that the administration had violated Wooten’s privacy on his workman’s comp records. There is some background info in the previous two, but this is the first formal charges wtih more info…
see the Sept 4th post new charges/different battlefield post to pick up from there.
The medical relates to a complaint that Wooten was supposed to be out collecting workman’s comp, and Todd Palin saw him out, tooling around in a snowmobile, violating his conditions for receiving the benefits.
Get’s more convoluted than that… but that’s the gist until you start reading the posts and the links to catch up with that part of the story.
But… bottom line… both charges (Monegan firing and medical records violation) have already been in the Personnel Board for inquiry for over three weeks. So it’s not new….
Thank you for the reply, it was much more extensive than I was expecting. Here is the link to Fagan’s opinion piece. I was aware of the whole issue with Wooten’s file. This latest salvo seems to extend the issue by alleging that the Workmans Comp case itself was tampered with. In reality, I don’t see how this would ever be directly tied to Palin, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try.
On a side note, seeing Palin elected VP would be great if only for the sight of Andrew Halcro’s head exploding as she gets sworn in. I really can’t stand that guy.