YET MORE TROOPERGATE….While we’re waiting for the Alaska legislature’s official report on Troopergate, the New York Times offers the results of its own investigation:
In all, the [public safety] commissioner and his aides were contacted about Trooper Wooten three dozen times over 19 months by the governor, her husband and seven administration officials, interviews and documents show.
…. On Jan. 4, 2007, a month into the Palin administration and his tenure as public safety commissioner, Mr. Monegan went to the governor’s Anchorage office to talk with Todd Palin, who had requested the meeting. Mr. Palin was seated at a conference table with three stacks of personnel files. That, Mr. Monegan recalled, was the first time he heard the name Mike Wooten.
“He conveyed to me,” Mr. Monegan said, “that he and Sarah did not think the investigation into Wooten had been done well enough and that they were not happy with the punishment. Todd was clearly frustrated.”
….Several evenings later, Mr. Monegan’s cellphone rang. “Walt, it’s Sarah,” the governor said before echoing much of what her husband had said. Trooper Wooten, he recalls being told, was “not the kind of person we should want as a trooper.” He told the governor, too, that there was no new evidence to pursue.
Soon after that, Mr. Palin and several aides began pressing the public safety agency to investigate another matter: whether Trooper Wooten was fraudulently collecting workers’ compensation for a back injury he said he had suffered while helping carry a body bag.
Mr. Palin’s evidence: He told Ms. Peterson, the commissioner’s assistant, that he had seen the trooper riding a snowmobile while on medical leave and that he had photographs to prove it.
The Palin family really had the bug, didn’t they? Definitely not people you want to get on the wrong side of.
