New Emails Suggest Holes in Palin’s Trooper-Gate StoryDon’t look now, but on the night of the biggest speech of her life, Sarah Palin’s story on Trooper-Gate may be in the process of falling apart.
The Washington Post has obtained emails sent by Palin to then-Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, which show Palin complaining about the fact that trooper Jim Wooten — who was embroiled in a family dispute with the Palins — was still employed. The emails don’t explicitly show Palin pressuring Monegan to fire Wooten — but they do appear to undercut Palin’s claim said that she only ever discussed Wooten with Monegan in the context of security concerns for her family.
Here’s the Post’s description of the key emails:
“This trooper is still out on the street, in fact he’s been promoted,” said the Feb. 7, 2007, e-mail sent from Palin’s personal Yahoo account and written to give Monegan permission to speak on a violent-crime bill before the state legislature.“It was a joke, the whole year long ‘investigation’ of him,” the e-mail said. “This is the same trooper who’s out there today telling people the new administration is going to destroy the trooper organization, and that he’d ‘never work for that b****’, Palin’.)
This isn’t the first time that events have appeared to contradict Palin’s story about her role in Trooper-Gate. Palin at first claimed that her administration did not put pressure on Monegan to fire Wooten. But after a phone recording surfaced in mid-August of Palin aide Frank Bailey raising the issue of Wooten’s employment with a trooper official, she was forced to acknowledge her office’s involvement, though she has continued to deny her personal role.