The Sarah Palin Trooper-Gate saga has taken so many twists and turns lately that we decided it was worth taking a step back, to consider what we've learned to date, and what it might all amount to.

As regular readers of TPMmuckraker know, Trooper-Gate centers on allegations that Sarah Palin fired the former Alaska Public Safety Commissioner for his refusal to axe a state trooper who had undergone an ugly divorce from Palin's sister, and who was embroiled in a bitter feud with the Palin family. But as is so often the case when powerful figures are accused of wrongdoing, the effort to conceal what happened by Palin and Alaska Republicans, apparently with the aid of the McCain campaign, may be just as revealing as the original event.

The whole sordid tale started on July 13th, when the Anchorage Daily News -- which has been all over Trooper-Gate since the start -- reported that Walt Monegan, the state's respected public safety commissioner, had been fired without a clear explanation.

Within the week, Monegan came forward to allege that Palin had pressured him to fire a state trooper, Mike Wooten, who has been embroiled in a long-running dispute with the Palin family since his messy 2005 divorce from Palin's sister. Monegan's claim was backed up by the troopers' union, which, the day before Monegan came forward, released a file from its own 2005 internal investigation of Wooten -- initiated at the request of the Palins -- and charged that Wooten had been unfairly targeted by the Palin family. Palin immediately denied that anyone in her office had pressured Monegan to fire Wooten. A former U.S. attorney and ethics adviser that Palin had previously hired to oversee new financial-disclosure regulations for the Alaska state legislature wrote to Palin to advise her to simply "apologize" for "overreaching" in regards to Wooten.

But the release of information from the internal trooper investigation had made clear that there was long-standing animosity between Wooten and the Palin family. In taped interviews that were conducted as part of that probe, members of the family, including the future governor, had alleged that Wooten threatened to kill Sarah Palin's father, drove drunk in his trooper car, shot a moose out of season, and took sick days when hungover, among other complaints. Wooten was ultimately suspended for five days.

On the basis of this information and Monegan's allegation, a bipartisan committee of the state legislature voted unanimously in late July that there was sufficient evidence of an abuse of power by the governor to launch an investigation into the matter, with a budget of $100,000. A few days later, Sen. Hollis French, the Anchorage Democrat overseeing the investigation on behalf of the committee, announced that Steve Branchflower, a respected former state prosecutor with a reputation for toughness and impartiality, had been hired to conduct the probe.

Though Palin had initially pledged her full cooperation with the investigation, saying she had nothing to hide, she nevertheless didn't seem to want to allow Branchflower's effort to be the only game in town. Less than two weeks later, her office announced that Attorney General Tavis Colberg, a Palin appointee, would conduct a parallel probe. Critics saw the move as a way for the governor to get out ahead of the Branchflower investigation.

The following day, the governor's office released a recording of a phone conversation between Frank Bailey, a top Palin aide, and a trooper official, as part of Colberg's probe. In the call, Bailey told the official that both Sarah and Todd Palin were unhappy that Wooten was still employed as a trooper, and repeated some of the allegations about Wooten made by Palin and her family in the internal trooper investigation from 2005. At a press conference, Palin now admitted that her office had applied pressure to fire Wooten, but continued to deny her personal involvement, saying Bailey was acting alone.

Still, at this point Branchflower and French were publicly declaring their satisfaction with the level of cooperation they were receiving from Palin's office. Branchflower told reporters he didn't expect to have to issue subpoenas in the case.

That was about where things stood on August 29, when John McCain shocked the political world by announcing Palin as his running-mate.

After this, Palin's pledged cooperation with the investigation began to slow noticeably. A few days after McCain's announcement, it was reported that Palin had hired a lawyer in connection to Trooper-Gate, Thomas Van Flein, a specialist in employment law with the Anchorage-based firm, Clapp, Peterson, Van Flein, Tiemessen & Thorsness.

Van Flein quickly filed an unusual complaint on Palin's behalf with the state personnel board, arguing that only that body -- whose three members were appointed by Palin's Republican predecessor as governor, Frank Murkowski -- was legally mandated to consider the charges against Palin (an argument that, according to a former Alaska Attorney General interviewed by TPMmuckraker, did not hold water). Van Flein asserted that unless the state legislature called off the Branchflower probe and handed things over to the personnel board, Palin would not be made available to testify.

Two days later, Frank Bailey's lawyer cancelled Bailey's planned deposition with Branchflower, citing the bogus question over jursdicition raised by Van Flein.

Soon, Palin's story on Trooper-Gate took its second significant hit. Monegan showed to the Washington Post emails he had received from Palin from February 2007, in which she brought up her displeasure that Wooten was still employed as a trooper. She had earlier claimed that she only discussed Wooten with Monegan in regard to her concerns for her family's safety.

That same day, Monegan also told ABC News that Palin hadn't been truthful in her denials that she had pressured him to fire Wooten, and reiterated his belief that he was fired for his reluctance to do so.

At that point, an additional wrinkle developed: the trooper's union filed an ethics complaint of its own against Palin, alleging that the information about Wooten's record passed on by Bailey in his recorded call with the trooper official proved that Palin's office had improperly accessed Wooten's personal file. In response, the McCain campaign -- now handling PR for Palin on the issue -- claimed that Bailey's information had come from Todd Palin, who had gotten it from Wooten's unsealed divorce records.

Meanwhile, evidence was growing of a more widespread Republican effort to stonewall the Branchflower probe. Two days after the troopers' union complaint was filed, Rep. John Coghill, a Republican supporter of McCain, released a letter calling for French to be removed as overseer of the investigation, citing public comments made by French that Coghill described as politically partisan -- including French's suggestion to the Wall Street Journal that the investigation could lead to impeachment charges. Newsweek reported the following day that Coghill had given the McCain campaign a "heads-up" on his letter, and that the McCain camp had sent at least one staffer to Alaska "to monitor the investigation and related matters." (Three days later, Sen. Kim Elton, the chair of the special legislative committee assigned to Trooper-Gate, told the Associated Press that French would remain in charge.)

The same day that Coghill released his letter, French announced in a press release that seven witnesses in the investigation had cancelled their depositions -- adding to the evidence of a coordinated effort to obstruct the investigation. (TPMmuckraker later reported that one of the possible witnesses, Palin aide Ivy Frye, had hired Palin's lawyer, Van Flein.) French added that his committee therefore intended to meet to issue subpoenas, but that it would not subpoena Palin herself -- a move that some Democrats saw as knuckling under to GOP pressure. Rep. Jay Ramras, a GOP committee leader, later confirmed to TPMmuckraker that Palin would not under any circumstances be subpoenaed, calling such a move "bad form" in light of her nomination as a candidate for the vice presidency.

French also announced in the same press release that the committee intended to move up the release date for Branchflower's report -- originally scheduled for October 31, just four days before the election -- by three weeks, to avoid any suggestion of politically motivated timing.

Most recently, reports this week have shown that Wooten himself has not been contacted by Branchflower, though the investigation has been underway for over a month. Yesterday, Monegan testified at a hearing yesterday, in front of the legislative commission. And we learned today that Van Flein also began an investigation into Branchflower on September 3, requesting internal documents from the attorney general's office relating to the hiring of Branchflower for the Trooper-Gate probe.

Finally, the legislative commission is set to hold a hearing tomorrow on issuing subpoenas -- and the Alaska attorney general's office has stated today that they would move to block such subpoenas if they are issued.

So that's where we are.

It's worth noting that Obama supporters looking to Trooper-Gate to provide a devastating blow to the McCain-Palin ticket may wind up disappointed. Close observers of Alaska politics say that Republicans initially welcomed the probe, as a way of inflicting political damage on Palin -- who, since her election to the governorship in November 2006, has had sky-high approval ratings with Alaska voters -- and thereby increasing their bargaining power in negotiations with the governor's office. But now that Palin has been announced as McCain's running-mate, things have changed. Those lawmakers have no interest in allowing the investigation to damage their party's chances of retaining the White House, and -- with or without the encouragement of the McCain campaign -- will exert their influence to stifle the probe. The pressure on French to resign, and the committee's decision, apparently under pressure from Republicans, not to subpoena Palin, suggest that that process is already well under way.