Todd Palin Waged Campaign To Get Trooper FiredTodd Palin spoke to over a dozen state officials, both before and after his wife became governor, in his effort to get state trooper Mike Wooten fired. But he says he never pressured Walt Monegan to remove Wooten.
That’s what Todd Palin told independent investigator Steve Branchflower, according to a sworn affidavit released to reporters by the McCain campaign and Palins’ lawyer.
In his statement, Todd Palin made clear that he carried a grudge against Wooten, a state trooper who was embroiled in a family dispute with the Palins, during and after a messy divorce from Sarah Palin’s sister.
“I had hundreds of conversations and communications about Trooper Wooten over the last several years with my family, with friends, with colleagues, and with just about everyone I could — including government officials,” Palin said.
“I talked about Wooten so much over the years that my wife told me to stop talking about it with her.”
But he also said: “My concerns … were not why Monegan was reassigned,” adding that to the best of his knowledge, Monegan, the state’s former public safety commissioner, incurred the governor’s displeasure because of “budget issues and failure to fill trooper vacancies.”
The move by the Palin camp to release the affidavit, in advance of the legislative hearing tomorrow at which Branchflower is scheduled to unveil his finished report, appears to have raised some eyebrows.
State Senate President Lyda Green, a Republican but frequent Palin critic, told ABCNews.com: “The McCain campaign should not be releasing these documents.”
The state’s Supreme Court is scheduled to rule today on a GOP suit to quash the investigation, after a lower court threw out the effort last week.