Alaska

Monegan: Palin Aide Knew Of Top Cop's Sexual Harassment Rap

Zachary Roth | October 11, 2008, 4:18PM

Aside from what it says about Sarah and Todd Palin, the Trooper-Gate report also appears to paint Mike Tibbles -- the governor's former chief of staff, who's now running Ted Stevens' Senate re-election campaign -- as shockingly incompetent. And that's the best case scenario for Sarah Palin.

To explain: Steve Branchflower writes on page 113 of the report that Walt Monegan told him about a conversation between Monegan and Tibbles, shortly after Palin was inaugurated as governor in January 2007. According to Monegan, Tibbles asked Monegan to consider hiring Chuck Kopp, formerly the police chief of Kenai, for a job in the public safety department.

As a result, said Monegan, he met with Kopp. When Monegan asked Kopp whether there was anything in Kopp's background that Monegan should be aware of before hiring him, Kopp revealed that, as Kenai police chief, he had been reprimanded over a sexual harassment allegation, though he maintained that it was bogus.

Monegan told Branchflower that the next day, he talked to Tibbles. "I disclosed what Chuck had told me," said Monegan. Tibbles responded that, in that case, they had "better steer clear from [Kopp] for a while."

But in a separate part of the report (page 43) that we noted earlier, Branchflower writes that in July 2008, Kopp was hired as public safety commissioner -- replacing Monegan -- after being interviewed for the job by two Palin aides for just 30 minutes, and without speaking directly to the governor about it at all.

Just two weeks later, Branchflower writes, Kopp resigned the post, when the sexual harrassment reprimand surfaced. Adds Branchflower: "Apparently, that was a fact that the governor's office did not know about when Mr. Kopp was offered the commissioner's job."

Indeed, at the time, the governor's office said publicly that at the time Kopp was hired, the governor knew of the allegation but understood it to be baseless, and was unaware of the letter of reprimand.

But the report suggests that Tibbles -- who, just four days before Kopp's hiring, was announced as Stevens' campaign manager -- did know about the reprimand, because Monegan had told him about it back in January 2007.

In other words, if Branchflower is correct, Tibbles failed to pass on to his colleagues in the governor's office his knowledge of Kopp's reprimand, setting them up to hire for a high-profile position a man with a significant black mark on his record.

It's also possible, of course, that Branchflower has erred in writing that the governor's office didn't know about Kopp's reprimand when it hired him. Perhaps Tibbles did pass along the information, but Palin and her aides, in their haste to find a replacement for Monegan, decided to overlook it and hire Kopp anyway, trusting that the issue would not resurface.

Tibbles did not immediately respond to a detailed request for comment.

So either Palin's chief of staff was jaw-droppingly incompetent, or she knowingly hired as the state's top law enforcement official a man who had been reprimanded for sexual harassment, then lied to the press about it. Neither alternative is flattering.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Report: Firing Wooten Wouldn't Have Made Palins Safer

Zachary Roth | October 11, 2008, 2:29PM

As we noted last night, the Trooper-Gate report found that Sarah Palin's claims that she feared Mike Wooten were unfounded. But the subject of Palin's alleged concern for her own and her family's safety deserves more attention.

The McCain-Palin campaign has argued that the Palins were acting merely to "protect their family" in going after Wooten.

But in the report, Branchflower disposes of that argument:

Assuming that Trooper Wooten was ever inclined to attack Governor Palin or a family member, logic dictates that getting him fired would accomplish nothing to eliminate the potential for harm to her or her family. On the contrary, it might just precipitate some retaliatory conduct on his part. Causing Wooten to loose (sic) his job would not have de-escalated the situation, or provided her or her family with greater security.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Palin Never Interviewed Monegan's Replacement

Zachary Roth | October 11, 2008, 1:25PM

Here's some evidence from the Trooper-Gate report about just how eager Sarah Palin was to get rid of Walt Monegan as public safety commissioner.

Steve Branchflower found that Palin never interviewed Monegan's replacement, the appropriately named Chuck Kopp, for the job of top law enforcement officer in the state. Rather, she left the task to deputies, who conducted just one 30-minute interview.

Writes Branchflower: "Governor Palin did not speak to Mr. Kopp before he was appointed to his new job."

And as we already knew, Kopp served just two weeks in the job, before resigning after news reports surfaced showing that he had been reprimanded in connection with a past sexual harassment complaint.

Of course, the report found that Palin was within her rights to fire Monegan, since, as a legal matter, the governor can fire state officials for any reason, or none at all.

But that doesn't mean that, as a question of governance, it wasn't a rash, poorly thought-out move, done for reasons of personal pique rather than a concern for the public interest.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

For Palin, A Picture of Wooten Is Worth A Thousand Words

Zachary Roth | October 11, 2008, 12:36PM

Here's a funny note from the report that brings home the depths of Sarah Palin's antipathy toward Mike Wooten:

Shortly before the annual celebration of Police Memorial Day on May 15, 2008, Commissioner Monegan had dropped off a color photograph at Governor Palin's Anchorage office with a request that she sign and present it at the ceremony. The photograph was of an Alaska State Trooper who was dressed in a formal uniform, saluting. He was standing in front of the police memorial located in front of the crime lab at AST headquarters in Anchorage, partially obscured by a flagpole. The picture to be signed by the Governor was to be used as a poster to be displayed in various Trooper Detachments around the state.

Shortly after he returned to his office from dropping off the photograph, he received a call from Kris Perry, Governor Palin's Director of her Anchorage office who asked [according to Walt Monegan's testimony] "Why did you send a poster over here that has a picture of Mike Wooten on it?" Until that moment, Commissioner Monegan never realized it was indeed a photograph of Trooper Wooten. Governor Palin cancelled her appearance and sent Lieutenant Governor Parnell in her place.

Monegan's eventual replacement as Public Safety Commissioner, Charles Kopp, testified that Palin aide Frank Bailey later called him and told him the administration was thinking about replacing Monegan as commissioner. When Kopp asked why, Bailey cited the incident with the Wooten photograph as one reason, among several, for the governor's displeasure with Monegan.

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Topics: Alaska, Mike Wooten, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Monegan's "Ominous Feeling" After Meeting With Todd

Zachary Roth | October 11, 2008, 12:16PM

Walt Monegan told Steve Branchflower about what he was thinking directly after a meeting with Todd Palin, in which the "First Gentleman" had given him a stack of files about Mike Wooten's record, and had asked Monegan to look into whether Wooten had been appropriately disciplined:

Well, on the drive back as i was reflecting on the meeting -- drive back to the office, I was thinking that in essence they certainly didn't like the idea that Wooten was still employed. And they wanted severe discipline, probably termination, and that -- and if this was going to build, I had this kind of ominous feeling that I may not be long for this job if I -- if I didn't somehow respond accordingly.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Todd Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Stonewalling By Key Witnesses Proved Effective

Zachary Roth | October 11, 2008, 11:37AM

The Trooper-Gate report provides an answer to something we were asking ourselves earlier this week.

It was announced, just days before Steve Branchflower was scheduled to wrap things up, that several top Palin aides would reverse course and honor subpoenas issued in the investigation, after resisting them for weeks. But would Branchflower, we wondered, have enough time to depose those key witnesses and include their testimony in his report?

The answer: no.

Branchflower writes:

On October 6, 2008 Attorney General Talis Coberg announced that some of the ... employees have decided they wish to honor their subpoenas and provide information about this case to the Legislative Council. Given that last minute decision, and in view of the publication date of October 10, 2008 for this report, it has not been possible to inculde any such information herein. It is anticipated that the additional information will be submitted to the Legislative Council in a separate report prepared by the employees and/or the Attorney General.

It's impossible to know what additional information these witnesses would have provided Branchflower. And he made clear that, even without them, he had enough information to draw firm conclusions.

Still, it's certainly plausible that with input from Palin's top lieutenants about the pressure they may have been under to pursue the Wooten matter, the report would have been even more damning.

In that limited regard, the Palin camp's stonewalling appears to have worked.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate, subpoena

Alaska

Trooper-Gate Report Came In Under Budget

Zachary Roth | October 11, 2008, 10:39AM

From the start, the McCain-Palin camp's major strategy in defending Sarah Palin on Trooper-Gate has been to argue that the investigation is a partisan witch-hunt run by supporters of Barack Obama, designed to inflict maximum political damage on the governor.

But most partisan witch-hunts don't end up spending only 75 percent of their allotted budget.

Sen. Hollis French, who was overseeing the probe, told the Anchorage Daily News last night that the investigation ended up costing only $75,000. When legislators voted to launch it in July, they had authorized spending up to $100,000.

The paper reports that Steve Branchflower, the investigator, will be paid $45,000, and the additional $30,000 went to "expenses such as copying, court reporting and transcribing, and managing computer files."

Of course, the fact that the report's release date was moved up by three weeks, to ensure it didn't appear on the eve of the election, may have been one reason why it came in under budget.

Still, Branchflower left $25,000 on the table. That's not exactly the move of 21st-century Ken Starr, a comparison made by Palin's lawyer.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Palin "Failed To Act"

Zachary Roth | October 11, 2008, 10:23AM

Here's a key excerpt from the Trooper-Gate report about the nature of Sarah Palin's abuse of power, in regard to her failure to rein in her husband's efforts to pressure state employees to fire Mike Wooten:

[Sarah Palin] had the authority and power to require Mr. Palin to cease contacting subordinates, but she failed to act.

Such impermissible and repeated contacts create conflicts of interests for subordinate employees, who must choose to either please a superior or run the risk of facing that superior's displeasure and the possible consequences of such displeasure. This was one of the very reasons the Ethics Act was promulgated by the Legislature.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Todd Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Trooper-Gate Report: McCain Campaign Statement

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 10:06PM

Here's a statement from the McCain-Palin camp on the report.

"Today's report shows that the Governor acted within her proper and lawful authority in the reassignment of Walt Monegan," said Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapelton. "The report also illustrates what we've known all along: this was a partisan led inquiry run by Obama supporters and the Palins were completely justified in their concern regarding Trooper Wooten given his violent and rogue behavior. Lacking evidence to support the original Monegan allegation, the Legislative Council seriously overreached, making a tortured argument to find fault without basis in law or fact. The Governor is looking forward to cooperating with the Personnel Board and continuing her conversation with the American people regarding the important issues facing the country."

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Topics: Alaska, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate

Sarah Palin

Palin's Claims She Feared Wooten Were Bogus

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 9:46PM

Here's another interesting finding, that belies a key claim made by Governor Palin in her defense against the Trooper-Gate allegations.

"Governor Palin has stated publically that she and her family feared Trooper Wooten. Yet the evidence presented has been inconsistent with such claims of fear."
...

"I conclude that such claims of fear were not bona fide and were offered to provide cover for the Palin's real motivation: to get Trooper Wooten fired for personal family related reasons."

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Sarah Palin Pursued "Personal Agenda" in Seeking To Get Trooper Fired

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 9:42PM

Here's another of the report's key conclusions:

"The evidence supports the conclusion that Governor Palin, at the least, engaged in "official action" by her inaction if not her active participation or assistance to her husband in attempting to get Trooper Wooten fired [and there is evidence of her active participation]. She knowingly, as that term is defined in the above statutes, permitted Todd Palin to use the Governor's office and the resources of the Governor's office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees, in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired."

...

"Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: To get Trooper Michael Wooten fired.''

In other words, the investigators appear to have concluded that Palin's improper conduct was not the firing of Monegan, which, as governor, she had a right to do for essentially any reason. Rather, it was the improper pressure placed on subordinates in her effort, conducted largely through her husband, to get Mike Wooten fired.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Monegan: Todd Palin Was "Venting"

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 9:22PM

About that meeting between Todd Palin and Walt Monegan, arranged by Todd Palin:

Monegan described to investgators that Todd Palin recounted to him the evidence against Wooten that had came out in the 2005 internal trooper probe -- including that Wooten tasered his stepson and drank while driving a patrol car.

Said Monegan: "He told me ... this guy shouldn't be a trooper."

Monegan added:

"My impression initially was that he's venting. I mean, there was a complaint, the troopers investigated it and they came up with a conclusion, and that he was not happy with he conclusion.

And often, having been a cop for a long time, that actually happens a lot in divorce cases."

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Tom DeLay, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Todd Palin, First Gentleman

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 9:08PM

Here's a funny note on the airs that the Palin administration appears to have put on after coming into office.

Monegan's secretary told Branchflower that she received a call in December 2006 from a Palin aide, asking to set up a meeting between Monegan and "the First Gentleman."

"At that time." said the secretary, "I was not familar with the term 'First Gentleman'...so I kept asking her 'who?', and eventually she said, 'Todd Palin,' and I said, 'oh okay.'"

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Todd Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Todd Palin Pressured Wasilla Police Chief Not To Hire Wooten

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 8:58PM

The report reveals that four days after Sarah Palin was elected governor in November 2006, Todd Palin called John Glass, who was then the chief of the Wasilla Police Department and shortly afterwards became a deputy public safety commissioner for the state, working under Walt Monegan.

There were two vacant spots on the Wasilla PD at the time. Todd Palin told Glass that he did not want Wooten hired as a Wasilla officer, and that he should be fired as a state trooper.

Wooten was not hired by Glass.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Todd Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Trooper-Gate Report Finds Palin Abused Power in Firing Monegan

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 8:42PM

The just-released Trooper-Gate report finds that Sarah Palin abused her power in the affair by pressuring subordinates to fire Mike Wooten, thereby violating an Alaska law holding that "each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust." *

It also finds that Monegan's "refusal to fire Trooper Mike Wooten" -- who was embroiled in a family dispute with the Palins -- "was not the sole reason [Monegan] by Governor Sarah Paln" but "it was likely a contributing factor". Still, the firing was a proper exercise of Palin's authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.

In addition, the report found that the office of Attorney General Talis Colberg failed to substantially comply with the legislature's written request for information about the case in the form of emails.

* This sentence has been updated from an earlier version.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Lawmakers To Release Trooper-Gate Report

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 8:22PM

The legislative council voted 12-0 to release the Trooper-Gate report, according to the Anchorage Daily News.

Legislators had been in a closed door meeting all day.

We'll let you know about its findings once we have a copy.

Update: Here's the report.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate, U.S. Attorneys

Voting

McCain Camp Tying Obama To ACORN

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 5:39PM

The McCain campaign is stepping up its efforts to make an issue out of ACORN's voter registration activities -- and one of its new moves is to tie Barack Obama to the beleaguered community organizing group.

On a conference call with reporters this afternoon, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis raised the specter of massive voter fraud enabling an Obama victory November 4th.

"We don't want to see battleground states turn on ACORN," he said. "We want to make sure not one of these states are (sic) stolen."

Davis continued: "You don't file fake registrations if you're not going to use them to cast fake ballots."

There's little backing to support that contention. According to experts, false registrations almost never result in fraudulent votes, but rather are the result of canvassers artificially juicing their numbers in order to earn a bigger bonus. Tony Romo, for instance, is highly unlikely to try to show up to vote in Las Vegas.

So it bears repeating: despite reports in several swing states that ACORN has submitted fraudulent registration forms in the hundreds, and even perhaps the thousands, there's scant evidence that the group's lapses could significantly affect the integrity of the vote.

But for the McCain campaign, the point of touting the ACORN story is in part to tag Obama as tied to a supposedly radical, lawless community organization that works on behalf of minorities.

Davis noted that Obama had acted as a lawyer for ACORN, and had taught classes to ACORN community organizers. He also asserted that the Obama campaign had paid $800,000 to an ACORN subsidiary to canvass voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas during the primary.

Those claims are all technically true, though they deliberately exaggerate the closeness of the relationship between Obama and ACORN.

Davis also pointed reporters to a website, obamaacorntree.com, detailing the connections between the two.

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Topics: ACORN, Barack Obama, Rick Davis, Voting

Alaska

Alaska Lawmakers Could be Meeting For A While

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 3:20PM

Sounds like the members of the Legislative Council in Alaska, who are meeting behind closed doors to vote on whether to release the Trooper-Gate report to the public, could be there a while.

A source who's at the state legislative building where the meeting is taking place reported moments ago that the lawmakers just ordered lunch.

And the Anchorage Daily News adds:

Two lawmakers who've stepped out of the meeting briefly say it could be hours.

Senate President Lyda Green, a Wasilla Republican, and Rep. Peggy Wilson of Wrangell said the session is moving slowly.

How slow? Wilson was asked.

"Slooowwww," she said.

During the public portion of the meeting, Wilson said that she had not yet had a chance to read the report -- which centers on the firing by Governor Sarah Palin of the state's former public safety commissioner -- and suggested that she would therefore be reluctant to release it publicly today.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate

Voting

Big GOP Pollster Behind Oregon Calls

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 2:31PM

So yesterday we reported on a possible push poll being conducted in Oregon by a company called Western Wats. A caller told one Oregon woman we spoke to about tax increases being supported by Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Merkley, then asked whether the information made her less likely to support Merkley -- who's in a tight race with Republican incumbent Gordon Smith.

Western Wats had told us yesterday that its client was NMB Research, who did not return our call. But today, Stacey Jenkins of Western Wats called back to say that, after speaking again with their client, Western Wats had been authorized to tell us that the client is in fact Public Opinion Strategies (POS), a well-known GOP polling firm. POS, Jenkins said, had asked Western Wats yesterday to give us the name NMB Research as the client.

Jenkins could not answer why POS had directed Western Wats to give what appears to be misleading or incomplete information to a news organization.

A representative for POS did not immediately make available to TPMmuckraker anyone who could provide more information, or clarify the relationship between POS and NMB Research, but pledged to do so.

POS is a major GOP polling firm, founded by respected veteran pollsters Bill McInturff, Glen Bolger, and Neil Newhouse. Its involvement may indicate that the call was not part of a push poll, but rather an effort to test negative messages with a sample group of voters, for research purposes -- a possibility we suggested yesterday.

We'll keep you posted as we learn more.

Late Update: Public Opinion Strategies sent the following statement to TPMmuckraker this afternoon:

NMB Research is a separate legal entity with a separate office set up by the members of Public Opinion Strategies. It was established to comply with coordination rules of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. NMB is retained by a number of clients involved in public policy research, issue advocacy, and independent expenditure campaigns. The establishment of NMB ensures compliance with the coordination rules of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

Neither Public Opinion Strategies nor NMB Research engages in push polling, voter ID, or GOTV programs.

We've contacted Neil Newhouse, a founder and senior pollster with the firm, to ask specifically about the Oregon call we reported on yesterday, and as always, will keep you posted.

Later Update: Neil Newhouse emails to say: "The poll was done by NMB and included more than 20 questions, including some message testing regarding Jeff Merkley."

He adds: "It was not a push poll, but a standard message-testing survey."

In other words, the call was designed to test which negative message about Merkley voting for tax increases would be most effective with Oregon voters.

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Topics: Voting

Alaska

Trooper-Gate Session Begins: GOP Legislator Sounds Reluctant To Release Report

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 1:30PM

The Alaska Legislative Council has been begun its meeting. It will soon go into a private executive session to hear a briefing from Steve Branchflower on his findings in the Trooper-Gate investigation, and to vote on whether to release his full report to the public.

At TPMmuckraker, we've been listening on streaming audio to the public portion of the session. And already it looks like it could be a struggle to get a yes vote on releasing the report.

A Republican member of the council, Rep. Peggy Wilson, said that the report -- which runs to 1000 pages, including evidence -- was so long that she hadn't yet had time to read it, and therefore didn't feel comfortable moving forward.

So it doesn't sound like Rep. Wilson will vote for releasing the report today. Whether her GOP colleagues feel similarly will determine what we find out today.

We'll keep you posted...

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Release Of Trooper-Gate Report Hangs On GOP Cooperation

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 11:41AM

So today's the day for Steve Branchflower to release his report into Trooper-Gate to the Alaska legislative council.

But it's worth pointing out that, thanks to GOP resistance, Branchflower's findings may not be made public today.

The legislative council will meet in private at 1pm EST to receive a briefing from Branchflower on his findings. The council will then vote on whether to make the 253-page report public. The legislators, who have already picked up copies of the report, have signed confidentiality agreements promising not to show anyone, including their staff, unless authorized to do so by a vote of the council.

It's by no means clear which way that vote will go. The council comprises 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats. It had voted unanimously in July to launch the investigation, but since Governor Palin was named as John McCain's running mate, many Republican members of the legislature have fallen into line behind the McCain camp's effort to quash the probe. Last month, Rep. John Coghill, a Republican from North Pole who is on the council, charged that the investigation had been inappropriately politicized and called for the removal of Sen. Hollis French, the Anchorage Democrat running the probe. And shortly after, six GOP legislators filed suit to halt the investigation entirely. (The suit was dismissed yesterday by the state Supreme Court.)

The Anchorage Daily News also reports:

Branchflower also produced a separate volume, roughly twice as large as his report, that's expected to remain confidential because it contains exhibits with personnel information that cannot legally be released, according to legislative council staff.

Palin's lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, tried to preemptively discredit the report, telling the ADN that it won't be comprehensive because Branchflower didn't interview Palin or her chief of staff, Mike Tibbles.

"They didn't even try to interview the governor. You want to know why she reassigned Monegan, it would be nice to talk to her. They didn't even try," Van Flein said. "It's a report that's going to be half-done at best. And anything that's half-done will likely be half-baked."

In response, Hollis French told the paper that he wrote a letter to Van Flein last month asking to set up the interview.

In addition, the New York Times has new details on the pressure that was brought by Palin's office on Walt Monegan in regard to Mike Wooten, the trooper who was embroiled in a bitter family dispute with the Palins.

It reports:

In all, the 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.

In one of those instances, Monegan received a call from an aide to Palin, who was concerned that Wooten was assigned to work at a state fair the governor planned to attend. Wooten, says the paper, "had indeed volunteered for duty at the fairgrounds -- in full costume as "Safety Bear," the troopers' child-friendly mascot."

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Todd Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Palin Exonerated -- By McCain-Palin Campaign!

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 9:47AM

The McCain-Palin campaign, with an eye on the possible release today of the Alaska legislature's report on Trooper-Gate, last night unveiled its own "report" into the matter. And guess what? It clears Sarah Palin of any wrongdoing!

Campaign officials wrote:

The following document will prove Walt Monegan's dismissal was a result of his insubordination and budgetary clashes with Governor Palin and her administration. Trooper Wooten is a separate issue.

The use of the word "dismissal" is noteworthy. Lately, the campaign had seemed to settle on the story that Monegan was not dismissed, but rather was asked to take a new assignment, and quit instead of doing so. Todd Palin told the same thing in written answers to Steve Branchflower, the legislature's investigator, according to news reports yesterday.

The campaign's report blames Andrew Halcro, a blogger and political rival of Governor Palin, for conspiring with Jim Wooten -- the trooper whose ongoing dispute with the Palin family is at the center of the affair -- to make it appear that Palin fired public safety commissioner Walt Monegan because Monegan refused to fire Wooten.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Todd Palin, Trooper-Gate

Voting

Anti-Dem Push-Polling In Oregon Senate Race?

Zachary Roth | October 9, 2008, 5:07PM

Is Gordon Smith, Oregon's Republican senator who's in a tight reelection race, using push polls to turn voters against his Democratic opponent?

Kay Phillips, of Cottage Grove, Oregon told TPMmuckraker that last night she received a call about the race. After responding to some standard polling questions, including how she intended to vote in the Senate race and the presidential race, Phillips says she was then asked whether her opinion of Jeff Merkley, Smith's Democratic opponent, would change if she knew about tax increases he had supported. The caller then read six instances of tax increases, asking after each one whether she would change her opinion. The call lasted about 5-6 minutes, Phillips said.

At the start of the conversation, Phillips said, the caller told her she was calling with Western Wats. When, at the end of the call, Phillips the caller to repeat her affiliation, the caller spelled out the name, according to Phillips.

It's worth noting that political campaigns sometimes make similar calls to test negative messages, rather than to deceptively sway the opinions of large numbers of voters. Message testing calls are typically -- though not necessarily -- longer than 5-6 minutes, and conducted on a far smaller scale than push polls, since they seek only to target a representative sample of the electorate.

A spokesman for Western Wats, a Utah-based market research firm, confirmed to TPMmuckraker that his firm was conducting calls on the Oregon Senate race, and named NMB Research as the client, would not give additional information, citing a non-disclosure agreement.

Western Wats may ring a bell for TPM readers. Last fall, the New Hampshire Attorney General launched an investigation after voters in that state and Iowa reported receiving calls from the firm, informing them of Mitt Romney's Mormon faith, and praising John McCain's military record. As of August, the investigation was still ongoing.

NMB Research did not immediately return a call for comment. According to campaign disclosure records, the Virginia-based firm was paid $13,000 by the National Republican Campaign Committee to conduct "generic survey" in January.

Calls by TPMmuckraker to Smith's campaign, and to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which also conducts polling on Senate races, were not immediately returned.

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Topics: Voting

Alaska

Court Throws Out GOP Effort to Quash Trooper-Gate

Zachary Roth | October 9, 2008, 4:40PM

The Alaska Supreme Court has rejected the effort by Republican legislators to quash the Trooper-Gate investigation, affirming the decision of a lower court last week.

Details from the ruling to follow...

Update: The court wrote: "The order of the superior court issued on October 2, 2008 granting the Motion to Dismiss is AFFIRMED. An opinion will follow."

The ruling was provided to TPMmuckraker by Peter Maassen, the attorney for the legislators overseeing the investigation, who are named as defendants in the case.

Independent investigator Steve Branchflower is scheduled to release his report -- which centers on the firing by Governor Palin of former public safety commissioner Walt Monegan -- at a legislative hearing tomorrow.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate

Voting

McCain Camp's Anti-ACORN Campaign Goes Nationwide

Zachary Roth | October 9, 2008, 3:54PM

It looks like the effort by the McCain campaign and the Republican party to make an issue out of ACORN's voter registration activities has gone national.

We've seen reports from several states in recent days that the group, which works to register low-income and minority voters, has submitted flawed or fraudulent voter registration forms -- though it's by no means clear how widespread the problem is.

But that's not stopping the McCain team. At a town-hall meeting in Wisconsin today, when supporters began to chant the group's name in derision, the Arizona senator seized the moment to go on the attack.

"You've seen the allegations, the multiple registrations under the same name, the more registered voters than the population, these are serious allegations, my friends, and they must be investigated, and they must be investigated immediately and they must be stopped before November the fourth, so Americans will not -- will not -- be deprived of a fair process in this election.

The Republican National Committee is also flogging the story. Under the headline "You Can't Make This Stuff Up", its website lists various cases of potential voter fraud, and links to a GOP press release noting that ACORN employees are under investigation in Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

And this morning, Fox News interviewed a Domino's Pizza employee in Ohio, who said that he had been asked by an ACORN canvasser to fill out multiple registration forms. The story appeared on the front page of the New York Post this morning.

The Republican effort to raise the specter of voter fraud, with ACORN at the center, is being carried out on the local level as well. After Nevada investigators raided ACORN's Las Vegas office Tuesday, Nevada's Republican senator, John Ensign immediately called on the Bush administration to close a loophole through which the group, which works to register low-income and minority voters, is eligible to receive federal housing funds through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

No one has been charged in the raid, which was part of an investigation apparently being led by Democratic secretary of state, Ross Miller. But there are suggestions that it was prompted in part by GOP complaints. Tory Mazzola, a spokesman for Ensign, quickly ended a call without responding, after being asked by TPMmuckraker whether Ensign's office had complained to state authorities about potential voter fraud by ACORN in advance of the raid. And as we reported this morning, the head of the state Republican party told TPMmuckraker that the state party had indeed expressed concerns about the issue to Miller's office over the summer. Miller's office has said that the raid was prompted by evidence that ACORN has submitted fraudulent voter registration forms.

Meanwhile, Missouri Republicans, led by former senator Jack Danforth, yesterday accused ACORN of filing thousands of false forms with election officials in the Show Me state. Danforth, who garnered a reputation as a bipartisan statesman during his tenure the Senate, is helping to lead a nationwide effort by the McCain campaign to raise concerns about voter fraud. On a September conference call with reporters, Danforth highlighted reports of faulty registration forms in Michigan, Colorado, and other states, and tried to link ACORN to Barack Obama, pointing out that the group's political action committee affiliated had endorsed the Demcrat.

And in New Mexico -- where David Iglesias was fired as U.S. attorney in 2006 in large part for failing to respond with sufficient alacrity to complaints about voter fraud lodged by GOP elected officials -- the FBI has opened a preliminary investigation into 1400 potentially fraudulent registration forms filed at a county election office in Albuquerque. ACORN is active in the area. A Republican state legislator told the Wall Street Journal that even if fraud is rare, "every fraudulent vote cast cancels out a legitimate one."

ACORN may have been lax, at best, in its procedures for gathering registration forms. But aside from the GOP's continuing inability to pinpoint the scale of the problem, it's also worth noting that, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, "a fake registration doesn't necessarily mean an ineligible vote is tallied. Officials say canvassers sometimes make up registered names to impress bosses or earn bonuses, but that doesn't result in anyone ineligible casting a vote."

But by shrieking about voter fraud, the McCain camp hopes to make voting officials more willing to place restrictions in the path of voters on election day, potentially causing delays and confusion at the polls, and reducing overall turnout. And it seeks to discredit any Obama victory by raising the suggestion that it was aided by the votes of ineligible voters.

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Topics: ACORN, John McCain, Voting

Voting

Nevada GOP Contacted State About ACORN Before Raid

Zachary Roth | October 9, 2008, 11:26AM

The Nevada Republican Party raised concerns with the Secretary of State's office about potential voter fraud in ACORN's voter registration efforts before Tuesday's raid by state authorities on ACORN's Las Vegas office, according to the party's executive director.

Zachary Moyle told TPMmuckraker that the state party has long seen ACORN's voter registration work as a "red flag," and that the contact with the
office of Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller, which took the lead in ordering the raid, occurred over the summer. Moyle stressed that it's far from unusual for the GOP to raise concerns over voter fraud, and said that it has also been working closely with the Clark County registrar of voters on the issue.

The Secretary of State's office has said in an affidavit that the raid was triggered by evidence that ACORN has filed fraudulent registration forms, though it has not yet said how widespread the problem is.

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Topics: ACORN, Voting

Alaska

Todd Palin Waged Campaign To Get Trooper Fired

Zachary Roth | October 9, 2008, 10:07AM

Todd 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.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Todd Palin, Trooper-Gate

Ted Stevens

Judge Throws Out Key Evidence in Stevens Trial

Zachary Roth | October 8, 2008, 6:46PM

The judge in the Ted Stevens trial today threw out two major pieces of evidence, after it was revealed that prosecutors failed to provide the defense with crucial information.

According to Politico:

Judge Sullivan is throwing out a portion of the business records from Veco Corp., whose former CEO, Bill Allen, allegedly spent $188,000 renovating Stevens' home in Girdwood, Alaska. Two former Veco employees, Rocky Williams and Dave Anderson, are on the company's records as having spent significant time working on Stevens' home in late 2000 and early 2001.

But prosecutors never presented testimony from Williams, who was suppose to be the foreman on the home project, and instead shepherded him out of Washington right before the trial started, all without informing Stevens' attorneys.

And Anderson told the grand jury that he was in Portland, Ore., not Alaska, in late 2000, when Veco's records have him as working on Stevens' home. Prosecutors knew that Anderson had told the grand jury that and did not tell the defense team.

So Judge Sullivan excluded the portion of Veco's records that reference Anderson and Williams' work on Stevens' home, and he will instruct the jury that the government knowingly used false evidence in its case.

And:

Judge Sullivan will also exclude all evidence from a 1999 car swap between Allen and Stevens in which Stevens got a new Land Rover from Allen in return for a beat-up 1964 Mustang and some cash.

Prosecutors failed to turn over to Stevens' defense team a copy of the check which Allen used to pay for the Land Rover. Defense counsel alleged that they their case had been hurt when they cross-examined Allen over the transaction, which they only did because -- they asserted -- they didn't have Allen's original check.

Tomorrow, Stevens' lawyers are expected to offer a motion for a mistrial, based on prosecutorial misconduct.

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Topics: Alaska, Bill Allen, Ted Stevens, Veco

Voting

What's Behind The ACORN Raid?

Zachary Roth | October 8, 2008, 6:29PM

Yesterday, we told you about the raid conducted by Nevada state authorities on the Las Vegas office of ACORN.

The office of Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller has been telling reporters that the raid was prompted by complaints by Clark County officials about fraudulent voting forms being submitted by the group, which works to register low-income voters. An affidavit released by the state today described forms being received with the same name, as well as with fraudulent addresses and with personal information that did not match state records.

But the state has still not said how many such forms were submitted. Bob Walsh, a spokesman for the Secretary of State, told TPMmuckraker that the office is working to answer that question.

In a statement released yesterday, ACORN called the raid a "bogus attack" and asserted that it has "BENT OVER BACKWARDS to identify fraud and to encourage the Board of Elections to prosecute fraud."

But we're still puzzled by something: Republicans have a long history of clashing with ACORN, whose mission to register low-income and minority voters serves the cause of Democrats. So it's not clear what, beyond the immediate allegations, prompted Miller, a Democrat, to launch a high-profile raid of a major voter registration organization four weeks before election day.

According to Walsh, Miller, who has a background as a prosecutor, has always made law and order a priority. And ACORN does have a history of being less than fastidious about preventing small-scale fraud by canvassers who are paid per registration form they bring in. So perhaps this is nothing more than a state official being vigilant in upholding the law.

As more facts become clear, we'll keep you posted.

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Topics: Voting

Voting

Montana GOP Backs Off Voter Challenges

Zachary Roth | October 8, 2008, 3:10PM

Score one for democracy.

The Montana GOP announced last night that it's backing off its challenge to the legitimacy of thousands of voter registrations filed in predominantly Democratic areas of the state, which we told you about earlier this week.

In a letter to the head of the elections office of Missoula county -- the county with the largest number of challenged voters -- which was released to reporters last night, GOP chair Jacob Eaton wrote that the challenges were made in "good faith" but added:

"As a disabled combat veteran who has fought Al Queada (sic) to defend this country and our democracy and who has voted absentee en route to a war zone, I regret that my actions have been perceived as such."

It had been reported that the list of challenged voters -- which was based on discrepancies between addresses listed on registration forms and those obtained from a U.S. postal service database -- included a member of the Army Reserve about to deploy to Kuwait, and an 86-year old Second World War hero.

A spokesman for the secretary of state's office told The Missoulian that no one has ever complained to the secretary's office of widespread voter fraud based on inaccurate voter addresses.

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Topics: Voting

John McCain

McCain Pushing Lockheed-Made Weapons for Taiwan, Despite Advisers' Ties

Zachary Roth | October 8, 2008, 1:39PM

It looks like John McCain's foreign policy advisers are back in the news -- and not in a good way.

Yesterday, McCain issued a statement urging the Bush administration to enlarge a $6 billion package of military equipment for Taiwan, announced earlier this week. McCain wants submarines and F-16 aircraft added to the package.

But as the Washington Post notes, the lobbying firm run by Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign policy adviser, in June renewed a $200,00 contract to lobby on behalf of Taiwan. And in 2005, Scheunemann had personally signed the original contract between his firm, Orion Strategies, and the Taiwanese government. (Scheunemann took a leave of absence from the firm to work on McCain's campaign.)

The Post reports:

The McCain campaign did not respond to a request for comment on whether Randy Scheunemann, his foreign policy coordinator, had a role in drafting the statement or if he had recused himself.

But that's not the only potential conflict of interest here. As Think Progress points out, Scheuenemann has also lobbied for Lockheed Martin, which makes the F-16s that make McCain wants to give to Taiwan.

And here's something else worth noting. Another McCain foreign policy adviser, Bruce Jackson, is a former Lockheed vice president.

Jackson is a close Scheunemann ally, who was at Lockheed until 2002, during the period when, according to Senate disclosure forms, Scheuenemann lobbied for the arms contractor. The two men have worked together closely since then on efforts to expand NATO into eastern Europe.

In an interview, Jackson told TPMmuckraker that he has no financial stake in Lockheed, and has not spoken to McCain about the Taiwan arms package. He described his advisory role in the campaign as informal, and focused mostly on human-rights issues.

Still, Scheunemann's and Jackson's ties to Taiwan and Lockheed serve as a reminder of the influence of lobbyist and former corporate executives in McCain's campaign -- and of the ways in which the senator's bellicose foreign policy is often in sync with their interests.

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Topics: John McCain, Randy Scheunemann

Justice Department Wants To Keep Gitmo Uighurs Behind Bars

Zachary Roth | October 8, 2008, 12:09PM

Yesterday, a federal judge ordered the release of 17 detainees -- ethnic Uighurs from western China who were captured during fighting in Afghanistan -- being held at Guantanamo Bay. It was the first time a court had ordered the release of any detainees from Guantanamo.

But in a statement released last night, the Department of Justice said that the ruling "presents serious national security and separation of powers concerns" and announced that DOJ is filing an emergency appeal to ensure the men stay behind bars.

The statement also alleged that the men "have admitted to receiving weapons training at camps in Afghanistan." But this summer, a panel of judges found that the evidence on which that conclusion was based came from classified documents that "do not state (or, in most instances, even describe) the sources or rationales for those statements."

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Topics:

Trooper-Gate

Trooper-Gate Probe Could Carry Weight, After All

Zachary Roth | October 8, 2008, 11:01AM

It looked a couple weeks ago as if the McCain campaign's effort to shut down Trooper-Gate had largely succeeded.

But not so fast. Steve Branchflower, the independent investigator on the case, will release his report Friday, and, as the Anchorage Daily News notes, he will have heard from almost every key witness -- with the important exception of Governor Palin herself. As a result, says the paper, Branchflower "appears to have the makings of a fairly complete account."

Over the weekend, a judge ruled that seven witnesses, all government employees, must comply with subpoenas to testify. Those witnesses have made plans to answer Branchflower's questions this week, under oath. And it was announced Monday night that Todd Palin will, through his lawyer, provide written answers to questions.

Walt Monegan, the former public safety commissioner whose firing by Governor Palin is at the center of the inquiry, told the ADN that he spent nearly a day answering Branchflower's questions, and also handed over some documents.

A legislative panel will meet at 1pm EST Friday, to receive Branchflower's report. But the GOP effort to resist the probe has one more lifeline. Lawyers for a group of Republican legislators will try at 7pm EST today to convince the state Supreme Court to halt the probe, after a lower court rejected their suit last week. Stay tuned...

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Todd Palin, Trooper-Gate

Voting

State Official: "Tony Romo Is Not Registered To Vote in the State of Nevada."

Zachary Roth | October 7, 2008, 5:42PM

We're starting to get a little more information about the raid on ACORN's Las Vegas offices conducted by Nevada authorities earlier today.

FoxNews.com reports that, according to Bob Walsh, a spokesman with the Nevada Secretary of State's office, the raid was prompted by ongoing complaints that ACORN, which works to register low income voters, was submitting registrations with erroneous information, including non-existent and false names, and duplicates.

But it's still unclear how many of these fraudulent forms were submitted.

Secretary of State Ross Miller told Fox that the flawed registrations included the names of Dallas Cowboys football players. "Tony Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada, and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4," Miller said.

Miller added that no ACORN employees or canvassers have been arrested or charged in connection with the raid.

A month ago, state and federal authorities launched a joint task force to investigate voter-fraud complaints.

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Topics: ACORN, Voting

Voting

Nevada ACORN Office Raided By State Authorities

Zachary Roth | October 7, 2008, 2:03PM

Nevada investigators today raided the offices of ACORN -- a group that works to register minorities and low-income people to vote -- looking for evidence of voter fraud, reports the Associated Press.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN) is accused of submitting multiple voter registrations with false and duplicate names, according to a spokesman at the office of Secretary of State Ross Miller, a Democrat.

Two months ago, state and federal authorities formed a joint task force to pursue charges of election fraud in Nevada.

We're looking into the question of how much credible evidence exists of ACORN's involvement in significant voting fraud, and will keep you posted.

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Topics: Voting

Henry Waxman

Waxman To Probe Fannie and Freddie

Zachary Roth | October 7, 2008, 1:20PM

In response to concerted requests from Republicans, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who chairs the House Oversight Committee, announced today that the committee will hold hearings into the failure of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Waxman's low-key announcement -- "the request we've received from the minority will be pursued," he said -- came at a hearing with executives of AIG, as part of a committee investigation into the failed insurer. Yesterday, GOP members of the committee launched a campaign to discredit Waxman's broader investigation into corporate misdeeds, including at AIG.

Republicans had also called on Waxman to look into Fannie and Freddie, who, unlike many other corporations implicated in the current financial crisis, have closer ties to Democrats than to the GOP, by some assessments.

At a hearing yesterday, Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the committee, said of Fannie and Freddie: "They seem to be at the epicenter of the crisis, and yet the chairman continues to focus on issues, such as executive compensation, that generate headlines but neither get to the root of the problem nor move us any closer to a solution. We'd hate to think the millions of dollars Fannie and Freddie executives contributed to Democratic congressional candidates also contributed to the reluctance to investigate this aspect of the crisis."

Republicans also called, at this morning's hearing, for Attorney General Michael Mukasey to appoint a special prosecutor to look into Fannie and Freddie.

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Topics: Bailout, Henry Waxman, Michael Mukasey

Alaska

Todd Palin To Answer Questions in Trooper-Gate Probe. Kind Of.

Zachary Roth | October 7, 2008, 10:28AM

So it looks like Todd Palin will answer questions in the Alaska legislature's Trooper-Gate investigation after all. But there's a catch.

According to representatives of the McCain-Palin campaign speaking at an Anchorage press conference last night, the First Dude will respond to questions from independent investigator Steve Branchflower, but only in writing, and with the answers funneled through his lawyer.

The campaign argued that his written responses would satisfy the subpoena issued by the legislature to Todd Palin. In response, Sen. Hollis French, the Democratic lawmaker overseeing the probe, told the Anchorage Daily News that the full Senate would decide whether Todd Palin is really off the hook. Resisting a subpoena can be punished with jail time.

It was announced over the weekend that seven other subpoened witnesses, all of whom work for the Palin administration, will testify in person this week.

Branchflower is expected to wrap up his investigation late this week, and release a report shortly thereafter.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Todd Palin, Trooper-Gate

Voting

Montana GOP Targets WWII Hero in Voter Challenge

Zachary Roth | October 6, 2008, 6:10PM

Last week, we noted the announcement by the Montana Republican party that it's challenging the voter registrations of over 6000 voters, mostly in Democratic-leaning counties.

The GOP has presented the move as an effort to combat fraud. For all the challenged voters, says the party, there were discrepancies between the address under which they registered to vote, and a U.S. postal service address database.

But two registered Montana voters, along with the state Democratic party, this morning filed suit with a federal court to stop the challenges, calling the GOP move "a transparent and very likely unsuccessful attempt" to discourage voters from turning out.

It's already clear that the list of challenged voters includes a good number of people who are hardly prime suspects for voter fraud.

In an opinion piece published yesterday in the Montana Standard, the state's GOP lieutenant governor, John Bohlinger, noted that one voter who's being challenged is Frank St. Pierre, a World War II veteran who helped save thousands of Allied troops in Dunkirk, and happened to move across town recently*. Bohlinger called the effort to challenge St. Pierre "an utter disgrace."

And as we told you earlier today, the list also includes Kevin Furey, a former Democratic state representative who's an army reserve officer about to deploy to Kuwait. (The GOP has since backed down on that one.)

Also appearing on the list are Matt Gouras of the Associated Press, who has been covering the presidential race in Montana, and Alden Downing, a former reporter for the local NBC affiliate who's now serving as communications director for GOP gubernatorial candidate Roy Brown. That's according to Matt Singer, who heads Forward Montana, a progressive activist group based in Missoula that obtained a copy of challenged voters in Missoula county -- and appears on it himself. (This afternoon, the group unveiled a website that allows users to search the lists of challenged voters from Missoula and Lewis and Clark counties. Additional counties will be added as the information becomes available, said Singer.)

On Saturday, John Brueggeman, a Republican state legislator, spoke out against the challenges, telling the Great Falls Tribune: "I can't think we'll do anything but irreparable harm to our party" with independent voters who may be targeted.

But that same day, the state GOP chair informed a local paper that the voter-challenge party is just getting started. "These counties are the beginning, not the end," Jake Eaton told the Billings Gazette. "We're looking at this across the state."

* This sentence has been corrected from an earlier version.

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Topics: Voting

Voting

Indiana Republicans Making Voting Harder for Blacks

Zachary Roth | October 6, 2008, 1:56PM

Indiana is one of the key red states that Barack Obama has unexpectedly put in play this year. So it's not surprising that the GOP is pulling out all the stops to keep it in their column -- including, predictably, launching an effort to make it much harder for African-Americans to vote.

In a nutshell, here's what's happened so far. The details get a little intricate, but stay with us here:

To win Indiana, Obama would likely need a big turnout from three low-income, heavily African-American cities, in the northern part of Lake County, near Chicago. Those three cities -- Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago -- together comprise more than 40 percent of the county's population. But under Indiana law, early voting can take place only in the county clerk's main office, which for Lake County is in Crown Point, more than an hour's drive from those cities.

As a result, on September 23, the county board of elections, on a 3-2 party-line vote, approved the opening of satellite early-voting centers in the the three cities. (State law specifically gives elections boards the authority to approve satellite voting centers, and early voting occurred at the centers in advance of the Democratic primary in May.)

But Republicans argue that the decision is unfair to voters in other parts of the state, many of whom would still need to travel to their county seat to vote early. Last week, the county GOP challenged the move, arguing that the centers can only be approved through a unanimous vote of the election board, and asking for a restraining order on early voting. Superior Court Judge Calvin Hawkins -- a recent appointee of the state's GOP governor, Mitch Daniels -- issued the order Friday.

Within hours, a federal judge had vacated that decision, and announced a hearing this Thursday to resolve the issue.

Democrats had hoped to open the satellite voting stations today, but have agreed to hold off until the issue is resolved. They have said that if the restraining order is not upheld on Thursday, they plan to open the centers the following day. But whatever happens, almost a week of easier access to the polls for many of the county's low-income residents has been lost.

Lake County has been in the news already this year in the context of voting. On primary night, the mayor of Gary, an Obama supporter, said publicly that his city had "delivered" for Obama, and did not release vote totals until unusually late in the night, leading to suspicions that the results were deliberately delayed to deny Hillary Clinton the chance to claim victory that night.

But it's worth pointing out that this may not be the only tactic in the Indiana Republicans' bag of vote-suppression tricks. The party chair in Marion County -- which contains Indianapolis, the state's other Democratic stronghold -- last week refused to rule out using foreclosure records as a basis for challenging voters. A GOP official in Michigan last month was quoted by an online news site saying that similar plans were in the works for one key county in that state, though he later back-tracked amid the ensuing furor, and is now suing the site for libel.

Of course, in recent weeks we've seen a range of other possible Republican vote-suppression tactics. Among other examples, in Montana, the state GOP last week used discrepancies in listed addresses to challenge the eligibility of more than 6000 voters, mostly in Democratic-leaning areas -- including at least one member of the military who's about to deploy to Kuwait. The party has now said it plans to issue more challenges.

And a flyer circulating in African-American neighborhoods of Philadelphia last week, whose authorship is unknown, falsely asserted that voters with outstanding warrants or unpaid parking tickets could be arrested at the polls.

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Topics: Voting