October 10, 2008 at 04:38:38
Headlined on 10/10/08:
Palin Guilty - Troopergate Witnesses & McCain Campaign Obstructed Justiceby Steven Leser
A bombshell is coming out of the Alaska investigation into Troopergate, the scandal where Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is alleged to have committed abuses of power by using her office to try to fire her sister’s ex husband, an Alaska State Trooper.
The New York Times reports here
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/us/10trooper.html that the Alaska State Legislature’s bipartisan investigation is unearthing evidence that Sarah Palin and her aides pressed then Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire Trooper Wooten repeatedly and when he refused, he was fired. According to the Times:
…an examination of the case, based on interviews with Mr. Monegan and several top aides, indicates that, to a far greater degree than was previously known, the governor, her husband and her administration pressed the commissioner and his staff to get Mr. Wooten off the force, though without directly ordering it.
In all, the commissioner and his aides were contacted about Mr. Wooten three dozen times over 19 months by the governor, her husband and seven administration officials, interviews and documents show.
“To all of us, it was a campaign to get rid of him as a trooper and, at the very least, to smear the guy and give him a desk job somewhere,” said Kim Peterson, Mr. Monegan’s special assistant, who like several other aides spoke publicly about the matter for the first time.
Ms. Peterson, a 31-year veteran of state government who retired 10 days before Mr. Monegan’s firing, said she received about a dozen calls herself. “It was very clear that someone from the governor’s office wanted him watched,” she said.
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The Times goes on to talk about how Monegan’s successors were also pressured to take action against Wooten.
Yesterday, according to this AP article in Yahoo
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081010/ap_on_el_pr/palin_troopergate , Palin and the McCain campaign desperately tried to get around the upcoming findings of the investigation by, amazingly, issuing its own report on what happened without performing any real investigation. So, who needs official investigations and criminal trials? Just issue a report declaring yourself innocent!
When viewed against the McCain campaign’s efforts to attack and derail the investigation into Troopergate, the new revelations raised by witnesses are dynamite and raise additional questions.
Did McCain and his campaign obstruct justice, or conspire to obstruct justice because they knew that Palin was guilty of these abuses of power?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Palin-Guilty--Troopergate-by-Steven-Leser-081010-851.html