The case involves Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, who was fired by Palin, allegedly for refusing to fire Palin’s former brother-in-law, state trooper Mike Wooten. Monegan said that no one explicitly said “fire Wooten,” but that Palin, her staff, husband and family repeatedly pressured him via phone, email and in person to get rid of the trooper. It often took the form of complaining that Wooten had not been fired, he said.

Monegan is a widely respected former Marine who served for 33 years in the Anchorage Police Department, including as Chief of Police from 2001 to 2006. He was asked by Palin in 2006 to become Public Safety Commissioner.

Details and documents on most aspects of the case are at the Anchorage Daily News’ special section on the firing.

Outside of whether Palin is guilty of abusing her power or not, the most troubling aspect of the case is a number of statements by Palin that contradict themselves.

After the investigation was announced, Palin adamantly stated that no one in her administration or staff contacted Monegan about Wooten.

Weeks later, a tape recorded by state police showed Palin’s director of Boards and Commissions, Frank Bailey, speaking to a state police manager saying that Palin and her husband Todd were very frustrated that Palin’s brother-in-law was still on the force, and asking the manager to call Monegan.

Here is the full tape. The parts related to the trooper are not until part-way through the clip. Bailey states that Palin thinks Monegan is doing a very good job, except with regards to his handling of Wooten, Palin’s former brother-in-law. Bailey asks the state police manager if he can bring it up with Monegan. He also reveals he has accessed Wooten’s private personnel file. Palin denies having any awareness of Bailey making the call.

In August, 2008, the legislature unanimously appointed a special investigator to investigate the firing.

At a press conference called to contend the allegations, Palin said she fired him because:

“I was concerned also that we were not doing enough on continuing alcohol abuse issues that I wanted to see tackled, including the bootlegging issues out in rural Alaska.”

But two weeks before, she said the exact opposite when telling the media she had offered him a job as the Director of the Alcohol Beverage Control Board. She said said she offered him the job because:

“I recognize that Walt’s interests and strengths certainly could be put to good use as he could concentrate exclusively on a couple of issues that were his interests – that being bootlegging and alcohol problems in rural Alaska.”

View both statements by Palin in this coverage by TV station KTVA11 in Alaska:

View the whole KTVA11 report here.

In the TV station’s poll, 87% said they thought she was lying.

Here’s more coverage by KTVA11:

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Soon after announcement of the investigation, Alaska Attorney General Talis Colb, at Palin’s request, launched his own inquiry, including interviews with state public safety officials.

The Anchorage Daily News reported:

Critics of the governor … have raised the specter of “witness tampering.” Some legislators said it doesn’t look good for the attorney general to get involved. “I think it is harmful to the credibility of the administration, harmful to the process and harmful to all the parties involved,” said Fairbanks Republican Rep. Jay Ramras, chair of the House Judiciary Committee. “It’s just the worst possible thing to be doing.”

Critics also questioned if the attorney general could be impartial in investigating the Governor, since he works for her. It was later discovered that Colberg had contacted Monegan about Wooten, making him a potential witness in the case. For that reason, an outside law firm was brought in to represent the governor’s office.

It has since been reported that Monegan and top state police officials were contacted at least two dozen times by members of Palin’s staff and family about Wooten. Palin says that she was never once told by any of them about the contacts. That raises a key question about Palin: does she surround herself with staff and family members who don’t tell her what they are doing on key matters such as asking her police chief about taking action against her former brother-in-law?

In her August press conference, the Anchorage Daily News reported:

“Palin, who has previously said her administration didn’t exert pressure to get rid of trooper Mike Wooten, also disclosed that members of her staff had made about two dozen contacts with public safety officials about the trooper.

“I do now have to tell Alaskans that such pressure could have been perceived to exist although I have only now become aware of it,” Palin said. "

E-mails from Palin shown to the Washington Post by Monegan, however, contradict her claim that she only became aware of any potential perception of pressure after the Bailey tape became public.

The e-mails show that Palin was clearly in contact with Monegan about Wooten not being fired. The e-mails, one from from Palin’s personal Yahoo account to Monegan, “harshly criticized Alaska state police for failing to fire her former brother-in-law and ridiculed an internal affairs investigation into his conduct,” the Post wrote.

In an e-mail Feb. 7, 2007, she wrote:

“This trooper is still out on the street, in fact he’s been promoted. It was a joke, the whole year long ‘investigation’ of him. 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’.”

In the past, Palin claimed that she raised the subject of Wooten with Monegan just once when they discussed her security detail soon after she became Governor in 2007 and hired him as public safety commissioner. At that time, she told Monegan that Wooten “had threatened to kill my dad and bring me down.” Palin claimed she thought that was the end of it. Those statements are contradicted by her emails to Monegan.

After being nominated by McCain, Palin argued that the ethics charges were false because she’d have no reason to want to fire a person her sister divorced long ago who she has nothing against now. The divorce, however, only took place in January, 2006.

The e-mails to Monegan also contradict her claim. In the Feb. 7 email above, she said Wooten is “out there today” criticizing her administration and her. In another email, she said Wooten was still harassing his sister:

“He threatened to kill his estranged wife’s parent, refused to be transferred to rural Alaska and continued to disparage Natives in words and tone, he continues to harass and intimidate his ex. — even after being slapped with a restraining order that was lifted when his supervisors intervened,” the e-mail said.

One email also contradicts a statement by the McCain-Palin campaign saying Palin’s family never knew that Wooten had been disciplined, explaining it as a reason her husband Todd kept contacting Monegan about Wooten. Monegan says he told Palin and her husband that Wooten had already been investigated and disciplined. In the email Palin stated she knows the trooper was disciplined but isn’t satisfied with it: “the trooper was ‘investigated’ for over a year and merely given a slap on the wrist.”

After the scandal broke, Palin repeatedly said that she has “nothing to hide” and that she and her administration would cooperate fully with the Legislature’s investigation.

For example:

Yet on Sept. 2, Palin’s lawyer said he was moving to block the Legislature from investigating and would push to move the matter to the state personnel board, a three-member board appointed by Palin that she can fire.

On Sept. 4 Bailey, a key witness, backed out of his interview that day with the investigator, his lawyer said, citing Palin’s move to switch jurisdiction to the personnel board.

Since then, Palin’s lawyer has blocked the investigation in other ways, including refusing to speak to answer questions from the investigator. She originally said she would, but then campaign officials said it might be hard for her to do due to her campaign schedule. The investigator said he could do it via phone, and later offered to do it in written form, but she refused.

Palin charged that the investigation was a partisan attack, but the probe was unanimously approved by a Republican-dominated legislative council with 8 Republicans and 4 Democrats. Palin campaign officials note that Hollis French, the Democrat appointed by the council to oversee the probe, has said the results of the probe could damage Palin. French’s defenders say he was simply stating the obvious. None of the Republicans who voted to initiate the investigation have moved to stop it. The council unanimously decided to move the close of the investigation to October 10th. Before Palin was nominated, it had been scheduled to conclude four days before the election. The council moved it to October 10th so it would not have a last-minute effect on the election.

Here are more stories on the troopergate investigation:

Anchorage Daily News special section: Walt Monegan firing

Long-Standing Feud in Alaska Embroils Palin (The Washington Post)

Fired official: Palin talked to me about ex-brother-in-law (McClatchy Newspapers)

Palin launches own inquiry into Monegan firing (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner)

Palin offers details about state investigation into Monegan firing (Juneau Empire)

On Sept. 5th, the Anchorage Daily News reported:

The union representing state Trooper Mike Wooten has filed an ethics complaint against Gov. Sarah Palin and members of her administration charging a possible unlawful breach of Wooten’s confidential personnel and workers’ compensation files.

…

The union this week lodged an ethics complaint with the attorney general’s office asking for an investigation into whether Palin or her aides tapped Wooten’s confidential personnel and workers’ compensation files and disclosed information in an effort to jeopardize Wooten’s job.

The complaint focuses on Palin aide Frank Bailey, who in February called a trooper commander on a recorded phone line and said the governor and her husband, Todd, were wondering why Wooten was “still representing the department.”

On the recording, Bailey makes reference to Wooten “lying on his application,” and also possibly making a false workers’ compensation claim.

The trooper commander, Lt. Rodney Dial, replied to Bailey: “Frank, where did you get that information from?” Dial added that such information “a lot of times is extremely confidential.”

Bailey replied: “Well, I’m a little bit reluctant to say …”

In a deposition given to Palin’s lawyer, Bailey said he received the confidential information from Palin’s husband Todd:

As to the source of what he told Dial about Wooten, Bailey said: “I was basing it on candid conversations I had had with Todd regarding Trooper Wooten.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that in July, former U.S. Attorney Wevley Shea, an informal adviser to governor Palin, warned her in a letter that the trooper incident could grow into a serious scandal.

The letter, written before Sen. John McCain picked the Alaska governor as his running mate, former U.S. Attorney Wevley Shea warned Gov. Palin that “the situation is now grave” and recommended that she and her husband, Todd Palin, apologize for “overreaching or perceived overreaching” for using her position to try to get Trooper Mike Wooten fired from the force.

After his initial letter in July, Mr. Shea followed up with another letter, dated Aug. 4, in which he told Gov. Palin that she probably couldn’t legally shun a legislative investigation into the firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.

The Associated Press reported:

The (McCain) campaign has released a series of e-mails detailing the frustration several Palin administration officials experienced in dealing with Monegan. The “last straw,” the campaign said, was a trip Monegan planned to Washington in July to seek federal money for investigating and prosecuting sexual assault cases.

In a July 7 e-mail, John Katz, the governor’s special counsel, noted two problems with the trip: the governor hadn’t agreed the money should be sought, and the request “is out of sequence with our other appropriations requests and could put a strain on the evolving relationship between the Governor and Sen. Stevens.”

But a travel authorization document signed by Palin Chief of Staff Mike Nizich on June 18 approves Monegan’s trip to Washington for the purpose of meeting Sen. Lisa Murkowski.