Working to block more than 20 separate probes

[struggle4progress]

4. Ed O'Callaghan and Troopergate

McCain’s Troopergate Scandal

Palin claims she wants more accountability in Washington. So why is the McCain campaign stonewalling the Troopergate investigation?
By John Nichols
SEPTEMBER 24, 2008

On day one of the Republican National Convention, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell breathlessly reported from the floor of the session that “there are Republican lawyers right now up in Alaska doing a deeper vet on Sarah Palin.” Mitchell was both right and wrong. A “jump team” of top lawyers and communications operatives had indeed decamped to Anchorage. But the dozen McCain campaign fixers–led by a veteran of the Bush v. Gore Florida recount fight of 2000–did not head north to perform a post-selection vetting of vice presidential pick Palin. The hired guns were on the Last Frontier to manage a mess: the prospect that the state-sanctioned investigation of an abuse-of-power scandal involving Palin would destroy the governor’s credibility as a reformer–and with it the argument that their new No. 2’s relative inexperience was mitigated by her able leadership ...

.... the Troopergate scandal .. really had the McCain camp spooked. With its intimations that the governor dismissed Alaska’s top cop because he refused to fire Palin’s former brother-in-law–a state trooper with whom she and her husband were feuding–the controversy threatened Palin’s carefully manufactured image. Weeks before she joined the ticket, her ethics counselor, Wevley Shea, a former US Attorney for Alaska, had warned her with regard to Troopergate that “the situation is now grave.” Despite statements to the contrary, the decision by top McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt to send a strike force, and the relentless focus on Troopergate by its members, like former Justice Department prosecutor Ed O’Callaghan, leaves no doubt that the McCain camp shared Shea’s assessment ...

The most politically volatile conclusion–an election-season determination that Palin had abused her authority in a manner that could lead to official sanctions, perhaps even impeachment–was not something the McCain camp was willing to leave to chance. Top aides parachuted into Anchorage on a two-tier mission. On the ground in Alaska, they initiated a series of stalling schemes designed to prevent a damaging report from being released before the November 4 election. At the same time, McCain acolytes, led by former New York mayor and presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani, appeared on national television to spin the story that the bipartisan inquiry was a partisan witch hunt. In so doing, McCain’s aides provided vivid illustration of precisely what can happen when a determined presidential campaign is willing to do anything to maintain the carefully crafted image of a running mate who has become essential to its electoral prospects.

The rewrite proceeded rapidly. By the time the GOP national convention opened–three days after Palin’s selection–the McCain team, led by veteran Bush/Cheney aide Taylor Griffin and reporting directly to campaign adviser Schmidt, had established a command center in Anchorage and conducted conference calls with Alaska GOP legislators, conservative leaders and associates of Palin to instruct them on how to say “supportive things,” according to an Alaska Republican who was in on the calls but spoke to media on condition of anonymity. “All I keep hearing is, ‘Why don’t you toe the line?'” said Rick Rydell, a conservative Anchorage radio host. Many Republicans did just that; former Alaska House Speaker Gail Phillips, who initially complained to reporters about McCain’s failure to vet Palin, suddenly stopped giving interviews. Calls to Palin’s office by national reporters started being routed to McCain campaign operatives. And Anchorage news cycles came to be dominated by denunciations of the probe from top GOP officials ...

Report finds Palin violated ethics laws

"The truth was revealed there in that report that showed there was no unlawful or unethical activity on my part."
— Sarah Palin on Saturday, October 11th, 2008 in an interview with reporters

By Robert Farley on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 12:00 a.m.

... Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten was involved in a messy divorce from Palin’s sister, and opponents claimed that Palin went so far as to fire the state’s top cop, Walt Monegan, in July because he refused to fire Wooten.

Alaska's 12-member Legislative Council — which has a Republican majority — decided to look into the matter, and in early August, they tapped independent investigator Stephen Branchflower to lead the probe.

Branchflower’s report , released Oct. 10, concluded that while Palin was within her rights to fire Monegan, she "abused her power" and ran afoul of state ethics laws in seeking to settle a score with Wooten ...
"Finding Number One" of the report is "that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Branch Ethics Act " ...