[Vision2020] Todd Palin Campaigned Years for Firing Trooper

[Tom Hansen]

As a preface to this article, the legislative committee investigating 
Troopergate is expected to release their findings/report some time next 
week.

>From today's (October 9, 2008) Anchorage Daily News at:

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Todd Palin's statement (PDF format)
http://tinyurl.com/5ym8yw

Todd Palin campaigned years for firing trooper
SWORN STATEMENT: He says he wanted to protect his family.

By BILL WHITE, ADN Staff

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Todd Palin's statement (PDF format)
http://tinyurl.com/5ym8yw

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Todd Palin talked with over a dozen state officials, many of them 
repeatedly, in his crusade to get a state trooper fired whom he considered 
to be a bad cop, a dishonest person and a threat to the Palin family, 
according to his sworn statement given Wednesday to a legislative 
investigator.

The 25-page statement from Gov. Sarah Palin's husband, in response to 
questions submitted by the investigator, shows that Todd Palin's efforts 
started before his wife became governor and accelerated during the first 
19 months of her administration.

Todd Palin was waging the campaign against his ex-brother-in-law, State 
Trooper Mike Wooten, who had divorced the governor's sister in 2006 and 
who is involved in an ongoing custody fight.

Two investigations -- one by the Legislature and one by the state 
personnel board -- are under way over whether Gov. Palin or members of her 
administration abused their powers in pushing for Wooten's firing, and 
whether their efforts resulted in the governor's dismissal of her public 
safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, in July.

The Legislature ordered its investigation in late July, and until this 
week Todd Palin and officials of the governor's administration resisted 
subpoenas to tell what they know about Troopergate. Palin's statement 
Wednesday comes after a state judge last week refused to invalidate the 
subpoenas. The Daily News obtained the statement from Thomas Van Flein, an 
attorney for Todd and Sarah Palin.

In his statement, Palin is unapologetic about his efforts to get Wooten 
fired, but he says he doesn't think those efforts had anything to do with 
Monegan's dismissal. He said his understanding is that Monegan lost his 
job due to a "dispute with the governor and her staff over budget issues 
and failure to fill trooper vacancies."

He also suggested there was bad blood between the governor and Monegan 
over two other matters:

• An inquiry from Monegan to the governor about whether she once failed to 
put her Trig, her infant, in a car seat while she was driving.

• The unavailability of a state trooper airplane for the governor's use 
when traveling to the Bush.

On the car seat, Monegan sent an e-mail to the governor on June 30, 12 
days before he lost his job, that said: "Via a soon-to-be-retiring 
legislator, we received a complaint that had you driving with Trig not in 
an approved car seat; if this is so that would be awkward in many ways."

The governor fired back from her private e-mail account: "I've never 
driven Trig anywhere without a new, approved car seat. I want to know who 
said otherwise -- pls provide me that info now."

Todd Palin, in his sworn statement, said this was a "false rumor," and 
that the governor was a passenger in a truck, "on a private farm road 
without traffic at low speed."

On the trooper airplane, "It seemed that whenever Sarah needed this plane, 
it was unavailable," Todd Palin said. "We were concerned that the 
Department of Public Safety was retaliating against Sarah for selling the 
Murkowski jet that Department of Public Safety officials enjoyed using." 
In 2007, the governor sold a jet her predecessor, Frank Murkowski, bought 
in a controversial defiance of the Legislature.

In his statement, Palin repeatedly discusses his quest to get Wooten 
dismissed, but said he never told Monegan to fire Wooten. He said Wooten 
threatened Palin's father-in-law, bullied people as a trooper, drove in 
his trooper car after drinking, improperly used his trooper car to shuttle 
his kids and falsified a worker's compensation claim. Wooten was suspended 
for five days in 2006 after troopers investigated complaints against him.

"We had a lot of conversations about a guy who threatened my family and 
verbally assaulted my daughter. We talked about my concerns. We talked 
about Wooten possibly pulling over one of my kids to frame them, like 
throwing a bag of dope in the back seat just to frame a Palin," he said of 
his conversations with one Palin aide.

"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."

He said by taking his concerns to Monegan he was following the 
instructions regular citizens get for complaining about troopers.

"There is absolutely nothing improper about lodging concerns about Trooper 
Wooten with Monegan or his predecessor -- complaints about State Troopers 
are supposed to go to the Commissioner," he said.

"I make no apologies for wanting to protect my family and wanting to 
publicize the injustice of a violent trooper keeping his badge and abusing 
the worker compensation system. The real investigation that needs to be 
conducted for the best interests of the public at large is the Department 
of Public Safety's unwillingness to discipline its own."

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
"We're a town of about 23,000 with 10,000 college students. The college 
students are not very active in local elections (thank goodness!)."

- Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)


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