By Zachary Roth - September 16, 2008, 3:51PM
There's a moment in a lot of political scandals when the contradictions and inconsistencies in the story being put out by the figure accused become so glaringly obvious that they themselves turn into an important part of the story. We may now have reached that point in Trooper-Gate -- especially as regards Sarah Palin's stated reasons for firing Walt Monegan.
A
court filing made yesterday by Palin's lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, asserts that Palin fired Monegan as the state's public safety commissioner because of a series of instances of Monegan's insubordination on budget issues, including Monegan working with an Alaska legislator to seek funding for a project Governor Palin had already vetoed. This alleged pattern of "outright insubordination" is said to have culminated in Monegan planning a trip to Washington to go after federal funds for an initiative to fight sexual assault crimes, which had not yet been approved by the governor. (Van Flein's account was in sync with the
line taken last night by a McCain campaign spokesman at a press conference in Alaska.)
The issue of Monegan's work on the sexual assault initiative doesn't come completely out of the blue. In a lengthy exploration of Palin's record on combating sexual assault crimes, ABC News
reported yesterday that Monegan was the "chief proponent" for an "ambitious, multi-million dollar initiative to seriously tackle sex crimes in the state," and that Palin's office "put the plan on hold in July," just days before Monegan's firing.
But whatever the role of the sexual assault initiative in Monegan's departure from state government, this is by now the third substantive explanation given by Palin for that departure. And, to one degree or another, all those explanations contradict each other.
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