Governor's office: Troopergate is over and Palin testimony won't be released to public

[Blue_In_AK]

Source: Anchorage Daily News

As far as Gov. Sarah Palin is concerned, Troopergate is behind her and she won't provide a transcript of testimony she gave in an investigation into whether she violated ethics laws in firing her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan.

Palin has maintained she did nothing wrong and that Monegan was dismissed for reasons unrelated to her concerns about her ex-brother-in-law, Trooper Michael Wooten. She had called Wooten a "trooper time-bomb" and complained to Monegan in an e-mail that Wooten had tasered his stepson, drank in his patrol car, and shot a moose without a permit, and yet was still on the street.

Her husband, Todd, as well as officials in her administration, pressured Monegan and others at the Department of Public Safety about Wooten. Monegan has said he believes he was fired in part because he wouldn't get rid of Wooten, and one investigation into the matter came to the same conclusion.

Palin cooperated with only one of two investigations into the circumstances of Monegan's dismissal, the one by the state Personnel Board, which she said was the proper venue for an ethics investigation and which cleared her, not the separate investigation by the state Legislature, which found she abused her power by failing to rein in Todd and others, but still had the right to fire Monegan.

When the Personnel Board investigation began, Palin said she wanted it made public.

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Then, Leighow went a bit further:

"Governor Palin waived her confidentiality to release the Personnel Board report - not her deposition. Two investigations concerning this matter have been conducted and concluded; we are not going to relitigate this in the media now. The politics are over and behind us. In both investigations, the investigators found that the Governor acted with her proper and lawful authority in dismissing Walt Monegan. We are moving forward now and not looking back at a matter, which has distracted Alaskans from the key issues at hand; the price of oil, the state of our budget, and resource development in Alaska, including the ultimate construction of a natural gas pipeline."

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Read more: http://community.adn.com/adn/node/135290

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Unbelievable! Queen Sarah decrees that the investigation is over, so it's over. I hope the legislature doesn't let her get away with this.