Word: wooten
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...Governor Sarah Palin abuse the power of her office in trying to get her former brother-in-law, State Trooper Mike Wooten, fired...
...refusal to fire Mike Wooten the reason Palin fired Commissioner of Public Safety Walt Monegan? Not exclusively, and it was within her rights as the states' chief executive to fire him for just about any reason, even without cause...
...spirit of transparency and accountability before she became the Republican Party's vice-presidential nominee. The Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee had started the inquiry when former public safety commissioner Walt Monegan alleged that he might have been dismissed for not firing the allegedly loutish state trooper Mike Wooten, who was in a bitter custody battle with Palin's sister Molly McCann and was accused of threatening members of the governor's family. The investigation has since been painted by John McCain and Palin backers as a purely partisan exercise, particularly because the committee chair, state senator Hollis French...
That seems far-fetched, but the whole affair is a rarity in Palin's charmed career: a political miscalculation. To many observers, the underlying accusations in Troopergate are not all that damning. Many Alaskans have sympathy for the anxiety and frustration the Palins felt over Wooten's continued employment. In Anchorage, I've heard time and again that Palin could have avoided further scrutiny with a single convivial mea culpa at the outset, apologizing in particular for her initial inaccurate denial that anyone in her administration, including herself, had contacted Monegan about Wooten. Stapleton says the firing was a personnel...
...artificial deadline" and that the real question of the investigation was already solved in his mind - Palin had the right to fire Walt Monegan because he was an at-will employee. But the other question is still germane: Did Palin, her staff and her husband pressure Monegan to remove Wooten from the force? There's evidence to suggest they did, starting with Palin's own admission that there were over two dozen contacts between her allies and Public Safety officials about Wooten...