Halcro also disclosed that “confidential material in Wooten’s Administrative Investigation file had been released to his ex-wife and her attorney. AI files are strictly confidential and can only be released with the written signature of the trooper … no one could explain how the detailed confidential information was released.”
At first Sarah denied everything. In a prepared statement, she said, “To allege that I, or any member of my family, requested, received or released confidential personnel information on an Alaska state trooper, or directed disciplinary action be taken against any employee of the Department of Public Safety, is, quite simply, outrageous.”
Outrageous, but also true. The next day, Monegan confirmed the allegations in Halcro’s blog, saying that not only Todd but also members of Sarah’s administration had pressured him. “The new assertions from Monegan … conflict with what the Republican governor said earlier in the week,” the Daily News reported.
On July 21, Sarah said she would welcome an investigation. “I’ve said all along, hold me accountable. And I’m telling the truth when I say there was never pressure put on Commissioner Monegan.” Had anyone in her administration ever tried to make Monegan do her bidding in regard to Wooten? “No, no, absolutely not. No,” she said.
She got a brief respite the next day when the statehouse voted 24–16 to approve the state’s exclusive contract with and $500 million subsidy to TransCanada. But it was a mark of how far she’d fallen that fifteen house members who had originally voted in favor of AGIA were now against it. One of them, Mike Hawker, an Anchorage Republican, said, “AGIA—I’m a little bit afraid it stands for ‘Alaska Goofs It Again.’ ”
On the same day, Monegan’s replacement, Chuck Kopp, acknowledged that a sexual harassment complaint had been filed against him in 2005 and that he’d received an official reprimand from Kenai city officials. He said he’d hugged the female employee in question “three or four times, friend-to-friend,” but “I did not kiss her.” This contradicted his earlier statement that “There is no history of these types of complaints” and that he’d never received a reprimand.
On July 24 one of Sarah’s spokespeople said she’d known about the complaint when she appointed Kopp, but had been told it was unsubstantiated. She had not been aware of the reprimand. “She is concerned, and she’s also disappointed,” the spokeswoman said. After meeting with Sarah the next day, Kopp resigned.
On July 28 a twelve-member bipartisan panel of legislators voted unanimously to hire an independent investigator to look into “the circumstances and events surrounding the termination of former Public Safety Commissioner Monegan, and potential abuses of power and/or improper actions by members of the executive branch.”
A week earlier Sarah had said, “Hold me accountable.” Now a spokeswoman said that the governor “doesn’t see a need” for the investigation. A Wall Street Journal story quoted state senator Hollis French as saying, “This is a governor who was almost impervious to error. Now she could face impeachment.”
On August 1 the state senate approved the TransCanada license by a vote of 14–5. In both houses of the legislature, it was Democratic support that allowed Sarah to prevail.
But the same day, legislators hired Steve Branchflower, a lawyer with twenty-eight years of experience as a prosecutor in the Anchorage District Attorney’s office, to investigate what was becoming known as Troopergate. In response, Sarah said she would conduct her own investigation, led by her attorney general, Talis Colberg.
Then it got worse. Branchflower had just begun his investigation when Sarah called a press conference on August 13 to admit that, contrary to her earlier denials, one of her aides had called a state police official in February in an attempt to have Wooten fired. It was the worst public moment she’d ever endured.
Talis Colberg, digging through the dirt before Branchflower arrived, had discovered that the state police had recorded the call from Frank Bailey, a longtime loyalist whom Sarah had appointed as director of boards and commissions.
“I do now have to tell Alaskans that pressure could have been perceived to exist, although I have only now become aware of it,” she said, with scant regard for the truth. She admitted that in addition to the Bailey call, members of her staff—including her then chief of staff, Mike Tibbles, and Attorney General Colberg—had contacted public safety officials more than twenty times in regard to Wooten. “The serial nature of the contacts could be perceived as some kind of pressure, presumably at my direction,” she said.
She released a recording of Bailey’s call to state police Lieutenant Rodney Dial. In it, Bailey said, “The Palins can’t figure out why nothing is going on. Todd and Sarah are scratching their heads. Why on earth hasn’t this—why is this guy still representing the department? From their perspective, everybody’s protecting him.”
Bailey also told Dial, “My understanding is, you know, Walt has been very reluctant to take any action … She really likes Walt a lot, but on this issue she feels like it’s, she doesn’t know why there is absolutely no action for a year on this issue. It’s very, very troubling to her and the family.”
Sarah denied knowing anything about anything and dragged Bailey out so he could fall on his sword. He had to tell the press that no one had asked him to make the call and that he didn’t know why he’d indicated he was speaking on behalf of Sarah and Todd.
Andrew Halcro wrote, “In Wooten’s eight-year career, the only complaints that have been filed against him came from people associated with Governor Palin during a divorce and child custody fight in which they were trying to get him fired so he wouldn’t be able to get custody of his children.”
Jesse Griffin wrote in his Immoral Minority blog, “I think it is well past time for Alaskans to not allow themselves to be seduced by Palin’s dewy eyes and to realize they are dealing with nothing more then [sic] another politician who will use her influence to circumvent rules she feels should not apply to her … The bottom line is that Sarah let her desire for revenge get the best of her, and punished an honorable man for not doing what he knew was wrong.”
As August waned and Branchflower continued his investigation, Sarah found herself at the low point of her political career. Former supporters, both Democrats and Republicans, turned against her. After promising honesty, transparency, and the highest ethical standards, she found herself accused of lying, cover-up, and actions that seemed, at the least, a grievous ethical breach.
Autumn is a mere blink of an eye in Alaska, and looking beyond it, Sarah would not have been able to see anything other than a long, dark winter of turmoil, acrimony, and discontent. Then, like an angel on a personal mission from her Heavenly Father, John McCain swooped down to tap her with his magic wand.
SARAH BECAME a national sensation overnight. Her September 3 speech to the Republican convention in Minneapolis was hailed as “dazzling” and “electrifying” by a national media that had at first viewed her with skepticism.
In the weeks that followed, she carried the momentum of Minneapolis with her across the country. John McCain’s previously moribund campaign pulsed with Sarah’s energy. With Todd at her side and her children—especially Trig, the Down syndrome baby—much in evidence, she created a sensation wherever she went. Adoring crowds flocked to her appearances.
Democratic attacks on her lack of knowledge and experience and her inability to answer simple questions were widely viewed as attempts by a panicky East Coast elite establishment to undermine this plainspoken “hockey mom” who personified “real” American values.
Even many in the liberal media were stupefied. For example, while noting that she was a born-again Christian, mainstream media largely ignored Sarah’s religious extremism, even after her blessing by Thomas Muthee went viral on YouTube.
Max Blumenthal, writing in Salon, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere, and Bruce Wilson, on the Talk to Action website, exposed with penetrating clarity Sarah’s close ties to the radical fringe of the Pentecostal movement. Ol
d-line print media, however, seemed to view Sarah’s picaresque religious beliefs as a private matter best left unexplored. (In the same way, they shied from reporting on her children, even after Sarah dragged them with her into the limelight and put them to work serving as props for her political career.)
Later in the campaign, Sarah would excoriate Barack Obama for having been a member of a Chicago congregation presided over by the incendiary reverend Jeremiah Wright. But only a week before McCain chose her, Sarah attended a Wasilla Bible Church service at which the evangelical preacher who’d founded Jews for Jesus said that terrorist attacks in Israel were nothing more than a manifestation of God’s displeasure with the Jewish state.
As governor, Sarah worshipped at the Juneau Christian Center, an Assembly of God affiliate whose pastor railed against evolution, saying, “Believe the word of God—you are not a descendant of a chimpanzee.” In Wasilla, in addition to Assembly of God and the Wasilla Bible Church, she’d also attended services at Church on the Rock, whose pastor preached, “This nation is a Christian nation! God will not be mocked! Judgment Day is coming. Where do you stand?”
That pastor, David Pepper, described Sarah as “a Spirit-filled believer.” He said, “She was very comfortable in the environment of our church. She is very genuine, very authentic.” He also said her involvement in the church went “beyond being just an attender” and that “There is definitely a sense of destiny over her life. There’s a sense that she is here for a time such as this.”
Many evangelicals thought Sarah was the Esther of modern times, comparing her to the Old Testament queen chosen by God to save the Jews from genocide. One of them, Mark Arnold, of Life Covenant Church of Monroe, Ohio, had the chance to meet her during the 2008 campaign and tell her so, an experience he described on his website, Agree in Prayer.
“I got to talk to Sarah Palin,” he wrote. “What an awesome time we had … I confirmed to her that ‘MILLIONS were praying for her and that she was to stand strong and be courageous … Be strong … stand strong … know people are praying … be like a bull-dog and don’t stop … stand strong!’ Each time I would say the above information to her … she would wink at me and say, ‘… THANK YOU and THANK those who are praying for us …’ WOW … OH GOD … YOU ARE AWESOME!”
Arnold believed that the Holy Spirit had called him to deliver a message to Sarah about being Esther. As he approached her, he said in an interview published by Charisma magazine in February 2009, “She spun around, looking right at me, and I told her: ‘God wants me to tell you that you are a present-day Esther.’ She began to cry and shake my hand in an affirming way. She said, ‘Yes, I receive that.’ ”
On September 22, in the midst of the campaign, Mary Glazier prophesied the election of John McCain, but also his death in a terrorist attack that would make Sarah president. Glazier sent out a “WARNING OF IMMINENT ATTACK.” She said two of her “trusted intercessors” had received warnings of a terrorist attack that “would cause national mourning.” One of them, Glazier wrote, “received the scripture Gen. 50:3, ‘A period of NATIONAL MOURNING.’ She then saw Sarah Palin standing alone and she was mantled with the American flag … I knew she was stepping into an office that she was mantled for.”
In mid-October, Sarah did a twenty-minute telephone interview with James Dobson, founder of the Colorado Springs–based evangelical group Focus on the Family. Dobson told her that not only was he praying for her but that he’d just hosted a gathering of more than four hundred “prayer warriors” and that “We were sure asking for God’s intervention” in the campaign.
“Well, it is that intercession that is so needed,” Sarah said. “And I can feel it, too, Dr. Dobson. I can feel the power of prayer and that strength that is provided through our prayer warriors across this nation … We hear along the rope lines that people are interceding for us and praying for us. It’s our reminder to do the same, to seek His perfect will for this nation, and to of course seek His wisdom and guidance in putting this nation back on the right track … I have to have faith that our message will get out there minus the filter of the mainstream media … I have to have that faith that God’s going to help us get that message out there.”
“My goodness,” Dobson said. “If our audience is any indication, they’re getting it. There are millions of people praying for you and for Senator McCain.”
Evidence abounded that Sarah’s extremist beliefs were not only religious but also political. But, again, the mainstream media were too busy swooning to pay attention. Even the disclosure that Todd had been a member of the Alaska Independence Party from 1995 to 2002—he changed his voter registration to Republican only when Sarah decided to run for lieutenant governor—caused little stir.
Sarah herself had spoken at the AIP convention in Wasilla in 2006. As David Talbot of Salon reported on September 10, party chairwoman Lynette Clark viewed her as a kindred spirit. “She impressed me so much,” Clark said. “As I was listening to her, I thought she sounds like what we’ve been saying for years.”
Salon also disclosed that in October 2007, Clark’s husband, Dexter, told delegates at the Secessionist Convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that Sarah “was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town. But to get along to go along, she eventually joined the Republican party … She’s pretty well sympathetic [to us] because of her former membership.”
In 2008, as governor, Sarah recorded a message of welcome to convention delegates in Fairbanks. She said, “I share your party’s vision of upholding the constitution of our great state … I say good luck on a successful and inspiring convention. Keep up the good work, and God bless you.”
The McCain campaign quickly denied that Sarah had been an official member of the secessionist party, and only Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert of Salon investigated her long-standing Wasilla connection to extremists such as Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll.
IN ALASKA, after an initial burst of parochial jubilation that for the first time in history an Alaskan was a candidate for national office, reaction to Sarah’s sudden ascent to national stardom was less than effusive. For one thing, she had unfinished business with the state, most important, Troopergate, the tar baby she couldn’t shake from her heel. On September 12, legislators voted to subpoena thirteen witnesses, including Todd. The next day, more than a thousand anti-Palin protesters showed up at an Anchorage rally sponsored by a group called Alaska Women Reject Palin. The crowd, wrote the Daily News, “appeared bigger than any Anchorage has seen in recent memory.”
On September 18 one of Sarah’s spokespeople announced that Todd would refuse to testify in the Troopergate inquiry, despite being subpoenaed. The next day, neither Todd nor any of the other witnesses called by the legislative committee showed up at the hearing convened to take their testimony.
Again, on September 26, seven subpoenaed Palin aides failed to appear before the committee. The same day, Attorney General Colberg filed a motion in Anchorage superior court seeking to quash the subpoenas. Despite having said, “I’m happy to comply, to cooperate. I have absolutely nothing to hide. No problem with an independent investigation,” Sarah was now stonewalling as hard as she could. Hollis French said, “For over two hundred years, legislatures have exercised their right to oversee the activities of the executive branch. Denying us that authority undermines the basic democratic process.”
The next day, more than a thousand protesters, many chanting, “Recall Palin,” convened in downtown Anchorage to protest her obstruction of the Branchflower inquiry.
Scant attention was paid to any of this outside Alaska, as Sarah continued to mesmerize national media. But on September 30, columnist Michael Carey wrote in the Anchorage Daily News, “Sarah Palin may be making new friends as she campaigns the nation, but at home she’s making new enemies.” He said that “the bulk of the responsibility for the ugly mess” that was Troopergate “falls on Palin herself, who can’t separate her personal life from her professional life.”
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sp; On October 2, an Anchorage judge denied Colberg’s motion to quash the subpoenas, which were now being ignored not only by Todd but by almost a dozen members of Sarah’s administration. On October 5, Colberg announced that seven of the subpoenaed state employees—although not Todd—would testify. Colberg said Todd would respond to written interrogatories.
In his sworn statement Todd acknowledged that he’d waged a personal war against Wooten throughout Sarah’s tenure as governor. For the first time he admitted to initiating frequent discussions with Monegan. “We had a lot of conversations …” Todd said. “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. 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.”
On October 8 the state supreme court heard an emergency appeal by Sarah’s lawyers asking that the entire Branchflower investigation be shut down. The court denied the appeal the next day, clearing the way for Branchflower to deliver his report. As the Daily News wrote, “Within hours of the court ruling, the McCain-Palin campaign looked to discredit the investigator’s report without having seen it.”
The Branchflower report was made public on October 10. It found that Sarah had, in fact, abused the power of her office by seeking so strenuously to have Wooten fired and by allowing Todd to do the same in his capacity as her quasi-official representative. “Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda,” Branchflower wrote. Also, she had allowed Todd to use her office “to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired.”