The anatomy of a scandal
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For those of us who pay way too much attention to politics, it's not hard to understand how in one week we went from the firing of a commissioner to the scandal that is before us today.
They say in politics, just like life, timing is everything. And when you look at the timing of events over the last week, the Monegan firing makes the case.
It probably seemed like a reasonably good time to fire Walt Monegan a week ago Friday for the Palin administration. So they decided to send a staffer to fire Monegan at the same time the governor was getting on a plane and would be out of town for a few days and when she came back the idea was that this whole thing would have blown over.
Unfortunately, it was Walt Monegan she fired. A man respected by not only the people who knew him, but the employees who worked for him.
Immediately questions started arising. Why was Walt fired? What is wrong with the department? But with no governor around to answer the question directly and her staff fumbling for a plausible explanation, the situation didn't blow over...it blew up.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Monegan's replacement was named less than 72 hours after his firing, and with the appointment of Chuck Kopp, brought a whole new line of questions about why Walt was being replaced.
The fact that Palin wasn't there to introduce her new Commissioner of Public Safety and didn't wait until she returned to make the announcement, also gave cause for people to say she was ducking the media so she wouldn't have to answer questions about Monegan's dismissal.
Then Thursday morning, right here on this website, we posted a blog that asserted that Monegan was fired because he disagreed with the governor on budget priorities and that he was being pressured to fire a State Trooper who happened to be Governor Palin's ex-brother in law.
On Thursday afternoon, the Public Safety Employees Association, at the request of Trooper Mike Wooten, realeased to the media his personal file detailing the lengthy list of complaints filed against him by Governor Palin and her family.
On late Thursday afternoon, Palin put out a terse press release denying any and all involvement in pressuring Monegan to fire Wooten. But again, she couldn't and wouldn't articulate a plausible reason why she fired Monegan.
On Thursday evening, every local news station ran the Wooten story as their lead story drawing more attention to the issue.
On Friday morning, Palin made the rounds of talk shows where the hosts are Palin friendly and dare not ask any tough questions. Palin proceeded to trash both me and this blog.
This is what Mark from the Bob & Mark show posted on the ADN political blog on Friday morning while Palin was on their show:
30 July 18, 2008 - 7:38am | hitman
The Governor... is on my show right now...we'll post the interview on the webite as soon as possible. This baby is put to bed, and someone owes the Governor an apology...but knowing them, won't do it.
However when she was invited to appear on the Mike Porcaro show later on Friday, her staff told Porcaro that she couldn't appear because she couldn't talk about the issue. But yet she appeared on two other talk shows earlier in the day. The reason she refused to show up on Porcaro's show is that the guy is smart and asks tough but fair questions; but Palin couldn't answer tough but fair questions on this issue.
Then hours later, Walt Monegan broke his silence and in doing so contradicted everything the governor offered in her defense and implicated her husband in what will now become a high profile investigation.
Later Friday evening, after KTUU broke the story of Monegan admitting that Todd Palin and others had pressured him to fire State Trooper Mike Wooten; this is what Mark from the Bob & Mark Show posted on ADN political blog:
56 July 18, 2008 - 8:47pm | hitman
Monegan has broken his silence and said that Todd Palin, Frank Bailey (of the Governor's office), and Annette Krietzer, Commissioner of Administration, all pressured him to fire Wooten, which he declined to do, and he also said that he finally told the administration that the conversations about firing Wooten had to stop.
You know whats next...the Governor will say that SHE never pressured Monegan. Kaboom!!!!
This does not bode well for palinbots/palinistas.
In a little more than 13 hours, our friend the Hitman went from saying the baby was put to bed and we owed the governor an apology to asserting the governor would use semantics to escape responsibility.
I think we're owed an apology....and maybe a beer.
Where does this all go?
Yesterday, lawmakers had begun discussions about how they would handle moving forward with some kind of inquiry. But that was before Walt Monegan talked.
Now with Monegan's public confirmation that he was pressured numerous times, including by the governor's husband, lawmakers will go right to hiring an independent investigator to uncover the facts.
This is where it gets extremely dicey for this administration.
By evidence of their initial response to Monegan's admissions, the Palin administration plans on digging in their heels. Last night, Palin spokeswomen Sharon Leighow sent this response to a reporter's inquiry:
"At no time did Todd Palin or anyone from the administration pressure Commissioner Monegan to fire Trooper Wooten."
A word of advice to the Palin administration, the cover up is always worse than the crime.
Unfortunately that advice doesn't bode well given Sarah Palin's own life story as detailed in her recent biography:
Chapter One: Growing up Sarah
When things got out of hand, however, they agreed on one thing. "We had a pact...If any of us got hurt, or if we broke something, we promised not to tell."
It is well known that more people within the DPS other than Monegan had contacts from Todd Palin and others inside the governor's staff about firing Trooper Wooten.
In fact two former insiders have reportedly said they were growing uncomfortable with how many times the name Wooten was being brought up in the governor's office.
With supoena power, all of these folks will be weeded out and it will just keep getting more and more damaging. But some good will come out of it as well.
This is an administration that climbed to power by stepping up on the backs of other sinners. The behavior of Greg Renkes, Randy Ruedrich and Governor Frank Murkowski to name a few.
And of course don't forget Governor Palin demanding that both Congressman Don Young and Senator Ted Stevens come clean with the public about their legal issues.
Now for the first time, an administration that promised openness and transparency will actually get a lesson in what that really means.
Now that's what I call standing up for Alaska.
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