SARAH’S AIRPLANE….Alaska’s First Dude has finally been forced to give testimony in the Troopergate scandal, and apparently getting ex-brother-in-law Mike Wooten fired from his job as a state trooper became a serious Ahab-like obsession with him:
Todd Palin talked with over a dozen state officials, many of them repeatedly, in his crusade to get a state trooper fired whom he considered to be a bad cop, a dishonest person and a threat to the Palin family, according to his sworn statement given Wednesday to a legislative investigator….Todd Palin’s efforts started before his wife became governor and accelerated during the first 19 months of her administration.
….”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,” Palin said.
Hundreds! But that’s actually not the most interesting part of the story. Todd Palin continues to insist that his anti-Wooten jihad had nothing to do with Sarah Palin’s eventual firing of public safety commissioner Walt Monegan, which he says was motivated by an entirely different kind of bad blood: her difficulty getting Monegan to provide her with a plane for official trips:
On the trooper airplane, “It seemed that whenever Sarah needed this plane, it was unavailable,” Todd Palin said. “We were concerned that the Department of Public Safety was retaliating against Sarah for selling the Murkowski jet that Department of Public Safety officials enjoyed using.” In 2007, the governor sold a jet her predecessor, Frank Murkowski, bought in a controversial defiance of the Legislature.
Please, please, can we hear more about this tussle over airplane use? Apparently Todd Palin thinks that’s an entirely proper reason for firing Monegan, and I’m eager to hear Sarah’s take on that. Please?
