Will it, like its namesake, have legs?
Christ, first they go after Bristol Palin, then Artichoke Palin, and now they’re after their Mom!
I am no fan of Palin, but I just don’t get this one at all. So she’s asking for help paying her legal bills.
… and?
Apparently it’s illegal for her to use campaign funds to pay for her legal defense (or something like that). She can’t co-mingle the funds.
In this case I think it’s more dumb than intentionally dishonest. We should just let her go away in peace.
From your lips to God’s ears.
If she just goes away it will be a good thing for humanity at large.
I can’t tell if the complaint is bull, or the AP is just doing a poor job summarizing the report. So far as I can tell, they’re the only ones that have a copy, and haven’t released the actual text (or at least, I couldn’t find it on google).
I have trouble believing the AK legislature is actually going to take her to task merely for using the word “official” in the sub-title of her funds website.
The investigator’s quoted remarks seem to indicate a conviction that public figures shouldn’t solicit donations for legal defense. That seems really cockeyed to me.
But it should be as painful as possible until she gets that message.
From what I can gather, what Governor Palin did in Alaska is a violation of that states ethics laws. It would not be a violation in most other states. Of course, since she is Governor of Alaska it is only the Alaska law and her behavior that is the issue here.
So… The state doesn’t provide a legal counsel for the Governor, and the state won’t allow the governor to raise funds for her defense.
This seems like a prescription that ensures the only people who run for governor will be independently wealthy.
According to the article, she wasn’t using campaign funds. This was a fund specially set up by her own friends and supporters to help her pay legal bills incurred while defending herself against a barrage of politically motivated, trumped up ethics complaints, apparently in an attempt to do exactly what they did - break her financially and force her out of office.
What the investigator is saying is that since the money is helping Palin personally, what she’s essentially doing is trading the publicity of being governor for personal financial gain, in the same way you’d be guilty if you set up a fund to help pay for a new house.
The difference here is that if Palin weren’t Governor, she wouldn’t be fighting the lawsuits in the first place. But this is more an argument for the state to provide legal defense against frivolous lawsuits for its politicians.
Correction: She quit on her own accord.
The estimates I’ve seen for her legal defense have been in the hundreds of thousands, while the estimates of her book deal have been in the millions. And she should easily be able to leverage her national noteriety for another few million. I seriously doubt she’s been broken financially.
And as Peanut Gallery points out, she was pretty far from being forced out of office. Not only she could she have easily stayed for her remaining year in office if she so desired, that’s pretty much what everyone expected her to do.
Again though, I’m pretty skeptical that the AP report is accurate. It seems to be a summary of a leaked internal report. I’ll wait and see if the legislature actually releases anything to the public.
Question: If Alaska won’t allow her to raise funds because it’s ‘trading on the popularity of the Governorship’, is she allowed to profit by writing a book?
Because if not, that could explain why she’s leaving.
And what I meant by ‘forced out’ is that if you can push someone to incur costs they can’t afford, you are essentially forcing them to do your bidding. I know if it were me and I were racking up $10K in legal bills every week or two, I’d be outta there. Because I’d have no choice.
It sounds like Alaska needs to do something about this - probably after Palin is gone. Maybe provide counsel for the Governor, or make a special exemption for legal defense funds or something. Your political enemies shouldn’t be able to hit your personal finances like that.
I think this is made even worse because of the lax standards for ethics investigations in Alaska. I’ve heard that almost anyone can trigger one with the right complaint to the right person, whether or not there’s any merit to the case.
Here’s the complete list of ethics complaints against Palin. Most of this stuff is really petty. My favorite:
Another was filed because she wore a jacket with an Arctic Cat logo on it while watching a snowmobile race (her husband is sponsored by Arctic Cat). Another complaint was filed because reporters asked her questions about the Presidential campaign and she dared to answer them while in the Governor’s office. Another was filed against her because she posted the news that she had been picked as VP on her governor’s web site.
It looks like some people are scouring her every move and filing complaints against anything that can even be remotely possible to get past initial scrutiny.
It’s too bad that no previous Alaskan Governor, operating under these idiotic laws, ever had political enemies who could exploit them to force to other Governors to resign, isn’t it? What a state–Governors resigning every few months just because some nutball has a vindictive fig up his ass or her ass or some fictional character’s ass, huh? Oh, wait…
Now at $300 per hour, I estimate that the fees generated to dismiss this one
comes to a neat $14.95. The lamer the examples you cite, seems to me, the more laughable the argument becomes that it cost her huge legal fees to defend herself. In the case of a non-existent complainant, I would think she could safely defend herself pretty well by acting pro se: “Your Honor, this complainant is a fictional TV character and, as such, does not exist.”
“Dismissed.”
Are you seriously suggesting that such an effort would be ruinous to Palin? (Well, maybe constructing a reasonably logical sentence would require a lawyer for her, I admit.) And why hasn’t this indefensible, ruinous, costly form of harassment ever been used against any previous Alaskan Governor? Are you seriously suggesting she is the first one to have political enemies?
No, the AP article said the fund ran afoul because it consisted of gifts, giving someone money to write a book isn’t a gift.
Except again, being governor (and VP candidiate) will net her much more money then she’s claimed to have spent in lawyer fees.
Most of the cases mentioned in your link were dismissed as being without merit.
Four of the 18 complaints were due to the firing her brother-in-law, where she was found to be at fault. One was the current complaint, where again, she apparently was found to be at fault. Two were against her aides, not her. One ended with her reimbursing the state. The rest were, like the ones you quoted, so obviously frivolous that they were dismissed without merit and I can’t imagine took much if any intervention from Palin’s lawyer.
I’d be interested in seeing how much she spent on each case. I suspect almost all of it was on her brother-and-laws case.