Andrew Halcro = best sources--Sarah Palin admits Monegan was pressured to fire Wooten AND she DID pay-off Chuck Kopp!

************UPDATE******************

HERE is the raw feed from Palin's press conference courtesy of Alaska Politics.
************************************

Two stories on Halcro's Blog that I've been watching the last several days:

1) You say potato...I say loose ends

Reportedly the Department of Law put acting commissioner John Glass under oath and questioned him yesterday.

So if this really is the excuse the Palin administration is using to explain very questionable behavior, that Branchflower requested it, then the press needs to find out if they questioned the governor and her staff under oath about Monegan's firing.

2) Hush Money?

Yesterday I received an email from a unknown reader who asked if I could put them in touch with the special investigator who was hired to investigate the firing of former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.

His email stated "I have a bit of information for him that he might find interesting in his investigation. It relates to a payment made to Chuck Kopp by the AG's office."

Halcro's sources were correct and now we know (sorta) why Palin was "questioning" everyone.

Gov. Sarah Palin says a recently discovered conversation recording one of her staffers pressuring the Department of Public Safety to fire a state trooper who went through a bitter divorce with her sister will be turned over to a legislative investigator.

Palin has been under heavy criticism since firing former Department of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.

In addition, the state paid a $10,000.00 severance package to Monegan's replacement, Chuck Kopp, the former Kenai police chief who resigned under pressure last month, according to Attorney Gen. Talis Colberg. That's in addition to his salary, he said.

So my question-- was the real reason for her internal investigation that she could find out how many folks had heard about the phone calls from her Administration so that she could figure out the best ways to do damage control? I don't believe for a second that she was learning about all of this the first time.


HERE is the severance agreement with Kopp, which includes mention of the $10,000.00.

HERE you can find the phone call of the man chosen to fall on his sword, Frank Bailey.

And please, Sarah claims that she didn't tell Frank to do this...except that here's what the recording caught:

Bailey says: "Todd and Sarah are scratching their heads, you know: Why on earth, why is this guy still representing the department, he's a horrible recruiting tool. And from their perspective, everybody's protecting him."

And later: “She (Palin) really likes Walt a lot, but on this issue she feels like it’s, she doesn’t know why there’s absolutely no action for a year … it’s very troubling to her and the family. I can definitely relay that.”

Yup...all on his own...no influence from the Palins at all.

It's getting harder and harder to swallow Palin's assertion that the Wooten issue had nothing to do with Monegan's firing.

Let's also be clear on another issue--Palin's sister has been divorced from Trooper Wooten for a few years now. There can only be a couple of reasons this has continued with the intensity we have seen:

1) The "Heath Clan" wants "hillbilly justice" by crushing the man who cheated on one of their little princesses

2) If he loses his job, it's a good bet he'd lose standing in the custody of his kids.

Either one of those reasons are disgusting and as things have developed, both of those reasons are very plausible. Alaska needs to ask if we are going to accept that kind of abuse of power from our Governor?