Warned by the Court

"It is the mother's [Hackett's] responsibility to set boundaries for her relatives and insure [sic] they respect them, and the disparagement by either parent, or their surrogates is emotional child abuse," Judge Suddock wrote. He added that: "If the court finds it is necessary due to disparagement in the Mat-Su Valley [the area north of Anchorage where Palin and her extended family live], for the children's best interests, it [the court] will not hesitate to order custody to the father and a move into Anchorage." Cyr, the union official, said that to his knowledge, no such move was ever ordered.

The "Troopergate" special investigator, former prosecutor Steve Branchflower, was hired by a unanimous vote of state legislative leaders. His mission: to investigate whether Palin fired Walter Monegan—her State Public Safety Commissioner (and the official in charge of the State Police)—when he refused to dismiss or open a new disciplinary investigation of Wooten after receiving complaints about him from Gov. Palin and her husband Todd. Initially, Palin indicated she would cooperate with the investigation. But more recently, a lawyer hired by the state to represent her in the case asked the Alaska Attorney General to request that a state personnel board conduct its own special-counsel inquiry and demanded that the state legislature back off.

At the heart of the continuing "Troopergate" flap is evidence that despite Judge Suddock's warnings back in 2005 and 2006, Palin and her husband continued to make disparaging allegations against Wooten, even after she went to the statehouse. During her first security briefing with a representative of the state police, Palin and Todd were both asked whether they knew of any potential physical threats against them, according to a deposition taken from one of Palin's top aides following her election in Nov. 2006. Both said the only threat they were aware of was posed by Wooten.

The Palins later raised allegations about Wooten with public-safety chief Monegan, according to an account Monegan gave to The Washington Post. Last February, a top Palin gubernatorial aide named Frank Bailey criticized Wooten in detail in a conversation with another senior state-police official. Bailey repeated previous charges made by the Palins against the trooper—including allegations  that he had Tasered his stepson; driven a cop car while holding a beer; and shot a moose without a permit (charges which resulted in his suspension for five days without pay as a trooper). But Bailey also made a new allegation: that Wooten might have submitted a questionable workers' compensation claim. The state police recorded Bailey's conversation, and Palin later released it after Monegan's sacking.

Palin and Bailey both said that Palin did not instigate Bailey's complaints about Wooten to the police. Bailey, who is now on paid leave from his state job, has said that in trashing Wooten to state police management, he had "overstepped my boundaries … I should not have spoken for the governor, or Todd, for that matter."

In a press release issued last week by her new lawyer, Palin continued to attack the character of Wooten—still serving as a state trooper in Palin's hometown of Wasilla. The release repeats allegations that Wooten had threatened members of her family, including her father, with violence; that Wooten had threatened to "bring" Palin and members of her family "down;" and that Wooten had once been the subject of a court-imposed domestic-violence protection order. A court filing by Wooten's lawyer indicates that within months of being issued, the violence protection order was dismissed.

© 2008