McCain’s opponents are running wild with this already.  We had best hash it out now:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s surprise vice-presidential pick, is the subject of a legislative probe into claims that she abused her office by trying to get her former brother-in-law fired from his job as an Alaska state trooper.

Palin is likely to be deposed soon in the case, according to State Sen. Hollis French, who leads the state Senate’s Legislative Counsel Committee.

French’s committee unanimously authorized an investigation into the dismissal of the state’s public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who claims he balked at pressure to remove Trooper Mike Wooten, who had an acrimonious divorce from Palin’s sister.

“I saw e-mails from [independent investigator Stephen] Branchflower two days ago to the Department of Law saying it’s time to schedule a deposition of the governor, her chief of staff and the attorney general who had some contact with the case,”

Senator French is doing his damnedest to get this case rolling now.  Unsurprisingly, he is a Democrat and the possibility that this investigation is politically-motivated can be entertained.  As for the whistleblower, Walt Monegan; he has had a long career in law enforcement.  Here is what you should know about this case:

Governor Palin, according to Monegan, repeatedly brought her concerns about Trooper Wooten to Monegan’s attention during the time that her sister was going through a messy divorce with him:

In total, Monegan says he and his office received 24 calls over 17 months from the governor, her husband and her staff about Wooten.

Some of the allegations she raised are mentioned here:

The alleged meetings with Monegan may have been just the latest steps in Palin’s apparent campaign to alert Wooten’s superiors to his alleged misbehavior.

In 2005, less than three months before she began her campaign for governor, Palin sent an e-mail from her personal account to the head of the Alaska state troopers about Wooten. The e-mail was obtained by ABC News and other outlets.

In the message, Palin relayed more than two dozen incidents in which she or others alleged Wooten had driven drunk, made threats, violated game hunting laws, hurt his son, abused his authority as a law enforcement officer, been unfaithful to his wife, and more.

Palin noted allegations that Wooten had threatened to “bring Sarah Palin down,” as well as make Palin’s father “eat a f******* lead bullet.”

The allegations, taken together, “would lead a rational person to believe there is a problem inside the [state troopers’] organization,” asserted Palin in the e-mail.

“I have objectively separated the divorce and Wooten’s threats against me and my family with the fact that the troopers have a loose cannon on their hands,” Palin wrote.

Now, Monegan doesn’t appear to be denying that Wooten was a tad, shall we say: troublesome.  However, he stated that Wooten had already been disciplined for those acts.  Monegan didn’t believe that further action was warranted.  Also, Monegan concedes that he was never directly told to fire Wooten, although Lt. Rodney Dial—Wooten’s supervisor—was questioned about it by one of Palin’s aides:

Two weeks ago, one of Palin’s aides, former boards and commissions director Frank Bailey, was placed on administrative leave by the governor after admitting he made phone calls to Wooten’s boss, Lt. Rodney Dial, in which he asked why the trooper still had his job. Bailey told reporters at the time that no one asked him to make the call, explaining, “My fear was (Wooten) could fly off the handle and do something that was irreversible.”

Keep in mind, a state trooper who allegedly threatened to kill the governor’s father has not lost his job, even though she’s been in office for two years.  If these accusations that the governor has made about Wooten are true—and Monegan isn’t denying them—I can’t see where there was any wrongdoing in this.  The guy sounds like an asshole, but the governor couldn’t get him removed.  On the other hand, Monegan’s dismissal as Commissioner is more problematic:

Palin’s press secretary Bill McAlister says that the governor denies that she pressured Monegan, attributing his dismissal to “other issues with the public safety commission as to how he was doing his job.”

McAlister says that Palin only discussed Wooten once with Monegan, at a routine security briefing shortly after she won election in 2006 when she cited her former brother-in-law as someone she was concerned about as a security threat.

Obviously, there was an issue,” says Monegan, who claims that the governor talked to him twice and e-mailed him two or three times about the issue. “And did she want us to do more than discipline him? Yeah, anyone can tell you that.

“No one ever—not her, not her staff—has ever said, ‘Fire Trooper Wooten,’” adds Monegan. “They all said, ‘He’s not the sort we’d like to have represent Alaska state troopers.’ But the intention was clear.”

Monegan was finally dismissed on July 11th of this year, after this had been going on for some time.  He’s now claiming that it was retaliation for his refusal to fire Wooten.  If true, Governor Palin sure took her time about it.  Furthermore, Monegan could not legally fire Wooten by state law after he had already been punished.  Surely Palin was aware of this?  Here’s her side of the story:

The governor continues to say she dismissed Monegan and replaced him with Kenai Police chief Chuck Kopp last week because she wants a new direction for the department…

The state troopers launched an investigation in 2005. In the end, Wooten was reprimanded for the moose and Taser incidents. Regarding the Taser, Cyr said Wooten was teaching the child about what if feels like to be hit by the stun gun. The trooper was disciplined without pay for 10 days, which was eventually, under Monegan, reduced, Cyr said.

Cyr believes Wooten is a good cop who has been unfairly targeted by people in power.

Palin said that since she took office in December 2006, the only mention she has made of Wooten to anyone in the Public Safety Department was when she sat down with Monegan at the beginning of her term to discuss her security detail.

She told Monegan that Wooten had “threatened to kill my dad and bring me down.”

She told Monegan allegations of unethical and illegal behavior. But, she said, she thought that was the end of it. “I don’t believe my discussion went anywhere,” she said on Thursday in a phone interview.

Palin said she never has asked for another trooper investigation.

When people ask her if Wooten is her brother-in-law, she said she embarrassingly answers yes, and tells them he is the father of her niece and nephew.

Todd Palin said that since his wife took office he contacted the troopers regarding Wooten only once, in April 2007. He said Wooten was on worker’s compensation for a back injury but Todd Palin saw him numerous times around Wasilla looking like he did not have a back injury—jumping up and down at local games. Then Palin saw him 110 miles from Wasilla on a snowmobile, demonstrating what he thought was an abuse of his worker’s comp. Palin took a photo and forwarded it to Wooten’s boss.

On Thursday, the governor held little regard for the trooper. She and her husband said they do not believe Wooten has what it takes to be a state cop.

“Based on what I know of trooper Wooten and his threat to kill a person, saying they will ‘eat an f’in bullet,’ and you know he said this with a gun on his hip; knowing of his drinking in a patrol car, knowoing of his illegally killing of the moose, knowing of his Tasering I believe at that time his 11-year-old stepson; knowing of his verbal abuse of minors, my daughter. ... I would question any trooper driving a car where the logo is printed on the side of that car being ‘integrity, (loyalty, and courage’).”

Now, Monegan was a member of Palin’s cabinet and could be terminated at her discretion.  Monegan and Palin agree that it was when she first took office (December 2006/January 2007) that they discussed Wooten and it was over a year and a half after that when he was dismissed as Public Safety Commissioner.  I can understand why Palin didn’t come out and say the real reason that she fired Monegan if she just wanted to get rid of him without ruining his reputation.  Still, “a new direction” is a pretty ambiguous reason to fire someone.  Overall, I don’t think that this investigation is going to be able to prove that Monegan lost his job because he obeyed the law by refusing to fire Trooper Wooten.  I do not see an “abuse of power”, given the trooper’s documented record of misconduct and the sheer elapse of time between Palin’s meeting with Monegan on this issue and his eventual dismissal.  I hope that she will answer questions on this matter as openly as possible.  The press is going to be on it after the Convention.

This is not going to go far.  Before anyone accuses me of being skeptical about this because I am on the record as approving of Governor Palin, note this post in which I dealt with the issue of Obama’s citizenship in a fair-minded manner.

The bad news is that this investigation is going to continue through much of the campaign season and distract the McCain campaign from other issues.  Ultimately, I do not believe it will be decisive, but it is going to be annoying.

ABC News

UPDATE: Mata Harley over at Flopping Aces has done a great deal of legwork concerning this case and laid out the best of what we know so far.  VO readers would be well-served to go read it.  Here’s a sample:

Disagreements between Monegan and Palin over a budget cut in the troopers, department morale and recruiting, and bootlegging enforcement are documented by Andrew Halcro. (As I mentioned earlier, but it bears repeating…. Halcro also happens to be the losing primary GOP candidate in the 2006 gubenatorial candidate, and is the source of the complaints against Palin.)

The political plot thickens…

Palin, giving more specifics later in the process than she should have, confirms her reasons for firing Monegan in that position, but offering him another in the department which she felt he was better suited for.

This case is going to look weaker every day.  Let the Democrats run with it.  It’s a snipe hunt.