ABC’s Jake Tapper bills himself as a journalist. Perhaps he is, but this evening he’s masquerading as a Democrat attack dog playing it fast and loose with the truth. If he were a public company CFO reporting on company earnings, he might well end up serving time for fraud.
In his October 12 anti-Palin propaganda piece with the flatly false headline, “Palin Makes Troopergate Assertions that Are Flatly False,” Tapper goes nuts. Here’s a quicky dissection:
On Saturday, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin twice spoke to reporters about . . . whether she had abused her power in trying to get her sister’s ex-husband Mike Wooten fired as a state trooper, and for firing Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan . . .
Palin spoke on the phone with Alaska reporters about the report. The McCain-Palin campaign only allowed one question per reporter. The journalists came from the Anchorage Daily News, KTVA-Channel 11 and KTUU-Channel 2. No follow-ups were allowed.
Barack Obama (running for President) has gone without a single press conference for the most wrenching 2.5 weeks in recent U.S. memory and Tapper thinks it’s news that Palin (running for VP) won’t allow follow-ups at a news conference focused on a total non-story?
“Well, I’m very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing,” Palin said, “any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that.”
That’s just not the case.
One can make the argument, as Palin and her allies have tried to do, that this investigation — launched by a bipartisan Republican-controlled legislative body — was somehow a partisan Democratic witch hunt, but one cannot honestly make the argument that the report concluded that Palin was “cleared of any legal wrongdoing” or “any hint of unethical activity.”
Well, yes, actually the investigator’s report — don’t forget this is not a Commission finding, it’s a report by a lone-wolf Democrat — states categorically that Palin’s own behavior was legally within her power as Governor and entirely “proper”. His contradictory rhetoric about “abuse of power” can fairly be written off as partisan mudslinging meant to generate juicy headlines — which is exactly what it was used for. Unfair and unprofessional. Just politics. Tapper admits as much here:
The investigator did conclude that Palin’s firing of Monegan was within her power, that “although Walt Monegan’s refusal to fire Trooper Wooten was not the sole reason he was fired by Governor Sarah Palin, it was likely a contributing factor to his termination as Commissioner of Public Safety. In spite of that, Governor Palin’s firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.” . . .
“The evidence supports the conclusion that Governor Palin, at the least, engaged in ‘official action’ by her inaction if not her active participation or assistance to her husband in attempting to get Trooper Wooten fired [and there is evidence of her active participation.] . . .
Here, the investigator heads off, probably violating his own bar association’s code of ethics, into the land of speculation and supposition — “at the least” . . . “action by inaction” (huh?? — didn’t read anything about that in the ethics code) . . .
. . . She knowingly, as that term is defined in the above cited statutes, permitted Todd Palin to use the Governor’s office and the resources of the Governor’s office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired. Her conduct violated AS 39.52.110(a) of the Ethics Act…
Let’s get this straight: No individual investigator is empowered to unilaterally conclude that anyone, anywhere, has done anything wrong. He can say that he believes this to be the case, but he can’t conclude a thing. In this sense, he protests too much. And so does Jake Tapper, who ought to know better paid as much as he is by ABCNews.
Asked “Governor, did you abuse your power?” she said, “No, and if you read the report you’ll see that there was nothing unlawful or unethical about replacing a cabinet member. You gotta read the report, sir.”
It’s true that there’s nothing “unlawful or unethical about replacing a cabinet member” in principle. And the report concluded that she had the power to fire Monegan.
But the report concluded that she had abused her power, and there was indeed something “unethical” about her behavior, insofar as it violated the state Ethics Act.
But now Palin has moved on from parsing to assertions that are not true.
No, Jake. Take a look in the mirror. You are parsing the report and playing word games. The report (copy below) explicity declares that she had the legal power and exercised it properly:
“Governor,” asked a reporter with the Anchorage Daily News, “finding Number One on the report was that you abused your power by violating state law. Do you think you did anything wrong at all in this Troopergate case?”
“Not at all and I’ll tell you, it, I think that you’re always going to ruffle feathers as you do what you believe is in the best interest of the people whom you are serving,” Palin said. “In this case I knew that I had to have the right people in the right position at the right time in this cabinet to best serve Alaskans, and Walt Monegan was not the right person at the right time to meet the goals that we had set out in our administration. So no, not having done anything wrong, and again very much appreciating being cleared of any legal wrongdoing or unethical activity at all.”
Again, not true.
She was NOT cleared, certainly not of “unethical activity.”
Ah. Here we have Tapper’s admission that he’s been playing word games all along. Up top, he was accusing Palin of doing something illegal. Now he’s backing of that falsehood, hedging with “certainly not of . . . ” Busted! And again, the report must be read in its entirety to understand that the investigator’s throw-away about “abuse of power” was itself an abuse of his power. He wasn’t chartered to render such judgment, nor could he ever on his own make such a conclusive determination.
Tapper’s “update” is telling:
UPDATE: McCain-Palin spox Taylor Griffing writes:
“The investigation set out to determine whether Gov. Palin had acted properly in reassigning Walt Monegan, it concluded that she absolutely did. The Legislative Council’s investigation offers an opinion based on a very tortured reading of the Ethics Act, but, as Legislative Council Chairman Kim Elton pointed out yesterday, it has no force in law.
“Unable to find wrongdoing under the original investigation, Mr. Branchflower [a Democrat with an agenda] tried to stretch the Ethics Act to fit facts that are well beyond the scope of the law. To say she is in violation because she did not stop Todd Palin from raising concerns with appropriate authorities about a rogue State Trooper who had threatened their family and abused the public trust really defies commonsense and has no basis in the law. Besides, as Todd pointed out in his interrogatory responses, she did ask him to ‘drop it.’
“Also, the Council made clear that the vote to make the report public was not an endorsement of its findings. In fact, five members of the council spoke up to say they do not agree with the report’s findings. The lengths that were taken to stretch the scope of the investigation to find something damaging to say, when the facts bore out that the Governor acted appropriately, show that our concerns about the politicization of this investigation were entirely justified.
“Trooper Wooten has a history of violent and intimidating behavior and threatened the life of Sarah Palin’s father. As anyone would, the Palins raised these serious concerns to the proper authorities. As Todd Palin said in his interrogatory responses, ‘I make no apologies for wanting to protect my family and wanting to publicize the injustice of a violent trooper keeping his badge and abusing the workers’ compensation system.’”
Tapper tries to make the case that an axe-grinding Democrat investigator’s report on the admittedly proper and legal firing of a state official is somehow conclusive that Palin violated legal and ethical duties as Alaska governor. This is the worst, most biased kind of journalism and clear violation of Mr. Tapper’s ethical obligations as a professional journalist. Too bad he’s not running for office. A partisan lone-wolf investigator’s un-cross-examined screed against a sitting Republican governor is about as reliable as a roll of thin toilet paper.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
April 38 10.13.08 at 12:51 am
Excellent. You hoisted Tapper on his own petard, Kurt. His petty petard.
A. Syllogism 10.13.08 at 1:12 am
Sarah and Todd Palin did exactly what common sense dictates they HAD to do. Only fools would ignore the Trooper Wooten’s threats against the Governor’s father and the taser gun used against the child.
Would Tapper argue that Palin’s family should have LESS protection than other Alaskans?
This whole scene is the worst kind of hypocrisy — on the part of the media and Branchflower, the lone wolf Democrat making the stink.
Cosmo 10.13.08 at 9:06 pm
So, basically the problem here is that the law supposes that Todd was acting under his wife’s direction.
“If the law supposes that… the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor(ette); and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.” -Dickens
Cosmo 10.14.08 at 2:58 am
I thought I’d posted this comment earlier, but I don’t see it now. Maybe it was blocked because it had the word “a_ s” in it? Just in case, I’ll edit that word out here.
So, basically the problem is that the law supposes that Todd was acting under his wife’s direction.
“If the law supposes that… the law is a a_s—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor(ette); and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”-Dickens
Cosmo 10.14.08 at 3:06 pm
I guess my comment was just held-up in moderation? Is that why neither showed, but now both are there? It used to be that it told me my comment was waiting to be moderated, if that was the case. This time it acted like a regular post, but didn’t appear.