Although John Coale is a Washington lawyer, maybe he should have read up more on Alaskan law. His lack of knowledge now has Sarah Palin in hot water.
Remember when Greta Van Susteren was given unprecedented access to Sarah Palin for interviews with Van Susteren on Fox News?
There was a quid-pro-quo operating, as John Coale, Greta Van Susteren’s lawyer husband, helped Sarah in a number of ways. One of the things John Coale did for her was set up Palin’s Political Action Committee and legal defense fund, now called Alaska Fund Trust.
This legal defense fund that John Coale helped set up for Sarah Palin is now the subject of her latest ethics complaint. There is no Alaskan law that allows the Governor to use her position as a means of collecting private donations for her personal use, even to fight ethics complaints. So, it turns out that John Coale did Sarah Palin no favors.
Earlier this year, the Greta Van Susteren-John Coale-Sarah Palin axis of political influence was questioned in the New York Times (emphasis mine):
While there, Mr. Coale, a prominent trial lawyer who helped lead the tobacco litigation of the 1990s, talked to Ms. Palin about her legal bills and advised her to start a political action committee. "I started the PAC for her over the next month or two, and helped start a legal defense fund for her. That’s about it," Mr. Coale said last week. "I never advised her on any politics or anything like that."
Mr. Coale’s assistance to Ms. Palin, first reported by The Washington Post in March, prompted questions about the couple’s combination of journalistic and political work.
Just like John McCain failed to adequately investigate Sarah Palin's qualifications for the office of Vice President, Sarah Palin failed to investigate the Scientology duo of Van Susteren and Coale that wanted to ride on Palin's coattails to increased fame and fortune. Palin would have benefited from exercising sound judgment and obtaining advice from several qualified Alaskan lawyers.
But exercising sound judgment is not what Sarah Palin is all about.
Cross-Posted at my blog: www.SarahPalinIndictment.com