Forgive me if this has been posted but there have been so many diaries on Palin and Troopergate, I haven't read them all and I could not find anything on it in my search.
It appears that Sarah pressured her sister, Molly, to lie to the judge about Mike Wooten, the state trooper and Sarah's brother-in-law, accusing him of physical abuse in order to get Molly full custody of her kids. Mike Wooten NEVER physically abused Sarah's sister or the kids by Molly's own admission. This is significant considering initially we were told that Wooten tasered the sister and the kids. In fact, Keith Olbermann told Rachel Maddow that this would be a non-issue because of Wooten's abuse. And Maddow answered that if this had happened to her family, she would rightfully strike back as well.
But it never happened, by the sister's own admission.
Andrew Halcro is the only person Mike Wooten has spoken to as Wooten now refuses to speak to the press. Halcro broke "troopergate" in his blog:
According to Halcro, he was initially examining why Monegan was dismissed from his post as Commissioner of DPS, focusing on budget disputes between the Commissioner and the Governor. Then he received a call last Wednesday morning from someone saying he should speak to Trooper Wooten. He called Wooten, spoke to him for about a half-hour, then called his sources to see if Wooten was credible—"I wasn’t interested, obviously, in chasing any rabbit trails," he says. He felt comfortable with what he heard, so he got together with Wooten Wednesday night for nearly four hours, going through Wooten’s court transcripts, personnel file, and trooper investigation file.
Anchorage Press
Now, according to Halcro:
In 2005, Palin and her sister Molly went to the Palmer Courthouse while Mike Wooten was in Portland with his stepson. They convinced a judge to grant Molly a domestic violence restraining order against Wooten. This was done so Molly could retain full custody of the children.
When Wooten returned from Portland, he realized that there was a order prohibiting him from seeing his kids. Three weeks later, Wooten was granted an appearance in front of the couple's divorce judge.
In front of Judge Suddock, Molly testified that Wooten never hit her or never physically abused her or ever touched the children. She told the judge she was feeling pressure from her family to file the order.
Suddock immediately dissolved the order because there was no proof of any domestic violence and called the order an abuse of the legal system. He then scolded Palin's sister for keeping Wooten's kids away from him.
This appears to be Palin's classic approach to deflecting attention away from situations she has created; blame the other person.
Halcro
This is HUGE. IMO, as big or bigger than troopergate. Sarah had her sister lie to the judge, it appears that Sarah lied as well to the judge and both she and her sister have slandered Mike Wooten. Did Sarah testify under oath when she accompanied Molly to get the restraining order? Did she testify that Wooten was physically abusive? If she did, Sarah is guilty of perjury. And we all know being guilty of perjury is grounds for impeachment!
And if Sarah did not testify, if she pressured Molly into perjury, Sarah is guilty of suborning perjury.
The press, while focusing on the inapproriateness, unethical and possibly illegal acts of Sarah Palin in pressuring for the dismissal of Mike Wooten has completely ignored the fact that the both Sarah and Molly have lied to the court and the public.
This woman is beyond disgraceful.
UPDATE: Then on August 10, 2005 Sarah sent an email to Col. Julia Grimes about the integrity of the Alaska State Troopers and how Mike Wooten poorly represented the office. In it, - get this - Sarah complains that Mike Wooten drives drunk and breaks hunting laws! Um Sarah... glass houses! In the PS she lies (by her sister's admission) and accuses Wooten of "physical abuse": "Again, Wooten happens to be my brother-in-law, and after his infedility and physical abuse of his wife (my sister)..."
UPDATE II: It seems Wooten is not the picture of a perfect man but the accusations that he abused his wife and kids are false. And here is where the story of the tasering his kids comes from:
One day -- maybe a year or two before the investigation -- Wooten showed his stepson his Taser. He had just been to Taser instructor school. Wooten told Sgt. Wall that the boy was fascinated and pleaded to be tased.
"So we went in our living room and I had him get down on his knees so he wouldn't fall. And I taped the probes to him and turned the Taser on for like a second, turned it off. He thought that was the greatest thing in the world, wanted to do it again," Wooten told the investigator. The boy flinched but nothing more, he said. The boy was about 11 at the time.
In his interview with troopers, the stepson said it hurt for about a second, according to Wall's report. The boy said he wanted to be tased to show his cousin, Palin's daughter Bristol, that he wasn't a mama's boy. The probe left a welt on his arm, he said. His mother was upstairs yelling at them not to do it, the boy said.
As Bristol remembered it, the jolt knocked the boy backward, the trooper report says. She said she was afraid.
The probes are attached by thin wires to the Taser cartridge. In the field, an officer fires the probes into a suspect's skin or clothing and the suspect receives a jolt of electricity for five seconds, said Steve Tuttle, a spokesman for Taser International, which makes the devices. They are only incapacitated during that time. In demos, the probes might be taped to a person so that they don't accidentally strike an eye or injure the volunteer, he said. If the Taser is fired for just a second, it would feel like your funny bone was hit but the quick jolt wouldn't knock you over, Tuttle said.
OUCH! Not a very smart thing to do but he did NOT taser the kid in an attempt to hurt him as was reported in the news.