Alaskan Drama Queen Sarah has claimed that ethics complaints have cost her $500,000.00 of her personal funds, and $2,000,000.00 to the state.
This was for a total of 15 ethics complaints, at an average of $166,666.66 per action.
As a lawyer of 20 years experience (including business litigation, some of which has been highly complex), my response (glib though it may be) is WTF?????
Palin Ethics Complaints May Have Connection to Lower 48 Democrats
THOMAS VAN FLEIN, GOV. SARAH PALIN'S ATTORNEY: A total of 15 were filed as of yesterday. A new one was filed yesterday. But all 15 have been dismissed. There was never a finding of any ethics violation or violation of our ethics law.
And the cost has been tremendous to her personally, about half of million dollars, and the state itself has incurred up to $2 million combined with the ethics complaint, actions that it has had to pay for on its end, along with responding to public record act requests.
VAN SUSTEREN: Thomas, what was the one filed yesterday?
VAN FLEIN: There was one filed yesterday by the same person who actually filed one against the governor. Previously, it was dismissed, and his prior complaint was frivolous. It alleged that you helped the governor violate the ethics act when you interviewed her in her office last January.
So this same fellow has now filed a new one, saying it is unethical for to accept per diem pay.
VAN SUSTEREN: So the problem that this person had with my interview with her, our interview with her, was simply the location. So that generated an ethics complaint, right? It was not the content?
VAN FLEIN: Well, that was a pretext -- well, no, I believe that it was the content. The complaint had said that you must be talking politics with her on state property, and breathing state air, and using state heat and sitting in a state chair. That's all improper use of state equipment for partisan purposes. It was content and equipment.
When you consider Van Flein's spin on this, the scope of the legal expenses is breathtaking, and on analysis, becomes the story.
Ah, but wait - there's another story on the expenses.
Palin ethics complaints cost Alaska $296,000
Ethics complaints against Gov. Sarah Palin and top members of her administration have cost the state personnel board nearly $300,000 over the past year, almost two-thirds of which appear to be from the Troopergate investigation of the governor.
That's according to new figures released by the personnel board, which described them as "independent counsel expenditures." The board hires private lawyers to investigate the complaints. The expenditures were released after the personnel board expressed frustration at the costs of the complaints. Palin has said the state is wasting money trying to resolve "frivolous" complaints against her.
The bulk of the expenses – $187,797 – appear to stem from Troopergate, the messy case involving Palin's former brother-in-law, a state trooper, who got on the wrong side with Palin and her family.
More reasonable, but still works out to over $53,000 per complaint - an outrageous amount of money. Makes you wonder why Van Flein is so badly misrepresented by his own words.
Of course, if the bulk of it is related to Troopergate, lets all rewind some clock....
Palin herself initiated at least a part of the ethics case to counter a legislative investigation into the same matter
As we all remember, that was to avoid the Branchflower report by going to her pets at the executive ethics board.
Here's the list of complaints:
http://www.adn.com/...
Many of them are less than earth shattering. Only a couple of them would appear to justify expenses approaching that $53,000.00 mark.
So where's all that extra money going? Is Van Flein or some other configuration of lawyerdom overcharging in violation of the ethical canons? Is he making deliberately misleading statements about a legal matter?