Todd Palin , Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s husband, has refused to testify in the investigation of his wife’s alleged abuse of power, which lawmakers claim will essentially derail the probe until after Election Day, the Associated Press reported.

“Todd Palin, who participates in state business in person or by e-mail, was among 13 people subpoenaed by the Alaska Legislature. McCain-Palin presidential campaign spokesman Ed O’Callaghan announced Thursday that Todd Palin would not appear, because he no longer believes the Legislature’s investigation is legitimate,” according to the AP.

Alaska State Sen. Bill Wielechowski, a Democrat, told the AP the McCain-Palin campaign has taken aggressive steps to prevent the Legislature from completing a report on whether Palin abused her power as governor.

Wielechowski said witnesses can avoid testifying for months without penalty and that court action to force them to appear sooner is unlikely, according to the AP.

In July, Gov. Palin vowed to cooperate with the probe. However, since her surprise selection as the Republican vice presidential nominee, she – as well as her husband and senior staff aides – have balked at giving depositions.

The emerging public record shows that Gov. Palin and her husband Todd – who calls himself Alaska’s “First Dude” – have been waging a vendetta to get Trooper Mike Wooten fired since shortly after Palin took office in December 2006.

Wooten was married to Palin’s younger sister, Molly McCann. The couple, who divorced in January 2006, have been engaged in a bitter child custody dispute. Through complaints to his superiors, Palin had helped engineer Wooten’s five-day suspension from the state police for various examples of personal misconduct.

In January 2007, a month into Palin’s term, her husband, Todd, invited Palin’s new public safety commissioner Walt Monegan to the governor’s office, where Todd Palin urged Monegan to reopen the Wooten case. After checking on it, Monegan said he informed Todd Palin that he couldn’t do anything because the case was closed.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Monegan said that a few days later, the governor also called him about the Wooten matter and he gave her the same answer. Monegan said Gov. Palin brought the issue up again in a February 2007 meeting at the state capitol, prompting a warning that she should back off.

However, rather than follow that advice, Gov. Palin and her husband appear to have enlisted senior state officials to keep the pressure on. Monegan said he began getting telephone calls from Palin’s aides about Wooten, including from then-chief of staff Mike Tibbles; Commissioner Annette Kreitzer of the Department of Administration; and Attorney General Talis Colberg.

Colberg acknowledged making the call, after an inquiry from Todd Palin about “the process” for handling a threatening trooper, and then relaying back the response from Monegan that the issue had been handled and nothing more could be done.

Todd Palin, who serves as an unofficial adviser to the governor and has billed the state for expenses for trips he takes on his wife’s behalf, continued collecting evidence against Wooten and lobbying for his dismissal. The governor’s husband acknowledged giving Wooten’s boss, Col. Audie Holloway, photos of Wooten driving a snowmobile while he was out of work on worker’s comp.

On July 11, 2008, Palin abruptly fired public safety commissioner Monegan, saying only that she wanted to take the public safety department in a different direction.

Monegan then went public with his account of the mounting campaign against Wooten from the governor’s family and staff. Monegan told the Anchorage Daily News that Todd Palin showed him the work of a private investigator, who had been hired by the family to dig into Wooten’s life and who was accusing the trooper of various misdeeds, such as drunk driving and child abuse.

Though Palin vehemently denied that she was involved in the pressure campaign, a review by the Attorney General’s office found that half a dozen state officials had made about two dozen phone calls regarding Wooten.