The Alaska Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a lawsuit filed by six GOP state lawmakers to block the publication of an ethics report that will determine whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her position of power when she fired her public safety commissioner.

The high court’s ruling means Independent Counsel Steve Branchflower will file the findings of his nearly three-month old investigation with Alaska’s Legislative Council on Friday. Lawmakers will then vote on whether to release the report publicly, which lawmakers said Thursday will likely be the case.

The probe centers on whether Palin, her husband Todd, and several of her senior aides pressured Public Safety Commissioner Monegan to fire Mike Wooten, a state trooper who was engaged in an ugly divorce and child custody dispute with Gov. Palin’s sister.

In July, Monegan claimed that he was fired because he refused to fire Wooten. Palin cited other reasons, such as insubordination over a budgetary dispute, and the governor initially welcomed the legislative inquiry, which was approved unanimously by the Republican-dominated Legislative Council.

In an 11-page decision issued last week, Alaska Superior Court Judge Peter Michalski said, “it is legitimately within the scope of the legislature’s investigatory power to inquire into the circumstances surrounding the termination (of) a public officer the legislature had previously confirmed.”

Last week, attorneys for Republican legislators Wes Keller, Mike Kelly, Bob Lynn, Carl Gatto, Fred Dyson and Tom Wagoner filed an emergency appeal with the Alaska Supreme Court asking justices to reverse Michalski’s decision.

In their emergency appeal, GOP Reps. Wes Keller, Mike Kelly, and Bob Lynn, and Senators Fred Dyson and Tom Wagoner, said “the Appellees intend to complete an unconstitutional and unlawful legislative investigation of “the circumstances and events surrounding the termination of former Public Safety Commissioner [Walter] Monegan and potential abuses of power/improper conduct by the executive branch.”

The “troopergate” probe, the attorneys for the GOP lawmakers argued in a court filing Monday, has been directed by Democratic Sen. Hollis French, a “legislator who was personally involved in the very conduct that led the governor to remove the Commissioner, and who has publicly stated to the press and media his bias, predisposition, and prejudgment, sensationalizing and slandering the character of the Governor and other in the press and media; scheduled deliberately, arbitrarily and needlessly to be completed and publicized prior to the national presidential election in a partisan political attempt to create a “October Surprise” and affect the outcome of the election.”

French, appointed project director of the investigation in a bipartisan vote, came under fire for comments he made to ABC News after Palin was chosen as Sen. John McCain’s vice presidential running mate at the end of August. At the time, he said when the report was due to be published it could amount to an “October Surprise” for McCain’s campaign, meaning that the findings would be damaging to his bid for the presidency.

In opposing the appeal, Peter Maassen, the attorney representing Alaska’s Legislative Council, said in a motion filed with the Alaska Supreme Court Monday that the GOP lawmakers are asking the high court to “shut down a duly authorized legislative investigation in the last days of its life, solely to avoid solely to avoid a possibly negative impact on the fortunes of one political party.”

“Plaintiffs’ desperately drawn picture of a “McCarthyistic investigation run amok has been so widely broadcast to such prejudicial effect, and yet is so far wide of the truth, that Defendants have to pay some attention to the real historical record,” states the Legislative Council’s motion to dismiss filed with the state Supreme Court.

Late Wednesday, Palin’s husband, Todd Palin, admitted in a 25-page sworn affidavit his attorneys sent to Branchflower that he has waged a three-year campaign to have Wooten fired and enlisted a dozen state officials to assist him in his efforts.

“In 2007, I was at the Yetna River area…when I saw Trooper Wooten operating a snow-machine-even as he claimed to the Alaska State Troopers that he was fully disabled an unable to work,” Todd Palin wrote in the affidavit, which his attorneys leaked to the media late Wednesday. “This typically dishonest disregard of the law offended me, and I offered photographs of Wooten’s snow-machine use to the appropriate authorities.

“Wooten also went on a spending spree during his 2006 divorce, buying all sorts of expensive toys; then instead of paying his debts honestly, he filed for bankruptcy and left some local businesses unpaid,” Palin wrote.

Wooten was married to Palin’s sister, Molly McCann. The couple divorced in January 2006 and over the next year or so was involved in a bitter child custody dispute.

“All of this upset me and I had hundreds of conversations with my family, with friends, with colleagues, and with just about everyone I could–including government officials. (In fact, I talked about Wooten so much over the years that my wife told me to stop talking about it with her.)”

Todd Palin’s claim in his affidavit that Gov. Palin was uninterested in what her former brother-in-law was up to stands in stark contrast to documents that have been publicly well before the probe commenced.

Palin was deeply enmeshed in the dispute with Wooten before she was sworn in as governor, according to a review of documents relating to the case.

Palin filed several formal complaints against her ex-brother-in-law over the course of three years alleging he engaged in illegal behavior while on duty. But her complaints relied heavily on second-hand information, some of which was later determined to be suspect and unverifiable.

Lodging 36 accusations against Wooten in 2005 alone, Palin and her family appeared to be waging a vendetta against the trooper who was assigned to the wildlife division. Palin personally seemed obsessed with ending his career.

In a three-page, sometimes rambling e-mail dated Aug. 10, 2005, and sent to Wooten’s boss, Col. Julia Grimes, Palin said the fact that her brother-in-law continued to be employed as a trooper caused Palin, her family and the community to lose faith in the “Trooper organization.”

“My concern is that the public’s faith in the Troopers will continue to diminish as more residents express concern regarding the apparent lack of action towards a trooper whom is described by many as being a ‘ticking timebomb,’ and a ‘loose cannon,’” Palin wrote in the e-mail slugged “Trooper Integrity, Character.” 

“Let me just share again with you a few of the many episodes in Wooten’s recent past that have been discussed with Wooten’s supervisors after the episodes were publicly discussed by Wooten with many in our community who are left scratching their heads regarding Wooten’s poor reflection of the Trooper mission to prevent loss of life and property as a result of illegal and unsafe acts….

“Wooten is my brother-in-law, but this information is forwarded to you objectively, and I trust it is received and considered by you objectively.”

Palin’s e-mail was sent to Grimes after Palin was interviewed by state troopers on two different occasions about previous complaints she and her family leveled against Wooten. But Palin was dissatisfied with the slow progress of the investigation and was angered that Wooten was still employed.

“Julia, as lifelong Alaskans, my family and I and concerned community members who have witnessed your employee’s actions still want to have faith in the Alaska State Troopers,” Palin wrote to Grimes. “But with recent public disclosure of abuses in the Trooper organization, and our own knowledge of Wooten’s blatant disregard for the laws he is hired to enforce, our faith is waning.”

Moreover, Palin sent an e-mail to Monegan on July 17, 2007, with a copy to Attorney General Talis Colberg, regarding proposed handgun legislation that would bar weapon sales to people who had made violent threats.

“The first thought that hit me,” Palin wrote, “about people not being able to buy guns when they’re threatening to kill someone went to my ex brother-in-law, the trooper, who threatened to kill my dad yet was not even reprimanded by his bosses and still to this day carries a gun, of course. …

“We can’t have double standards. Remember when that death threat was reported, and follow-on threats from Mike [Wooten] that he was going ‘to bring Sarah and her family down’ – instead of any reprimand WE were told by trooper union personnel that we’d be sued if we talked about those threats.

“Amazing. And he’s still a trooper, and he still carries a gun, and he still tells anyone who will listen that he will never work for that b*tch (me) because he has such anger and distain [sic] toward my family.

“So consistency is needed here. No one’s above the law. If the law needs to be changed to not allow access to guns for people threatening to kill someone, it must be applied to everyone.”

Immediately after becoming Alaska’s governor, Palin – along with her husband and senior aides – conducted what amounted to a rogue investigation into suspicions that Wooten was faking a job-related injury, according to state documents, law enforcement officials and former aides to Palin.

According to John Cyr, executive director of the Public Safety Employees Association which represents Wooten and other state troopers, Wooten was approved for workers comp benefits in January 2007 because he had suffered a back injury when he pulled a dead body from a wrecked automobile and slipped on icy pavement.

After Wooten started receiving workers comp, Todd Palin began following him around “snapping pictures,” Cyr said.
 
In the affidavit, Todd Palin said he had “so many” conversations about Wooten with Mike Tibbles, Gov. Palin’s chief of staff, “gave him a packet of information” on Wooten, and “spoke to him a couple of times about my questions whether Wooten was following the law on his workers’ comp claim.”
 
“I watched [Wooten] drive a snowmachine and then tip one over to work on it, all while he was supposedly fully disabled,” Palin’s affidavit says. “I took a picture of Wooten. I gave a file of information to Monegan. Monegan was head of [Department of Public Safety] and it was his job to receive complaints about troopers… I made a complaint [to another official in the Palin administration] about what I thought was a possible workers comp fraud issue.”
 
Todd Palin said he “makes 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.”
 
“The real investigation that needs to be conducted for the best interests of the public at large is the Department of Public Safety’s unwillingness to discipline its own,” Palin wrote.
 
Palin also attacked the integrity of the investigation, claiming Branchflower, “in a rush to judgment, has done nothing to investigate or verify” that Monegan was fired for insubordination.