Sarah Palin’s vendetta against the state trooper who divorced her sister began in the spring of 2005, more than a year before she was elected Governor of Alaska.

Palin and her father, Chuck Heath, filed three-dozen formal complaints against trooper Mike Wooten in 2005 alone alleging he engaged in illegal behavior while on duty. But her complaints relied heavily on second-hand information, some of which law enforcement officials later determined to be suspect and unverifiable.

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.
 
“These are just a few as I have received many calls and comments over the past four years about Wooten’s questionable actions and his relationship with my family. 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.”

Palin’s e-mail indicated that Wooten had been unfaithful to her sister and that her family had hired private investigator Leonard Hackett to follow Wooten and interview people Wooten encountered during the course of a day to build a case against him. Wooten, 35, has been married and divorced five times.

Around March 26, 2005, Wooten “rode with his girlfriend, Mrs. Angie Johnson, home from another local bar after another night of drinking,” Palin’s e-mail said. “Mrs. Johnson was pulled over by a Trooper for suspected drunk driving.
 
“According to Wooten’s account for the evening, he leaned over from the passenger window and demanded the responding Trooper turn off his recorder and not cite Mrs. Johnson. She was not cited for DUI. Wooten subsequently bragged about this incidence to others.”
 
Palin claimed her brother-in-law also had a serious drinking problem and routinely drove while intoxicated.
 
Palin also alleged that Wooten illegally shot a cow moose, but added that her father butchered the carcass and that she and her family cooked and ate the meat. She also claimed that he used a taser on his stepson.

Palin’s opinion of Wooten appears to have darkened only after his marriage to her sister failed. When Palin was mayor of the small town of Wasilla, she had been a character reference for Wooten when the Air Force veteran was pursuing a career in law enforcement.
 
In a Jan. 1, 2000, letter of reference, Palin wrote that if “America had more people with the grace and sincerity that mirrors the character of Mike Wooten…we would have a much kinder, gentler, trustworthy nation as a result. …

“I have witnessed Mike’s gift of calm and kindness toward many young kids here in Wasilla,” said Palin’s Jan. 1, 2000 letter written on City of Wasilla letterhead. “I have never seen him raise his voice, nor lose patience nor become aggitated [sic] in the presence of any child. Instead, Mike consistently remains a fine role model for my own children, and other young people in Wasilla.”

Alaska law enforcement officials investigated all of Palin’s accusations and concluded that some of the allegations she and her family lodged against her brother-in-law did violate department policy, including an admission by Wooten that he tasered his stepson, Payton, and drank beer while on duty. The department suspended Wooten for 10 days, which the union negotiated down to five.

“The record clearly indicates a serious and concentrated pattern of unacceptable and at times, illegal activity occurring over a lengthy period, which establishes a course of conduct totally at odds with the ethics of our profession,” Col. Grimes wrote in March 1, 2006, letter suspending Wooten.
 
“This discipline is meant to be a last chance to take corrective action,” Grimes wrote. “You are hereby given notice that any further occurrences of these types of behaviors or incidents will not be tolerated and will result in your termination.”

John Cyr, executive director of the Public Safety Employees Association, issued a statement noting that a majority of the claims leveled against Wooten were “unfounded or not sustained.”

Palin’s interest in – or obsession with – the Wooten case surged again after she became Alaska’s governor in December 2006 and Wooten appealed to a court for additional custody and visitation rights.

Role of ‘First Dude’

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 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.

Alaska’s Deputy Attorney General Michael Barnhill told the Post that a member of the governor’s staff, personnel director Diane Kiesel, also made at least one call to Col. Holloway about the snowmobile incident.
 
On July 11, 2008, Palin dismissed Monegan, who said his relationship with the governor deteriorated when he refused to comply with requests from Palin’s associates to oust Wooten from the state troopers.
 
An investigative report released by Alaska lawmakers Friday found that Gov. Palin abused her authority and broke state ethics laws by sanctioning a campaign to pressure subordinates to fire her former brother-in-law, state trooper Mike Wooten.

The report found that Palin violated a statute of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act, which says “each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.”

The punishment for violating the ethics act ranges from sanctions to several thousand dollars in fines that can be imposed by the state ethics board.

According to the report, Palin “knowingly, as that term is defined in the above statutes, permitted Todd Palin to use the Governor’s office and the resources of the Governor’s office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees, in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired.”

The report, prepared by former prosecutor Steve Branchflower, who led the six-week probe, concluded that the effort to oust Wooten was spearheaded by Todd Palin with the full support of Gov. Palin

“Gov. Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: To get Trooper Michael Wooten fired,” the report said. “The evidence supports the conclusion that Gov. Palin, at the least, engaged in ‘official action’ by her inaction, if not her active participation or assistance to her husband, to get trooper Wooten fired.”

 

Moreover, Branchflower questioned, too, the truthfulness of the repeated assertion from Gov. Palin and members of her family that Wooten represented a physical threat to their safety, which the governor and her husband said was the reason they sought Wooten’s removal termination from the police force. 

Instead, Branchflower said the “evidence presented has been inconsistent with such claims of fear,” adding:

“I conclude that such claims of fear were not bona fide and were offered to provide cover for the Palin’s real motivation: to get Trooper Wooten fired for personal family related reasons.”