Two top Alaska lawmakers said they were surprised with the findings of a report released Monday by an independent investigator hired by the state’s personnel board, who concluded that Gov. Sarah Palin did not violate ethics laws by sanctioning a campaign to have her husband and aides try and fire her ex brother-in-law, a state trooper who was entangled in a messy divorce with Palin’s sister.

The report prepared by Timothy Petumenos, the independent counsel hired by the personnel board to conduct the probe, contradicted findings in a report issued by the Legislative Council last month, which found that 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.”

That report, released on Oct. 10, by independent counsel Steve Branchflower, said 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” by sanctioning a campaign authorizing her husband and aides to try and fire Wooten.

Petumenos said the findings in his report “differ from those of the Branchflower Report because Independent Counsel has concluded the wrong statute was used as a basis for the conclusions contained in the Branchflower Report, the Branchflower report misconstrued the available evidence and did not consider or obtain all of the material evidence that is required to properly reach findings.

“The Branchflower Report … states that violation of the scope of code provision may be based on the governor’s inaction as opposed to the governor’s affirmative acts,” Petumenos wrote. “But … the Ethics Act does not require a person subject to its provisions to police the behavior of third parties who are not subject to its provisions. To find that the Governor violated the Ethics Act by failing to control her husband’s behavior would require one to add language to the Ethics Act that does not exist.”

“The findings of the Branchflower report at this juncture are the findings of one attorney who was not subject to adversarial proceedings in which his findings could be tested,” Petumenos said.

Branchflower’s report was based on more than 1,000 pages of documents and interviews with more than a dozen state and law enforcement officials. Petumenos said his report was based on the same evidence as well as “thousands of additional e-mails, files, and other documents as well as the sworn deposition testimony of key officials that were not relied upon by Mr. Branchflower.”

Branchflower disclosed in his report that state officials, including Attorney General Talis Colberg, did not turn over e-mails to assist with the probe. Colberg also advised witnesses who were subpoenaed by the Legislative Counsel not to comply. 

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.

Gov. Palin released an audio recording of her director of state boards and commissions, Frank Bailey, pressing police Lt. Rodney Dial in February 2008 about why no action had been taken against Wooten.

Palin acknowledged that there had been more than two dozen inquiries from her staff to the public safety department regarding trooper Wooten, though Palin still insisted she had no role in them.

At a news conference Monday, Petumenos cleared Palin of ethical wrongdoing in his report and said, “there is no probable cause to believe that any other official of state government violated any substantive provision of the Ethics Act.”

“The governor has testified that she did not seek the termination of Trooper Wooten after she became governor,” Petumenos said in his report. 

Petumenos, a Democrat, concluded that “there is no basis upon which to refer the conduct of Governor Palin to any law enforcement agency in connection with this matter because Governor Palin did not commit the offenses of Interference with Official Proceedings or Official Misconduct.”

Furthermore, “there is no probable cause to believe that any other official of state government violated any substantive provision of the Ethics Act.”

His report also said that “there is no probable cause to believe that Governor Palin violated the Alaska Executive Ethics Act in any other respect in connection with the employment of Alaska State Trooper Michael Wooten.” 

Petumenos said an ethics complaint filed by Wooten’s union, the Public Safety Employees Association, alleging Palin and her aides illegally accessed his personnel files, should be dismissed.

Moreover, Petumenos determined that there was nothing improper about Palin’s firing in July of her Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, whose dismissal sparked the “Troopergate” inquiry.

Monegan said he was fired because he resisted pressure by Palin, her husband, Todd, and several of Palin’s aides, to fire Wooten.

Kim Elton, the Democratic chairman of the state’s Legislative Council, said he was “surprised” by Petumenos’ conclusion.

“I think the ethics act is very clear and that Mr. Branchflower strung together a series of events that made it clear there was not only smoke but fire,” he said.

Rep. Les Gara, a Democrat, said the facts in Branchflower’s report are “undisputed.”

“It’s clear there was wrongdoing by the governor,” Gara said. “Those facts, as detailed in Mr. Branchflower’s report, are undisputed.”

On Sept. 2, just a day before she accepted the GOP nomination, Palin took the unusual step of filing an ethics complaint with the state personnel board against herself regarding her firing of Monegan.

The McCain-Palin campaign apparently was betting that the personnel board, two of whose members were appointed by former Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski, another Republican, would clear Palin of wrongdoing.

Initially, Palin welcomed an investigation by the Republican-dominated Legislative Council. However, after her selection as John McCain’s running mate in late August, she and the McCain campaign attacked that inquiry as a Democratic witch hunt led by Barack Obama’s supporters.

Gara said last week that Palin’s decision to file a complaint against herself with the personnel board “probably, in retrospect, wasn’t a smart move.”

“I think in the end the McCain campaign brought Gov. Palin a little more trouble than she bargained for by convincing her to have the personnel board investigate this,” Gara said in an interview.

Petumenos released his 56-page report hours before Tuesday’s historic presidential election. He deposed Palin two weeks ago in St. Louis. He said Palin categorically denied that she had two conversations with Monegan about firing her ex brother-in-law.

“Governor Palin asserts that this is more than a failure of recollection on her part,” Petumenos said in his report. “She believes that she would have remembered that such a conversation, given its content, had it taken place.”

In an interview with The New York Times, Monegan said “the conversations absolutely did take place. I’ve been a police officer for some 35 years. Aren’t I supposed to tell the truth? And in this case I did, under oath to both investigators.”

“It’s not only me,” Monegan told The Times. “There were senior members of the department of public safety who got the calls, felt the pressure and knew exactly what was going on. I will always feel that there were conversations and e-mails that were intended to inappropriately use an official government position to settle a family matter.”

He added, “Obviously I’m disappointed with the outcome and the contradictory nature of this investigation, compared to the first one.”

Moreover, Petumenos said a complaint Monegan filed with the personnel board against Palin last month, in which he asked for a hearing to address “Reputational Harm” he said was caused by the McCain campaign’s disparaging public statements about his work ethic.

“There is no legal basis or jurisdiction for conducting a “Due Process Hearing to Address Reputational Harm” as requested by former Commissioner Walter Monegan,” the report says.

Monegan has indicated that he would sue Palin if he was not granted a hearing to address his grievances. He was unavailable to comment on the personnel board’s report Monday.

Branchflower’s report determined that the effort to oust Wooten was spearheaded by Todd Palin, who calls himself “First Dude” and received support in his anti-Wooten campaign from the governor. He added that Branchflower’s report said that after Palin was sworn in as governor she permitted her husband, Todd Palin, to use the resources of her office to continue this effort to get Wooten fired and that she failed in “her authority and power to require Mr. Palin to cease contacting subordinates.”

“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,” Branchflower’s report said.

Palin was deeply involved in the dispute with Wooten before she became governor. She filed several formal complaints against her ex-brother-in-law over three years alleging he engaged in illegal behavior while on duty and had threatened her family.

Even earlier, Palin was enmeshed in a messy family feud with Wooten. 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 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.