Troopergate continues

Item: Looks like Murlene Wilkes honored her subpoena after all. If Jason Leopold's reporting is accurate, then her testimony indicates that Todd Palin met with Wilkes about Wooten's compensation case and instructed her to reverse judgment and deny Wooten's claim. Moreover, Wilkes complied with Todd Palin's instruction because it was made clear to her that her firm would lose it's state contract if she did not.

Item: Speaking of Leopold's reporting, this statement from John Cyr from the PSEA seems to me to trump the snow machine story.

“Out of nowhere [Wooten’s] workers comp claim was contravened, which basically means he got a letter saying he wasn’t entitled to benefits anymore,” Cyr said in an interview. Documents show that a state lawyer intervened in the case. Wooten “hired an attorney and filed a counterclaim against the state. Eventually, in November 2007 there was a settlement. Part of that settlement included an operation on [Wooten’s] back in California. This was a serious injury and he was flat broke and had to file for bankruptcy because his claims were denied. There was absolutely a personal vendetta against this trooper by the governor and the governor’s staff.”

Item: Frank Bailey, the senior aide who was placed on administrative leave after it was revealed that he had pressured employees in the Alaska Division of Public Safety to fire Wooten, went back to work last Thursday.

Item: On Friday, Palin's chief of staff Mike Nizich and six other state employees fail to honor subpoenas from Branchflower. Get this. The Attorney General advised them that honoring legislative subpoenas is optional.

Item: Speaking of the Attorney General, Colberg spent last week vacationing in Kansas, as it was one of only four U.S. states he had never been to.

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Addendum: Apparently Jason Leopold a reputation as a fabulist. Well, I don't know. I take the same attitude toward his reporting that I take toward everybody's. That is, I assess it in relation to what else I know, and when possible, do a little bit of digging to find relevant documents. In the present case, the general shape of Leopold's story is consistent with what I know, and I'm pretty well informed about the scandal. His scoop has to do with the content of Wilkses' testimony, and nobody else has that. So we'll see. That said, nothing about Leopold's account of Wilkses' testimony differed from what she was expected to say, so I take Leopold's story very seriously.