Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

John McCain’s failure to properly evaluate his running mate is backfiring tonight. While McCain hopes that the top news of the night will be Sarah Palin’s speech he might be disappointed to find that the big story is on her abuse of power. The Washington Post has uncovered emails which contradict Palin’s story:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the running mate for GOP presidential candidate John McCain, wrote e-mails that harshly criticized Alaska state troopers for failing to fire her former brother-in-law and ridiculed an internal affairs investigation into his conduct.

The e-mails were shown to The Washington Post by a former public safety commissioner, Walter Monegan, who was fired by Palin in July. Monegan has given copies of the e-mails to state ethics investigators to support his contention that he was dismissed for failing to fire Trooper Mike Wooten, who at the time was feuding with Palin’s family.

“This trooper is still out on the street, in fact he’s been promoted,” said a Feb. 7, 2007, e-mail sent from Palin’s personal Yahoo account and written to give Monegan permission to speak on a violent-crime bill before the state legislature.

“It was a joke, the whole year long ‘investigation’ of him,” the e-mail said. “This is the same trooper who’s out there today telling people the new administration is going to destroy the trooper organization, and that he’d ‘never work for that b****’, Palin’.)”

TMP Muckraker points out that this isn’t the first time evidence has contradicted Palin’s story:

This isn’t the first time that events have appeared to contradict Palin’s story about her role in Trooper-Gate. Palin at first claimed that her administration did not put pressure on Monegan to fire Wooten. But after a phone recording surfaced in mid-August of Palin aide Frank Bailey raising the issue of Wooten’s employment with a trooper official, she was forced to acknowledge her office’s involvement, though she has continued to deny her personal role.