UPDATED: Ankle-Biters Saddling Palin With Hundreds of Thousands in Personal Debt

(h/t Tom at It's A Kwazy Life)

Lisa Demer at the Anchorage Daily News has a long article out today about Governor Palin being saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal debt caused by defense against frivolous ethics complaints and lawsuits.

Critics will undoubtedly say that Palin is "whining" or "playing the victim card," but, astonishingly, the only reason this came to light is that Palin was required to disclose the legal debt on her annual financial disclosure, which she filed yesterday. The disclosure is not yet on the state website; when it is, it should be available here.

The disclosure said only that she owed "hundreds of thousands of dollars." On Friday in the written statement, attorney Thomas Van Flein wouldn't give a precise number but said it was "a substantial debt." Palin said she didn't have an exact figure yet but "the debt is over a half a million dollars."

The article revealed that the perennially-obsessed attention freak Andree McLeod is continuing to file frivolous complaints:

[McLeod's] most recent complaint, filed this week, accuses Palin of using state resources to post a campaign message on the state Web site, and using her state spokesman to address confusion caused by her political action committee.

Well, I looked through all the recent messages on the Governor's website, and I don't see anything that is a "campaign message." As to the second part, it's apparently in reference to Mr. Bill answering a question about whether the Governor would attend a GOP fundraiser in June. You'll recall that McAllister and Palin were blasted in the press because of a miscommunication with SarahPAC about the event; it looks like even the extreme firewall that Palin has placed between political and gubernatorial activities, which handicaps her by resulting in these types of crossed signals, has not served to head off ethics complaints.

The complaints are indeed being dismissed as frivolous:

Out of the 10 complaints, Palin said six have been dismissed, one had "concluded," and three are pending.

The article also reveals an amazing fact about the Tasergate investigation I hadn't previously known (although others may have). Palin's opponents in Legislature appropriated $100,000 in state funds to investigate her. Palin was allotted $95,000 to pay for her own defense, but because she thought the issue was purely political, she refused to touch the state money and assumed the cost herself. The same goes for all the other ethics complaints, even though they've resulted from her official actions as Governor. Talk about integrity.

Palin opponent Hollis French (who has legal problems of his own) defended his actions:

"The investigation came in 25% under budget, which is clear evidence that the investigator was restrained and judicious in the work that he performed," French wrote Friday evening.

So Hollis French appropriated the taxpayers' money to attack his political opponent on behalf of the Obama campaign. Meanwhile, Palin paid for her own defense, and even her supporters in the legislature had to seek pro bono legal assistance in an attempt to stand by her.

And what did the taxpayers' dollars achieve, aside from giving the Obama campaign an "October surprise"? A purely symbolic "contempt" resolution against Todd Palin and others, that was orchestrated in secret and against which the targets were not allowed to defend themselves.

There are even legal attacks against Palin in the Lower 48. The article states there was a small-claims court case against her in Washington (?). And though it wasn't mentioned in the article, a Z-list celebrity named Gregory Charles Royal recently filed a class-action suit against Palin in federal court, because her office neglected to issue a routine Juneteenth proclamation in 2007 - an oversight that was later rectified.

(Just to show the moral character of Royal and the other ankle-biters, he is the same individual who went public during the campaign with strange allegations that in 1990, Palin refused to have sex with him only because he was black. Palin was a married mother at the time, and pregnant with her daughter Bristol. The same so-called "journalist" who aired this weird story, Charley James, also spread the smear that Palin called Barack Obama "Sambo" and Hillary Clinton a "bitch.")

When you see the tactics used by Palin's political opponents, like personal slander and destruction, attacks on young children, and legal terrorism to destroy a person financially, it makes you wonder how any ordinary American can possibly go into politics. Tom says "Think again about entering politics." Indeed:

"On August 29, it seems the political landscape changed in Alaska. Now, it seems in order to do this job as Governor, with the political blood sport some are playing today, only the independently wealthy or those willing to spend their income on legal fees to defend their official actions in office ... can serve," Palin said.

The article states that Palin will likely have to start a legal defense fund to help with the expenses:

Palin made $131,891 last year, counting her $125,000 salary and expense payments she collects when she's away from Juneau, according to the disclosure. Todd Palin made $86,150 from his two jobs, as a commercial fisherman and a BP production operator.

"Obviously we cannot afford to personally pay these bills -- and really no future governor should feel the sense of financial vulnerability at the hands of those with a political vendetta bent on personal destruction," Palin wrote. "Some have suggested a legal fund to pay these bills. We'll have to pursue that."

UPDATE: Here is the full conversation between Palin and the Anchorage Daily News. It reveals that the ADN is very, very concerned about such hard-hitting issues as whether Bristol Palin was given baby blankets as gifts, and that someone gave Governor Palin a pair of eyeglasses - Lisa wants to know when and where she wore them. (Palin's response: "Really, Lisa, are you kidding?")

For those who may have forgotten, Lisa Demer heads up the Trig Truth Research Department at the ADN.

UPDATE by RAM: Last week at Hot Air, some people were snickering at the miscommunication gaffe between the governor's office and SarahPAC over the governor's invitation to speak at the GOP Congressional fundraiser in D.C.

I wrote then:

You can snicker about this all you want, but the fact remains that there is a frivolous ethics complaint still pending against Bill McAllister, Gov. Palin's press secretary, and Kris Perry, Gov. Palin's aide. The frivolous complaint was lodged by one Andree McLeod, a woman with a bizarre vendetta against Gov. Palin because she was denied a patronage job.

She charged McAllister with working on "partisan activities" on the government's dime. The partisan activities include McAllister's coordination of Palin's press availability at the RNC convention before she was named to the ticket. He was arranging for her to be interviewed as the Governor of Alaska, but in those interviews she would acknowledge her support of the Republican presidential candidate; therefore, McAllister was engaging in "partisan activities." And he said factually correct nice things about his boss while she was running for vice president. Oh, and he also answered Palin's partisan critics. These are the sort of "ethics charges" he is facing. In the current political climate in Alaska, McAllister is wisely steering clear of any involvement with SarahPAC. The next FOIA request from McLeod will be for phone records. She'll go through the governor's office phone records and highlight any calls placed to or from the governor's office and SarahPAC.

And when she files another worthless frivolous ethics complaint, I expect that Allahpundit will post it here without offering any commentary on the circumstances. He'll just be his usually snotty self and make a lame wisecrack implying that Gov. Palin is a crook.

It turns out that I was correct. McLeod did file another ethics complaint -- and this one even takes aim at the SarahPAC miscommunication gaffe:

McLeod also takes issue with comments made by Palin's spokesman this week after news stories said the governor would be headlining one of the biggest Republican events of the year, the June 8 congressional fundraiser dinner in Washington, D.C.

Bill McAllister, the governor's communications director, said Monday the governor didn't know about the request and hadn't confirmed she was attending. The next day, a spokeswoman for her political action committee, Sarah PAC, said the organization had mistakenly confirmed she would attend without clearing it.

McLeod contends the governor used state resources for "purposes that have nothing to do with the state's interests and everything to do with her personal, extremely partisan political Washington, D.C., beltway interests."

McAllister said he was just trying to answer questions about the governor's travel plans because of wild assertions that she travels all the time.

"There's an irony here, too: I was clarifying that the governor might well not do something political," he said in a written statement.

When it comes to these crazy vindictive frivolous ethics charges, Mr. Bill can't win. Gov. Palin can't win.

Gov. Palin zeroes in on the pertinent facts of case right here:

"If the public knew the resources we spend on answering bogus complaints and over 150 FOIAs, they would be flabbergasted at the absurdity of it all."

Why is McLeod doing this? The Governor tells us why:

"She hounded us for a job for many months, didn't get hired and decided to go this route."

The aim here is simple. Keep the ethics charges coming no matter how frivolous they are. They want to steal from her one of her most admirable qualities -- her track record as a genuine ethics reformer. All they care about is the headline: "New ethics complaint against Gov. Palin." It doesn't matter that the complaint is frivolous and will be tossed out of court. All that matters is the headline -- and the distraction and the waste of time and money and energy.

We see the game they are playing. We see through them. We're not buying it. We won't stand for it.

UPDATE II by VO: I encourage our readers who support Palin, particularly those in Alaska, to write their state legislators to do something about his ongoing travesty. In particular, the following Senators are particularly supportive of Governor Palin:

Fred Dyson: Senator_Fred_Dyson@legis.state.ak.us
Gene Therriault: Senator_Gene_Therriault@legis.state.ak.us
Con Bunde: Senator_Con_Bunde@legis.state.ak.us
Tom Wagoner: Senator_Thomas_Wagoner@legis.state.ak.us