What is the troopergate scandal Palin is involved in?

Question

I heard she wanted her ex brother-in-law fired from the state police for using a taser on her pre-teen nephew. Is it a scandal that she would want this man fired?

Answer 1

The Alaska Public Safety Commissioner dismissal is a situation involving the 2008 firing of the Public Safety Commissioner for the State of Alaska by Governor Sarah Palin and an ongoing investigation surrounding the firing.

Alaska Governor and presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee for the 2008 United States presidential election Sarah Palin is currently, as of September 2008, being investigated by an independent investigator hired by the Alaska Legislature to determine whether she abused her power when she fired Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan in July 2008. Palin denies wrongdoing, and the investigator's report is expected before the November 4, 2008 presidential election.

Palin says that she dismissed Monegan because of performance-related issues. However, Monegan says that his dismissal may have been tied to his reluctance to fire Mike Wooten, an Alaska State Trooper who is also Palin's ex-brother-in-law. Wooten was disciplined in 2006 for making a death threat against Palin's father, though he denied the accusation; Wooten is also involved in an ongoing custody dispute with Palin's sister. Several news sources have referred to this controversy as Troopergate.

On April 11, 2005, before Palin became governor, her sister Molly McCann filed for divorce against her then-husband, Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten. The same day Chuck Heath, father of both McCann and Palin, called police to notify them that he had obtained a domestic violence protective order against Wooten. During a subsequent phone call that day McCann complained to police that in February 2005 Wooten had threatened to shoot Heath if he hired an attorney to help in her divorce, had threatened to "take down" Palin if she got involved, and had driven while intoxicated on several occasions. McCann, Palin and Heath subsequently made several further allegations against Wooten.

In May 2005, Palin told police investigators that she had witnessed the death threat against her father (Heath), but had not called the police immediately because she did not want to put Wooten's career in jeopardy and the situation had not yet progressed to physical violence. On August 10, 2005, Palin sent an email to Julia Grimes, chief of the Alaska state police, urging that Wooten be dismissed and giving more details about the alleged death threat. The email from Palin to Grimes said that in February 2005 Wooten had threatened to shoot Heath after McCann had accused Wooten of attending an event with another woman.

On March 1, 2006, Wooten was notified of the results of an Alaska State Trooper internal investigation. The probe found that Wooten violated internal policy, but not the law, in making the death threat against Heath (the father of Sarah Palin and Molly McCann).  Wooten denied having made the threat, but the investigation decided that he had in fact done so.  The trooper investigation concluded that the death threat was not a crime because Wooten did not threaten the father directly; therefore, the investigator deemed the threat to be a violation of trooper policy rather than a violation of criminal law.

  

Answer 2

Does she get involved with every hiring/firing of troopers?  Or is it only when family members are involved?

That's the problem.