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Sarah Palin faces another likely setback in an investigation into whether she entangled her duties as Alaska governor in a family feud with her ex-brother-in-law, a state trooper, according to a senior state legislator.

Alaska Rep. Les Gara, a Democrat, said Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, faces an uphill fight in her hope to be exonerated by a state personnel board investigation that she requested in hopes of heading off a legislative inquiry.

“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. “Probably in retrospect, wasn’t a smart move.”

The “Troopergate” scandal erupted in July when Palin fired Alaska’s Commissioner of Public Safety Walt Monegan, who then blamed his dismissal on his refusal to succumb to pressure from Palin, her husband and her associates to fire her ex-brother-in-law, State Trooper Mike Wooten.

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.

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 regarading 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.

However, the board hired an independent investigator, Timothy Petumenos, a Democrat. Palin’s maneuver also failed to head off the legislative inquiry, which concluded on Oct. 10 that the governor had abused her power and violated state ethics law in her vendetta against her ex-brother-in-law.

Rep. Gara, who spoke with Petumenos about a separate complaint that Gara filed accusing the McCain campaign of trying to obstruct the legislative inquiry, told me that he believes the personnel board’s report will parallel the findings of the legislative inquiry.

Gara said Petumenos “is well respected and will conduct a thorough investigation based on the facts,” adding: “I think the findings will be similar.”

Petumenos took a two-hour deposition from Palin last week at a St. Louis hotel and is scheduled to review the issue with the personnel board on Monday, the day before the presidential election.

Shared Data

Two weeks ago, the Alaskan Legislative Council voted unanimously to share with Petumenos more than 1,000 pages of documents collected by its independent counsel, Steve Branchflower.

Petumenos's investigation is said to include at least two other ethics complaints against Palin, including a possible complaint by The Public Safety Employees Union alleging that Palin and her aides improperly accessed Trooper Wooten’s personnel files and illegally tried to get him fired.

Citizen watchdog Andree McLeod filed another ethics complaint, alleging that Palin secured a state job for one of her fundraisers.

While the personnel board’s investigation is playing out, Gara is pressing Attorney General Talis Colberg to appoint an independent investigator to probe whether operatives in McCain’s presidential campaign broke Alaska’s criminal witness-tampering laws.

Gara alleges that McCain’s campaign staffers influenced witnesses close to Palin to get them to withhold cooperation from Branchflower’s probe.

“I am concerned that the state’s criminal witness-tampering laws have been broken by certain staff for Sen. McCain’s presidential campaign,” Gara wrote in a letter to Colberg.

Gara said the McCain staff arrived in Alaska after Palin was picked as McCain’s running mate on Aug. 29 and spent the next month and a half trying “to stall or stop” the investigation by getting several senior Palin aides and her husband Todd to balk at giving depositions.

Gara noted that Palin’s aides had agreed in July to be deposed about the ”Troopergate” case. However, after Palin’s selection as the GOP vice presidential nominee, the aides reneged.

Colberg earlier spearheaded a failed effort by the Palin administration to get the state courts to quash subpoenas issued to members of Palin’s administration during the investigation.

Colberg, a close Palin ally, responded to Gara and advised the Democratic lawmaker to bring his concerns before the state personnel board, and ask the panel to further expand its probe of Palin by having Petumenos investigate.

“That was obviously just a stall tactic,” Gara said. “He’s not dumb. He’s just trying to avoid looking into it. The personnel board has no jurisdiction over criminal conduct to stop a legislative investigation, which is what I believe the McCain campaign was trying to do.

“For the Attorney General, the state’s top law enforcement official, to say ‘why don’t we have someone who has no role looking into criminal activity’ investigate this shows that the torn allegiances the attorney general has to his job and the governor.”

Attorney General Colberg is “choosing party politics over the rule of law,” Gara told me. “He’s the state’s top criminal law officer. It’s going to have to be the court of public opinion that convinces him this is a serious matter. But I will keep pushing him to investigate.”

Still, Gara said he had a conversation with Petumenos about investigating the witness-tampering allegations and Petumenos confirmed that he is not authorized to investigate criminal matters.

Petumenos “said he would politely remind Attorney General Colberg that he [Petumenos] doesn’t have jurisdiction to investigate a criminal matter,” Gara said. Colberg’s office did not return calls for comment.

Disciplining Palin

Gara said when the Legislative Council reconvenes in January – if McCain is not elected President – there will likely be calls to discipline Palin.

“These folks have offended a lot of Alaskans,” Gara said. “You can see it in the way they attacked a lot of people up here.”

Gara got into a heated exchange with Palin’s spokeswoman Meg Stapleton on the day the Branchflower’s report was released. Gara demanded that Stapleton apologize to Monegan and other state officials whom she had disparaged publicly. Stapleton refused.

“I think there will be calls by some members [of the legislature] to impose some sort of punishment, but I would much rather sit down with the governor and the attorney general and have them apologize to people and move on,” Gara said.

Meanwhile, Palin was hit with another ethics complaint last week.

Frank Gwartney of Anchorage sent a three-page complaint to Colberg “requesting that the state Personnel Board investigate Gov. Palin improper and illegal use of her official position for personal gain.”  

Gwartney alleges that Palin misused her position by appropriating taxpayer dollars to pay for her daughters to travel with her on state business.

“The Governor’s children accompanied Palin on trips and to events that they were not invited to and to which their presence served no legitimate State or official business or purpose,” Gwartney’s complaint said.

Last week, the Associated Press reported that Palin charged the state of Alaska for commercial flights for her children and ordered changes to previously filed expense report to suggest that they were on official business.

Gwartney's complaint alleges, "The alteration of these documents constitutes an improper use of the Governor’s official position."

Palin charged the state $21,012 for 64 commercial flights and hotel accommodation for her three daughters after taking office in December 2006.

Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for the McCain/Palin campaign, characterized Gwartney's ethics complaint as a "political stunt," claiming that Palin “has always acted with the highest standards of ethics."

Jason Leopold has launched a new Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.org.

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