The article in Vanity Fair left many observers from all sides of the political spectrum unhappy. For example, the Sarah-cultists at C4P released an angry “Levi the Liar” post the day the first facts became known over the internet, and in the New York Times, Gail Collins wrote about “The Revenge of Levi” and couldn’t hide her disappointment when she remarked: “For the first time in my life, I feel sympathy for Sarah Palin.”
Even our “brother in arms” Gryphen from “Immoral Minority” was stunned and declared: “Essentially much of what Levi says in the article is in direct opposition to things I have learned over the last five months”, and his confusion was noticeable when he added: “I don't know what that means yet.”
Well, I also don’t know what this means yet, but what I do know is that a systematically executed analysis of the situation based on the facts is the only way forward.
There is one part in Levi’s article on which I would like to focus in this blogpost: Levi’s remarks about what happened on April 18, 2008, Trig Palin’s “official birth”.
According to Levi Johnston, Sarah Palin told her family that she was pregnant only “one or two days” before she revealed her well concealed secret to a stunned media on March 5, 2008. Then, on April 18, 2008, the following happened, according to Levi Johnston: “I was at the hospital when Sarah had the baby a little after six A.M. on April 18, 2008, two weeks before we told her we were pregnant.”
This sentence left some readers perplexed. Most people I know understood it in the way that Levi Johnston himself was physically present at the hospital at a little after six a.m. in the morning.
But can this really be true?
On the blogs, some commenters doubted that Levi had a good reason to be there at all that morning, given the fact that he was merely the boyfriend of the daughter of the baby’s mother.
As promised, I will try to look into the facts which are available to us. We actually have one person who went on the record regarding what happened on the morning of April 18, 2008 at Mat-Su hospital in Palmer, AK.
This person is Lori Tipton. She is a journalist with the Alaska TV-channel KTUU, and cannot be suspected of left-wing sympathies. On her facebook page, she openly declared that she is “a fan of Sarah Palin”, and she is the partner of Bob Lester, who is the co-host of the ultra right-wing Alaska radio program “The Bob and Mark Show” - which used to be one of Sarah Palin’s favourite radio programs. This radio show brought us an unforgettable insight into the type of humor that Sarah Palin enjoys, when Bob Lester described Sarah Palin’s then internal Republican rival, former Alaska Senator Lyda Green, as “nothing but a very jealous woman” and a “cancer” and a “bitch”. Sarah Palin herself couldn’t suppress a few girlie giggles – knowing very well that Lyda Green herself is a cancer-survivor.
Lori Tipton had been assigned to report for KTUU from Mat-Su hospital on the morning of 18th April, 2008.
She gave not only one, but two reports about what happened there that morning, and those reports are complimentary to each other.
Further to the above accounts, a while ago, I received an e-mail from a reader of PD which was written to her by Lori Tipton on September 22, 2008. The email had been written in response to a question that this reader had asked to Lori Tipton about Sarah’s pregnancy with Trig. There, Lori Tipton explained, after first mentioning how tight the HIPPA rules are: “Mat-Su hospital, where Gov Palin delivered, wouldn’t even confirm that she was a patient at the time of her delivery. We had to camp outside the entrance and wait for her family to walk by.”
Obviously, Lori Tipton was not at the Mat-Su hospital at six a.m. that morning. In the email she clearly says that they were waiting outside the hospital and that the family walked in at a later point. In her KTUU report she mentions that Sally and Chuck Heath “visited with their new grandson Friday afternoon”.
Interestingly, Lori Tipton was later interviewed by the “Daily Dish” in December of 2008 about what happened on the 18th April 2008.
Andrew Sullivan’s colleague Patrick Appel, who identified himself in this article as a “non-believer” in babygate (stating “I don't believe Sarah Palin is capable of pulling off such a cover-up”), quoted Lori Tipton as follows:
“Sarah [Palin] was in another room, and they said that she was sleeping when we arrived. And so, we got a little bit of footage of Sally [Heath] holding Trig, and Chuck [Heath] standing next to her. And Bristol [Palin] was in there, and I said to Bristol, "We should get some footage of you and your brother and your grandparents." And she’s like, "No I really don’t like to be photographed." And I said, "Are you sure?" And she’s like, "Yeah, yeah, no." And she didn’t have any make-up on or anything, but she was dressed in typical teenage attire, a tight shirt, low-cut jeans, you know, and we had heard the rumors before the delivery of this baby also, that Bristol was pregnant, and so, when my photographer and I got to the hospital and we saw her, I thought, well, clearly there’s no way that that girl just delivered a baby seven hours ago.”
Therefore, from this account we learn that Sarah’s parents Sally and Chuck Heath were present that afternoon (also documented through the pictures and the footage which was shown on KTUU) and according to Lori Tipton, Bristol Palin was also there.
So are we to believe that Levi was there at Mat-Su hospital before the rest of Sarah’s family?
Well – at the time of the interview with the Daily Dish in December 2008, Levi Johnston had already been a “national celebrity” for several months. Would Lori Tipton really have left him out from her description about who was there on that day?
I personally do not believe so because a common appearance of Bristol and Levi together in April 2008 at such an event would have been too spectacular for Lori Tipton not to mention when she was interviewed by the Daily Dish.
I therefore have to conclude that Levi Johnston was in fact not there in the afternoon together with the Palin family, but at six a.m. in the morning – unless we want to call Levi a liar. And I refuse to believe that Levi is a liar. What I do believe is that we have a cleverly written Vanity Fair article which allows us to read between the lines.
So, if Levi was present at the hospital at six a.m. that morning, despite the fact that the family only arrived later that day – what was he doing there so early? What was his function? I don’t have an answer to that – but it is a question that Levi or his handlers could and should answer.
However, one possible answer could be that he was “handing over the baby”. And that the Palin family had a vital interest that he would be “invisible” for the rest of the day, and therefore it’s very likely that he was sent home before the media arrived.
This leads me to the second part of the title of this blogpost.
This is a little bombshell. From a reliable source in Alaska who has first-hand knowledge, I know for a fact that Rex Butler, Levi Johnston’s attorney DOES NOT want to go on the record regarding the question of who Trig’s biological mother is, and in addition he said "he doesn't know for a fact" that Sarah Palin has given birth to Trig.
Especially for the readers of Palingates, I have obtained another snippet of information, which is properly sourced and documented, and which has never been reported anywhere so far to my knowledge. Many of you will probably remember that our friend Gryphen from Immoral Minority wrote in his famous “Splitsville” blogpost:
“I also learned that there was an incident back in the summer of 2008, before the McCain campaign officially tapped Sarah, where Todd Palin pulled a gun on Levi in a heated exchange concerning his relationship with Bristol. This news will be hitting the local papers here in town next week.”
Well – the reason why this “gun incident” didn’t hit “the local papers here in town” was that it was not confirmed by Levi, when he was confronted with it shortly after Gryphen’s blogpost had been published. In addition, with regard to the “gun incident”, Levi made a memorable comment which so far has also never been reported – he said exactly these words:
“If someone pulls a gun on me, they better use it.”
Have we seen the “real, honest, straightforward Levi” in this sentence?
Hopefully we'll never find out...
UPDATECC, Livvy, Naked Truth and others
Thank you very much for your input. The 18th April 2008 raises a lot of questions. Who alerted the journalists, and when? At which time in the morning did the journalists arrive at the hospital? Etc.
Even more questions raises Sarah Palin's official schedule from the 18th April, 2008, and this is one piece of evidence which I didn't mention in the blogpost. The schedule was obtained through a FOIA request, and this page can be viewed here:
http://tinyurl.com/luab5z
On the top of the schedule for the 18th April 2008 it says:
“Bristol: Interview Assistance Set Up w/KTUU (Wasilla)
GOV: Interview w/KTVA and ADN (ANC)
Todd: Interview w/KBYR (Wasilla)
Trig's Birth
WASILLA”
What does "Interview Assistance" with Bristol and KTUU mean? And I have never ever seen interviews by Sarah Palin or Todd Palin which were conducted on that day!
When were these appointments which are mentioned in the schedule set up? How did people know that the premature DS-baby would have been "fit" to be presented to the public at the day of his birth?
Sarah and Todd gave a press conference about the birth only three days later - the link for the audio to download is in Regina's special babygate resources on the right-hand side of Palingates. The statements in the press conference ("I didn't look so far along", said Sarah - despite of the famous Gusty-picture with her massive belly) also raised a lot of additional questions.
We are not conspiracy theorists. I am personally not even interested in conspiracy theories. All I am dealing with since November 2008 are facts - and the facts DO NOT ADD UP.
Nobody should be in doubt here that this investigation will continue until the truth has finally been revealed.
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