David Kernell today has been sentenced to one year and one day imprisonment, to be served in a halfway house. This felony conviction will severely damage his future prospects.
He was punished for guessing the answer to Sarah Palin's super-easy security question on her yahoo-account ("Wasilla High"), an account which she routinely misused for state business (no punishment given to Sarah, though - but don't try it in your own office).
David Kernell then posted the newly changed password on the internet, and screenshots from the account appeared at several places. Whether he tried to hide his activities later is a matter of dispute.
Another important fact:
The reason why David Kernell got to know about Sarah Palin's yahoo-account in the first place was that just shortly before he accessed the account, the existence of the account was revealed together with the information that Sarah Palin used the account routinely for state business.
Without Sarah Palin's misuse of her yahoo-account, David Kernell today would still be an unknown, happy student without a criminal conviction!
However, there is more news today: Palingates got hold of the so-far unpublished testimonies by Sarah Palin, Frank Bailey and Ivy Frye from the David Kernell trial. We already published Bristol Palin's testimony from the David Kernell trial in September 2010 (download Bristol's testimony HERE).
Please download Sarah Palin's and Frank Bailey's testimony HERE (one document) and Ivy Frye's testimony HERE.
The testimonies are full very important facts, some of which are new. For example, it turns out that Frank Bailey set up the yahoo-account by order of Sarah Palin at the beginning of April 2008 and linked it immediately to her blackberry. In fact, it seems obvious that the yahoo-account was set up specifically for the blackberry, in order to give Sarah the possibility to "secretly" communicate while she is travelling. This happened two weeks before Trig was presented to the world. We will examine this and other points in more depth at a later point.
Some other facts immediately stand out: Bristol Palin for example blatantly lied about the existence of a landline in the home of the Palin family in Wasilla, in an obvious attempt to make the "loss" of her cell phone appear much more dramatic. Sarah Palin herself reveals in her own testimony during the David Kernell trial that the Palins indeed have a landline.
We also know from a previous testimony of Track during the "Troopergate" investigations that the Palins have a house phone.
In addition, Sarah Palin also grossly exaggerated in her testimony the extent to which the communication was "disrupted."
Let's take a closer look at what was said. Bristol explained in her testimony on page 14:
A. I couldn't get another cell phone because I
was only 17. I couldn't sign into a contract. I wasn't
able to get another phone until about 14 days after the
incident.
Q. Did you have a land line at your Wasilla
residence?
A. No.
Q. Without your cell phone how were you able to
contact your parents?
A. I wasn't able to contact my parents.
Q. And your parents were in the lower 48 states
on the campaign trail?
A. Correct.
No landline, not been able to contact her parents.
But what did Sarah Palin say in her testimony during the trial?
Let's take a look - page 61 of her testimony:
>
Q. Governor, did any of your children call you
shortly after you learned that this account had been
broken into?
A. It was some hours after we had found that out.
My daughter Bristol called me from home.
Q. Why did Bristol call you?
A. She called to say she was receiving messages
from all over the country. She was scared and didn't
know what she was supposed to do to stop it.
Q. Was there a time when you had, a period of
time after this that you had difficulty communicating
with your family, especially your children?
A. Yes. We were not e-mailing or texting
immediately after we heard of the hacking. That had to
be shut off right away. It was some hours before
Bristol was able to contact me. We don't have a land
line in our home. Everybody uses the cellphones. We
have a land line, we just don't plug it in, unless we
have a fax coming in.
Bristol called them after the hacking? Funny that Bristol didn't mention this in her own testimony. As far as I can see, Bristol's testimony makes it appear that they had no contact after the hacking at all.
Let's further take a look at how Sarah Palin continues with her testimony on page 61:
Q. After Bristol called you to tell you she had
been receiving these various unidentified calls, did
you, was there a period of time after that even that you
had more difficulty contacting or staying in touch with
your children?
A. It was a lot more difficult to contact the
kids because their cell phones, their Blackberries were
all taken away from them. There was always the threat
in the campaign of any more hacking that could possibly
take place. The kids were basically banned from using
e-mail or text messages, not just my kids, but their
caretakers and others who were close to me.
Sarah says:
"It was a lot more difficult to contact the kids because their cell phones, their Blackberries were all taken away from them."
In fact, Bristol's phone wasn't immediately taken away from her, but only about 9 days later, on September 24 or 25, 2008. Until then, the phone was technically working, the contract wasn't cancelled. Bristol explains it herself in her testimony, on page 20:
Q. Now, based on the phone records that you were
asked to take a look at and have been admitted into
evidence, that phone was used up until around September
24th or 25th and that is when you turned it over to the
Secret Service?
A. Yeah, the phone number itself hadn't been shut
down. It was handed over physically to the Secret
Service.
Q. And so that is why there are records up to
those dates?
A. Correct.
Q. And you gave the Secret Service everything
that you had, the telephone, and I assume that you had
saved the voicemail messages?
A. The voicemail messages were saved on the phone
itself. I had to hand over my phone because it was not
usable.
So, first of all, there were phone "records" even for the time after the hacking, and it seems that both sides agree that the phone was "used." But even more importantly, this does not go along with Sarah Palin's statement when Sarah says that "it was a lot more difficult to contact the kids because their cell phones, their Blackberries were all taken away from them", because the phone was only taken away from Bristol about 9 days later!
It's apparent that Bristol as well as Sarah grossly exaggerate the true extent to which their communication was disrupted. They had contact after the hacking, there were records for Bristol's phone up to the 24th or 25th September 2008, and there was a landline - they just needed to plug a phone in.
Already in our recent post regarding "Troopergate" from October 7, 2010 ("Sarah and Todd Palin's vidictive streak" - PLEASE TAKE A LOOK) we pointed out that Track Palin expressly stated in a testimony from 2005 during the Troopergate investigations that the Palins have a "house phone." In this remarkable, little know document with summaries of testimonies from 2005 by Sarah, Todd, Bristol, Track, Chuck Molly and others Track is quoted with the following statement:
By the way: Track was only sixteen years old when he made this statement, when he explained that they listened to the conversation in order to find out whether Mike Wooten had an affair!
This is Jerry Springer material! Which mother would so such a thing to her son?
Oh, yes, Sarah Palin, possibly the next President of the United States of America.
There are a lot more interesting details in the testimonies from the David Kernell trial which we will explore at a later point.
However, the fact that Bristol clearly lied in order to over-dramatize the situation was one of the most striking points for me. Unfortunately for Bristol, her mother Sarah Palin "strayed from the script" and revealed that a landline does exist. A phone has to be plugged in, oh the horror!
Will anything happen to Bristol Palin now?
Or don't I even have to ask this silly question?
Furthermore:
Did the Palins think for one moment about this guy whose future they helped to destroy with their lies and exaggerations?
I wish somebody would confront Bristol and Sarah with the facts and ask them this question.
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UPDATE:
Our dear reader ProChoiceGrandma spotted something!
In the days when Queen Palin was still talking to the lamestream media, she granted Matt Lauer from MSNBC an interview in her kitchen in Wasilla, January 2009.
At around 5:30 in the clip, you can see in a corner something which to me looks like a house phone, with a, I think, 90% probability:
What's your impression?
I would say it's a house phone, and we gotcha the whole Palin clan again, lying in court.
Here is the clip (click HERE for large version):
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UPDATE 2:
Our reader curioser11 made a very good find:
This phone by Panasonic looks very much like the object in Palin's kitchen. It's certainly not exactly the same model, but the round shape, the handset and the antenna are clearly visible.
Look, Bristol, that's what a phone looks like! There is one in your kitchen!
Sarah, I am starting to understand why you spend all your money for the lucky Mr. Van Flein!
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UPDATE 3:
The Palins have a publicly listed landline, and they had the same landline number already in September 2008.
Let's take a look at the evidence.
A. It's listed!
B. Also in the print version of the local phone book!
C. It's definitely a landline!
D. It was already in operation in September 2008, as for example some of Ron Paul's fans observed during the Presidential campaign in 2008:
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Please note:
I would like to clarify that I don't believe that the fact that Bristol in particular lied in her testimony will have any consequences for David Kernell's trial or conviction.
With this post I want to highlight one fact in particular which has been proven over and over again: That the Palins will go out of their way to make themselves appear as victims and at the same time make the actions of the "other side" appear as horrible as possible. In addition, the Palins will not hesitate to tell smaller and bigger lies in order to achieve this goal. This has been proven before for example in the extremely well documented Troopergate scandal.
At the same time, the Palins keep total silence about incidents which might be damaging for themselves, for example the case of Todd Palin's half-sister Diana Palin, who was indicted in 2009 for burglaries she had committed in March and April 2009 while being a drug addict. In the custody trial between Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston, the Palins had the audacity to highlight the crimes of Sherry Johnston, while conveniently ignoring the equally worse crimes which were committed by Diana Palin, who was very close to the family and Sarah Palin's children in the past.
During the "Troopergate" scandal, the Palins didn't hesitate to lie in family court in order to wrongfully obtain a domestic violence restraining order against Mike Wooten, which the judge called "abuse of the legal system" afterwards. They also lodged about a dozen complaints with the state police in order to attack trooper Mike Wooten - Newsweek reported:
Court records obtained by NEWSWEEK show that during the course of divorce hearings three years ago, Judge John Suddock heard testimony from an official of the Alaska State Troopers' union about how Sarah Palin—then a private citizen—and members of her family, including her father and daughter, lodged up to a dozen complaints against Wooten with the state police. The union official told the judge that he had never before been asked to appear as a divorce-case witness, that the union believed family complaints against Wooten were "not job-related," and that Wooten was being "harassed" by Palin and other family members.
Court documents show that Judge Suddock was disturbed by the alleged attacks by Palin and her family members on Wooten's behavior and character. "Disparaging will not be tolerated—it is a form of child abuse," the judge told a settlement hearing in October 2005, according to typed notes of the proceedings. The judge added: "Relatives cannot disparage either. If occurs [sic] the parent needs to set boundaries for their relatives."
But there are no boundaries for Sarah Palin and her family.
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