Investigator Tim Petumenos rules: Sarah Palin's "Alaska Fund Trust" (Legal Defense Fund) was illegal - UPDATE: THE SCANDAL CONTINUES!

Tim Petumenos

AP reports:

"An investigator for the Alaska Personnel Board says a legal defense fund set up for Sarah Palin when she was governor was illegal.

Investigator Timothy Petumenos said Thursday the Alaska Fund Trust inappropriately used the word "official" on its website, wrongly implying Palin's endorsement as governor.

Palin's attorney says she will return the funds.

Petumenos, however, found the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee acted in good faith and relied on the advice of lawyers when setting up the fund.

A preliminary, confidential report also implicating Palin was issued last July, less than two weeks after she announced she was resigning. In announcing her resignation, Palin cited the toll of the ethics probes as one of the reasons she was stepping down."

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So, the ethics complaint which was filed by Kim Chatman in 2009 was successful, which is good news. But, not surprisingly, Sarah just get's a slap on the wrist: Such an innocent looking woman could NOT possibly act in BAD faith, could she? Now she is a victim of the evil lawyers who did everything wrong.

Under Meg Stapleton's name a long post has already been published on Sarah's facebook.

The spin is unbelievable!

"Ultimately, the Alaska Fund Trust was borne, and within a day or two, a complaint was filed against it challenging its legality. (And like everything else, the public knew because someone – likely the complainant – violated the law and publicly released the accusation.) And so started another prolonged legal battle – this time to determine if the legal fund created to defend Governor Palin against frivolous ethics complaints was itself ethical. Quite a circle really. We made it clear that no money would be paid out on until the matter had been resolved.

Thus, to this very moment, the money received was frozen and no one, not the Palins, not the Palins’ attorney, no one ever received a penny from the Trust on the Palins’ behalf.

The Personnel Board initially appointed an “independent” investigator. That investigator, we later learned, had connections with, and was associated with President Obama. The Personnel Board had hired President Obama’s personal law firm as an “independent” investigator to review whether a fund created to raise money to eliminate a debt incurred as a result of Governor Palin’s opposition to President Obama was appropriate. We objected to both the illegal leak and the blatant political influence, and a new investigator was appointed.

The new investigator spent considerable time reviewing the old information and collecting new, but I think it proved to be too difficult to reverse an already-public decision. He concluded that the Trust fund violated Alaska law in two respects. His biggest heartburn was that we used the word “official” on the website. And he was distressed that we turned down an offer from a former White House Special Counsel to serve as trustee and instead chose an Alaskan whom Alaskans would recognize – Kristan Cole."

Also, a BRAND NEW Legal Defense Fund has been started for the multi-millionaire Sarah Palin, as is proudly announced in this facebook post.

Milk the sheeple as long as you can, Sarah!

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Download the full Petumenos Alaska Fund Trust Report HERE.

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UPDATE - THE SCANDAL CONTINUES:

Sarah's shiny new Legal Defense is just announced today, and already we can prove that the people who run this new Defense Fund are LIARS!

On the website of this new Defense Fund, it says:

"Is this site officially sanctioned by Sarah Palin?
Yes, the legal defense fund is sactioned by Sarah Palin. However, this website and fund are not associated with SarahPAC or other entities. Governor Palin is not the trustee of the fund. She has sanctioned the use of her name and image for the website and trust to help raise funds for her legal defense."

So, who is behind her new Legal Defense Fund? Nobody knows, and not even the name of the Trustee is mentioned. The only contact details on the website of the new Legal Defense Fund are an email address and postbox in Anchorage:

However, somebody forget to cover his tracks.

Look at the registration details and administrative contact information of the website for the new Legal Defense Fund:

HERE (another link HERE and HERE):

The registrant of the website is:

Registrant Contact Information:
Name: T C
Organization: Sarah Palin Legal Defense Fund
Address 1: P.O. Box 7711
City: Arlington
State: VA
Zip: 22207
Country: US
Phone: +1.12027471812
Email: @raisedigital.com

Now guess what the contact details of SarahPAC are?

Screenshot from their website:

The new "Sarah Palin Legal Defense Fund", which officially has absolutely nothing do to with SarahPAC, Sarah Palin's political action committee, shares the same address and phone number with SarahPAC!

And I would eat my hat if "TC", who is the registrant and the administrator of the new website, doesn't stand for "Timothy Crawford", the treasurer of SarahPAC (see our post about Timothy Crawford).

Sarah, you are so BUSTED! ;-)

You might fool some investigators, but you won't fool us.

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UPDATE 2:

The Petumenos AFT (download here) report contains several real bombshells and exposes several lies of Sarah Palin and her devoted Palinbots.

We learn for the first time ever that the State of Alaska was actually prepared to pay for the costs of Sarah Palin's legal defense against the ethics complaints, for "up to $ 100,000 at public expense" - but Sarah Palin turned it down, with a moronic explanation:

So, nobody was about to bankrupt poor Sarah! The State of Alaska wanted to pay for her!

But it was Sarah herself who declined!

In addition, we learn also for the first time that it was no "grassroots effort" which led to the creation of the Alaska Fund Trust - it was Meg Stapleton and Sarah Palin herself who organized everything!

The extent of the lies is just incredible.

See the lengthy statement of AFT trustee Kristan Cole which Sarah Palin published on her facebook on July 22, 2009:

"I want to be clear on a point that has been misrepresented: The Governor is not and was not involved with the Trust. The Governor has never worked on or with the Trust. The Governor has not even accepted or requested one penny from the Trust or quite frankly anything of me. And I have never expected anything from her. Really it’s quite the contrary; as I, and many other caring folks across the country have only sought to help with this legal burden.

The first and only time I have spoken with the Governor about the Trust was yesterday to alert her that I was responding to this violation of the law and leak of preliminary and confidential materials from the complainant.

There is a loophole in Alaska law. Alaskans can file frivolous complaints against the Governor - violate the law and alert the media they are doing so, all the complaints can be dismissed and yet the Governor has to personally pay for representation. Legislators covered themselves with a law that warrants automatic dismissal of a complaint if it is leaked to the public.

It has been quite obvious to me, and to other every day citizens like me, that over the last several months that something needed to be done to help the Palins with the overwhelming crush of frivolous ethics complaints.

In their own humble way, the Palins never asked for help. The Governor never even asked anyone to contribute to this legal expense fund. This trust, and the thousands and thousands of dollars raised, were the results of hard working Americans and their outpouring of support. It is disgraceful that anyone would assume that the thousands of people who sent in $5, $10 or $50 intended to "influence" the governor's official actions in Alaska! And this in a state where a half dozen legislators have been convicted of corruption as well as the previous governor's chief of staff. Not one ethics complaint was filed against these individuals who were convicted, but this governor is harassed for having her picture taken with a fish, wearing a jacket, answering press questions and giving a speech."

I do hope that the MSM will notice the lies as well.

Sarah Palin, how does it feel to be a gangsta?

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Please read the extremely interesting report about the press conference today in Anchorage with Tim Petumenos and Thomas Van Flein in Anchorage on Alaska Dispatch.

It's sickening to see the warped messages that new Defense Fund has been sending out already, according to Alaska Dispatch:

Some supporters of Palin have already begun to argue the same of the ethics settlement.

"Sarah Palin's enemies have scored another victory in their vicious campaign to smear, bankrupt, and force this dedicated public servant and conservative leader out of politics!" the Sarah Palin Legal Defense Fund said.

Even as Petumenos was calling the ex-governor's old trust fund illegal, the new fund was being set up and e-mails were being sent out soliciting funds. The e-mail was labeled "Defend Sarah,'' and asked people to send money to "pay the legal fees to rebut these relentless, frivolous lawsuits."

"This ruling is nothing but a political hatchet job designed to embarrass Governor Palin, destroy her financially, and smear her good name. But YOU can help restore her good name!"

A copy of this new begging email by the "Sarah Palin Legal Defense Fund" can be found on this website.

Another excerpt:

"As you know, Governor Palin made the painful decision to resign last summer rather than waste the good people of Alaska’s time responding to the more than 27 frivolous lawsuits filed against her and her family by left-wing extremists.

Now her enemies say she’s not even allowed to defend herself.

---, will you stand with me and The Sarah Palin Legal Defense Fund today as we fight to defend Governor Palin from this latest attack?

Alaska is perhaps the only state in the U.S. where the Attorney General does not routinely represent the governor when accusations and complaints are filed against the governor under the operative ethics statutes. This means that the governor has to personally pay for her or his own defense."

That means not only was Sarah Palin required by law to respond to each and every frivolous lawsuit filed against her by left-wing activists, but she also had to personally foot millions of dollars in legal bills to defend herself from this massive witch hunt.

My friend, that’s money Governor Palin simply didn’t have on a state salary.

So some of Sarah’s closest friends decided to put together a trust fund to help her pay the legal fees to rebut these relentless, frivolous lawsuits.

They called it the Alaska Fund Trust, the “official legal fund” for Governor Palin.

There are so many lies in this short excerpt, it's hard to count.

As it was stated in the Petumenos report, the State of Alaska was prepared to spend $ 100,000 of public money so that Sarah Palin could defend herself.

Left-wing extremists filed the complaints? No - actually, many were Republicans, including Zane Hennings (2 complaints) and Andrée McLeod (several complaints).

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Websites which linked to this post:

Alaska Dispatch

Qewz.com

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