BREAKING: Sarah Palin email "hacker" David Kernell sentenced to "one year and a day imprisonment", to be served at "halfway house" - UPDATE

UPDATE:

We now have the sentence - knoxnews.com reports:

KNOXVILLE - A federal judge today ordered a former University of Tennessee student who snooped through Sarah Palin's private e-mail account in 2008 to serve a year and a day for his crime and recommended that his time be served at a Knoxville halfway house.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Phillips noted the sentence for David Kernell goes on the books as a term of imprisonment. He said the U.S. Bureau of Prisons could override his recommendation that Kernell spend his days over the next year at the Midway Rehabilitative Center on Magnolia Avenue.

Phillips said Kernell's actions in 2008 merited some form of imprisonment not because his victim was a prominent political figure but because what he did threatened "the expectation of privacy that we all have."

Kernell spoke today for the first time since he was charged.

"I'm not going to make any excuses," he told Phillips in court. "For the rest of my life I'm going to be ashamed and guilty for what I've done."

Phillips insisted that his recommendation for a halfway house should not be viewed as an act of leniency.

"Even if the defendant serves his sentence at a halfway house, this combined with a criminal conviction is significant punishment ... and a sufficient restriction of the defendant's liberty."

Kernell now attends Pellissippi State Community College, where he is a senior.

The judge said Kernell can continue his studetns during his sentence, and ordered that he continue to receive counseling for depression.

So the sentence is fortunately a little bit lighter than was to be expected from the earlier report. At least David Kernell can continue with his studies.

Still, this is an incredibly harsh sentence for a "crime" which should have been treated as misdemeanour with probation, just like the actions of "Acorn-pimp" James O'Keefe, who tampered with the phone lines of US Senator Mary Landrieu.

David Kernell will have a felony record for the rest of his life. It will without any doubt massively damage David Kernell's career opportunities, and will certainly have a significant impact on his whole life.

What is even more ridiculous is that Kernell was at first charged with four felonies.

An opportunity to rejoice for "mean girl" Sarah Palin, and for all others, even more reasons to fight against her.

+++

Our previous story:

Today David Kernell will be sentenced by the court in Knoxville, Tennessee for guessing Sarah Palin's answer to her security question for her yahoo-account ("Wasilla High") and putting parts of the emails on the internet. Whether David Kernell then afterwards tried to hide his activities, is matter of dispute, and denied by David Kernell's lawyer.

Palingates wrote extensively about the David Kernell case in the past.

There is bad news, because the judge has already mentioned that "probation is not an option."

Knoxnews.com reports:

KNOXVILLE - A U.S. judge has signaled he does not think a former University of Tennessee student who snooped through Sarah Palin's private e-mail account in 2008 should get probation.

U.S. District Thomas Phillips could make his decision about David Kernell's fate before lunch.

During court proceedings this morning, Phillips agreed Kernell should get a sentencing break, citing "the unique circumstances of this case."

But the judge said he is rejecting defense attorney Wade Davies' request for probation as well as the federal government's request an 18-month prison term.

Phillips heard arguments this morning from Davies in which he said Kernell of Memphis has a long history of depression and impulsive behavior. It was never more evidence, Davies said, than when at the age of 20 Kernell made the reckless decision to go perusing through the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate's Yahoo! account.

Phillips has taken a break in the hearing, and sentencing is still pending.

Palin and her daughter, Bristol, both testified at trial in late April that the hacking and harassment afterward caused their family emotional distress.

Palin previously declined to comment when asked if Kernell should be sent to prison, saying it should be up to the judge. She did not answer Associated Press messages seeking comment this week about the sentencing. Her attorney, Thomas van Flein, referred questions Thursday to prosecutors, saying Palin provided them a victim's statement.

So the Palins will most likely achieve another great success about their "enemies."

Given their proven track record in acting vindictive, this surely will make them very happy.

+++

UPDATE - A look back in time: Sarah Palin and the use of her yahoo-accounts for state business

In the past, Sarah Palin used not one, not two, but three yahoo-accounts for conducting state business. These were

a) gov.palin@yahoo.com (accessed by David Kernell)

b) gov.sarah@yahoo.com

c) govpalin@yahoo.com

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!

In many of these emails which dealt with state-business, members of Palin's administration were sending messages to Sarah's yahoo-account, sometimes VERY important messages (more below). In other cases, Sarah Palin sent emails from her yahoo account to her staff which clearly referred to her gubernational business.

Sarah Palin sent from her "gov.palin@yahoo.com" account messages such as the following examples - from the Crivella West/MSNBC.COM database:

April 12, 2008:

April 12, 2008:

May 13, 2008:

May 24, 2008:

The emails prove that Sarah Palin often received important messages on her yahoo account which dealt with her gubernational business. One of the best examples which can be found in the Crivella West/MSNBC.COM database is an email by Ivy Frye, who on April 30, 2008 sent a comprehensive list of "legislation awaiting action" to Sarah's yahoo account, and noted for a particular bill: "The governor has until Friday, May 23, to sign and line-item veto or veto the bill".

+++

There is another interesting fact which I found while researching this subject. Sarah Palin earlier had a very, very similar looking yahoo account, which she also used for her state business: An account with the address "govpalin@yahoo.com". What's the difference? Well, the "." is missing between "gov" and "palin" in this earlier email address!

I realized this fact when I read a report by Alaska Dispatch from January 2010. Attached to this report were a number of emails from Palin's administration which Alaska Dispatch received from an anonymous source, and which are not part of the Crivella West database. Download these emails HERE.

These emails reveal that Palin first used a "govpalin@yahoo.com" account without the "dot".

Examples:

On February 2, 2007, Sarah Palin then sent a message to her most important staff members and told them that she has to "cancel" her "govpalin@yahoo.com" account and that she will open instead a "NEW personal/private/confidential account" with the address "gov.sarah@yahoo.com". No reason for this change was given in the email.

What happened then later to the "gov.sarah@yahoo.com" account? I don't know. But it appears that Sarah was also was unhappy with the "gov.sarah@yahoo.com" account, and in her unshaken faith to "Yahoo Inc" she then opened at some point the (third!) "gov.palin@yahoo.com" account which she used in 2008 - and which David Kernell eventually accessed after looking up the answers to the "security questions" on Wikipedia.

Regarding the "gov.sarah@yahoo.com" address:

Although this address was not subject of the trial in Knoxville, I would like to point out that you get 50 hits in the Crivella West/MSNBC.COM database if you search for this email address! Dates from beginning of 2007 up to end of August 2008! So the incredible Sarah juggled with two different yahoo accounts at the same time. Why are we not surprised?

Here is a particularly good example of an email written by "gov.sarah@yahoo.com" - one of the infamous Dairygate emails, a huge scandal of Palin's administration (read the details of Dairygate HERE).

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Please re-tweet:

http://twitter.com/#!/palingates/status/3136522643578881

http://twitter.com/#!/palingates/status/3150769691828224

http://twitter.com/#!/palingates/status/3151528730820608

http://twitter.com/#!/palingates/status/3183984301314048

.

Fox News reports about David Kernell's trial: The fair and balanced Trig Truthers - what the fox? - Bristol Palin's testimony - UPDATE!

The jurors in David Kernell's trial have finished their deliberations, and the situation, according to knoxnews, looks as follows:

KNOXVILLE — A federal jury this afternoon convicted Sarah Palin e-mail intruder David C. Kernell of felony destruction of records to hamper a federal investigation and misdemeanor unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer.

The jury acquitted Kernell, 22, of felony wire fraud.

U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Phillips declared a mistrial on the fourth charge, felony identity theft, after the jurors said they were hopelessly deadlocked.

The records charge carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence, while the misdemeanor maximum sentence is one year.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Weddle said federal prosecutors would decide next week if they would retry the former University of Tennessee economics major on that charge.

Phillips said he would set a sentencing date after prosecutors make that decision.

+++

Therefore, we have to wait and see what happens next. Of course is a positive development that David Kernell was only found guilty on one of the felony charges, but it's too early yet for a final assessment.

Fox News is also on the case. This is an excerpt from their current report:

OK - a report like all the others, isn't it?

Wait, let's take a closer look:

"Bristol Palin said she was distressed to find pictures of her newborn son in the public eye after he mother's e-mail was hacked."

Wait a moment! What the fox...?

Did she REALLY say that?

Or is it just a "gaffe" by Fox News, a misinterpretation, a false report?

When Sarah Palin's yahoo account was illegally accessed by David Kernell on September 15, 2008, the only baby that had been born recently was - Trig.

Tripp, Bristol Palin's "publicly acknowledged son", was born on December 27, 2008.

The two pictures from this yahoo-account which afterwards were leaked to the public also show Trig.

Picture 1 from the yahoo-account:

Large version of this picture HERE.

Picture 2 from the yahoo account:

All available screenshots from Sarah's yahoo account have been published by Gawker HERE.

So what happened regarding this Fox News report? Could it be possible that Bristol made a slip?

Remember, Palinbots: Fox News always speaks the truth! ;-)

Funnily, we just published a shiny new post about the "mysterious" parentage of Trig a few days ago. It's still not too late for the Palinbots to educate themselves!

(huge h/t to yellowgirl!)

In case this report on Fox News is changed, I saved a PDF-copy of it HERE.

+++

Off-Topic:

Our brilliant reader "mrsgunka" has just sent us an amazing PDF-document with a detailed hypothesis regarding the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig accident in the Gulf of Mexico, together with shocking pictures! You HAVE to see this:

Download HERE.

In case this link doesn't work, there is an alternative link HERE. But please try the other link first.

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UPDATE:

Thanks to the efforts of our brilliant Palingater ella, we now have access to all documents which have been filed about the David Kernell trial in the Tennessee court database.

Therefore I started rummaging through the documents and made some interesting discoveries. I was looking in the first place for the transcripts of the Sarah and Bristol Palin's testimonies, and I found out that it may take several months before they will be published. However, the good news is that we will definitely receive in the near future PRECISE word-for-word transcripts of the proceedings and the testimonies. And there is not one darn thing Sarah can do about it.

There are some very interesting documents for everybody who wants to start digging deeper into the trial. I have collected them all in THIS FOLDER and they are ready for download.

Some of the most interesting documents:

- Transcript from June 30, 2009

- Transcript from July 16, 2009

- Original indictment - long version

Here we have some brand-new items:

- Verdict of the jury - April 30, 2010

- Mistrial declared on charge 1

The verdict of the jury is incredibly interesting, because what I hadn't realized so far that the jury had the CHOICE regarding charge 3 between a more severe and a lesser charge - and the jury opted for the lesser charge!

Screenshots:

Also, there is a very exciting affidavit in the documents by David T. Jones, Senior Assistant General Attorney of Alaska (download here).

From this affidavit we learn that we will receive thousands and thousands of more emails from Sarah Palin's administration in the near future! I would call this very good news. :-)

Screenshot:




+++

Websites which link to this post:

www.memeorandum.com

Sarah Jones - politicususa

www.newsvine.com

.

Keith Olbermann reports Sarah Palin's possible perjury in David Kernell's trial in Knoxville on "Countdown" - UPDATE

+++Read our original post about Sarah Palin's

possible perjury - click here+++

What a day!

Sarah Palin's possible perjury, as first exposed by Palingates on Sunday, 25 April 2010, starts to receive the attention of the MSM.

Keith Olbermann just a few hours ago reported the story and credited Palingates for it - here is the clip:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

But let's have a look at the background of this report.

Keith Olbermann had David Weigel, reporter at the Washington Post, as a guest to talk about the story.

A tweet that David Weigel sent out a few hours earlier today makes you wonder whether he is the "independent" expert which would have been necessary for a meaningful discussion:

In his column in the Washington Post called "Right Now - Inside the conservative movement and the Republican Party", David Weigel today had a very unflattering description for us:

"Palin haters want to believe she perjured herself in the hacked e-mail trial. (My reporting confirms that the questioning was narrowly focused and she didn't.)"

So are we "Palin haters"? It's true that the aim of our blog is to expose the many lies and deceptions of Sarah Palin. Do we hate her? I don't! She has never done anything bad to me personally. However, I do NOT wish her to be in any position of power, because we here at Palingates believe she is a dangerously unhinged and mentally unstable warmonger.

The label "hater" is usually used to describe us by our special friends from Conservatives4Palin or by similar pro-Palin blogs. It makes a very "unbalanced" impression to have this label used by a MSM journalist who is a guest on Keith Olbermann's show.

So David Weigel was "ready to debunk a liberal myth" on Olbermann? OK...!

Earlier today, I had a short email exchange with David Weigel.

He contacted me "out of the blue", and what he said was:

"Subject: Question about your perjury story

Call me stupid, but I don't understand it, especially the e-mail question. You guys think there is a real argument that she perjured herself with her description of the yahoo account?"

Screenshot:

So I answered David and said:

"Our argument here is relatively simple.

According to Jamie Satterfield from knoxnews, who specifically
confirmed this for me, Palin said in her testimony, in the words of
Jamie:

"What she said was the people at the governor's mansion sometimes sent her emails relative to issues regarding the mansion and her children. She denied specifically diverting gubernatorial issues to the
account."

We proved in our post that this statement by Palin is simply wrong.
She did use this account for her gubernatorial business many times. We also proved that she used her other TWO yahoo accounts extensively for her gubernatorial business. Our points are 100% factual. There are no assumptions, no conjecture etc."

I received no reply to this message.

In order to have the full background of what happened, let me also show you the correspondence I had with journalist Jamie Satterfield from www.knoxnews.com regarding this topic - a journalist who actually was in the courtroom during the testimony of Sarah Palin - unlike David Weigel, who got his report "second-hand"!

I wrote to her on Saturday:

"Dear Ms Satterfield,

my name is Patrick, I write for the blog "palingates"
(http://palingates.blogspot.com).

We published an article today about the fact that Sarah Palin possibly
committed perjury when she testified in Knoxville:

http://palingates.blogspot.com/2010/04/did-sarah-palin-commit-perjury-during.html

This might be interesting for you.

I have a question to you regarding this matter. In your article you wrote:

+++

She denied using the account to conduct gubernatorial business.

"We know there was an Attorney General's opinion one week prior and a lot of other opinions in the state that, of course, it was proper for
me to have a private account," she said.

+++

Do you remember what the exact words were that Palin used?

Because from the records of the yahoo account, it's pretty clear that
she extensively used it for her gubernatorial business. We have
explained this in our article in detail.

Thanks a lot,

Patrick"

At first, I received the following reply from Jamie Satterfield:

"What's in quote marks are her exact words."

This didn't fully answer my question, therefore I sent Jamie a follow-up question:

"Was the sentence

"She denied using the account to conduct gubernatorial business."

just an "interpretation" of the quote that follows in your article, or
did she say it like that?

Thanks!"

Jamie answered me:

"No what she said was the people at the governor's mansion sometimes sent her emails relative to issues regarding the mansion and her children. She denied specifically diverting gubernatorial issues to the account."

A few minutes later, she sent me an additional message and said:

"And to make it clear how journalists actually work, if it's not in quote marks then it is a paraphrase of what was said. Finally, you can create an account on pacer, where a transcript of her testimony will be made publics in the coming months."

From this correspondence, one thing is abundantly clear: Jamie Satterfield tried to report the remarks of Sarah Palin with high accuracy. It's obvious that she applied high journalistic standards to her own reporting.

David Weigel was not in the courtroom - but Jamie Satterfield was. Yet, David apparently did not take very seriously what Sarah Palin actually said in her testimony in Knoxville. I cannot see how he "debunked" the accusation that Sarah might have committed perjury.

I do hope that Keith Olbermann himself or others will follow-up this story - and will invite guests who were actually in the courtroom, like Jamie Satterfield from www.knoxnews.com and who don't appear on a TV show with a political agenda, but want to report the real facts.

+++

UPDATE:

After Countdown aired, David Weigel exchanged this friendly tweet with C4P-outlet "Palin TV" (run by Sheya, contributor at C4P):

PalinTV:



David Weigel:

I do wonder if David Weigel calls C4P "Obama haters".

My guess is: Probably not.

+++

UPDATE 2:

In a post called "I, Sarah Palin defender" David Weigel reacted on his blog at the Washington Post to the criticism he felt was directed against him in this post at Palingates and stated:

"Today, PalinGates published a lengthy attack on me, including a screenshot of a friendly email I sent them before I went on the show, after my own reporting had convinced me that their first post was mostly baseless. Here's their take.

David Weigel was not in the courtroom - but Jamie Satterfield was. Yet, David apparently did not take very seriously what Sarah Palin actually said in her testimony in Knoxville. I cannot see how he "debunked" the accusation that Sarah might have committed perjury.

And here's what I actually said.

We need to see the transcript, but it doesn't sound like she actually trapped herself in anything here. The defense attorney, Wade Davies, was prohibited from taking this much further than the questions about what -- the e-mails that were sent, that were asked about previously. She stuck to saying that it was political e-mails, e-mails about the governor`s mansion.
The e-mails that you were talking about didn't really come up. So the people I talked to inside the courtroom say maybe she could have fudged the words a little bit less, but this doesn`t seem to be a problem for her.

I think it's pretty clear which of us was looking for the facts and which of us is trafficking in innuendo. There is just no case for accusing Palin of perjury."

+++

His remarks prompted me to explain my position. I therefore tried to post the following comment on his blog at the Washington Post, but for unknown reasons, it didn't get through.

This is my comment:

David,

Thank you for reporting our story about Sarah Palin’s possible perjury in Knoxville.

It seems that you don’t understand why we disagree with the premise of your report and felt uneasy with the way you introduced us to your readers. There are several reasons. One of them is that you struck the “wrong tone” right from the start when you simply labelled us “Palin haters”. That’s not what we are. We don’t hate Sarah Palin, but we do NOT wish her to be in any position of power, because we believe she is a dangerously unhinged and mentally unstable warmonger.

Then you claimed to have “debunked” something, although in my view, you didn’t. One of the key arguments of our story was the fact that Sarah Palin, according to the journalist Jamie Satterfield, who listened to Sarah’s testimony in the courtroom, “denied specifically diverting gubernatorial issues to the (yahoo) account”. I contacted Jamie Satterfield in order to find out specifically what was said. One can read the complete correspondence with Jamie Satterfield in our follow-up post:

http://palingates.blogspot.com/2010/04/keith-olbermann-reports-sarah-palins.html

So do you believe that Jamie Satterfield reported the testimony incorrectly? Because that’s what would have been necessary in order to “debunk” our claim. But you didn’t say that, but instead offered a very vague explanation of what you were told by others, including “Palin-aides”, what Palin is reported to have said in her testimony. In doing so, you carefully avoided the essence of our claim which is that the emails of Palin’s administration, which were published by MSNBC.COM, show that she conducted gubernatorial business on her yahoo-account on a regular basis. As a sidenote, we also explained and documented that Sarah Palin extensively used her other TWO yahoo accounts for her gubernatorial affairs.

As it stands, we believe Palin lied in her testimony about using the yahoo account for her gubernatorial business, as we explained in detail, citing several examples of her emails in our first post:

http://palingates.blogspot.com/2010/04/did-sarah-palin-commit-perjury-during.html

If this lie technically is “perjury” in a legal sense, is another question, and can only be answered by a judge – and that’s why we framed this as a question in our first post on this issue.

We also believe that Palin was untruthful regarding the two other points we mentioned in our original post.

In what you call a “lengthy attack” on you, I simply quoted your “one-line” email to me, to which I responded with a detailed reply. If your email was as “friendly” as you now claim, why didn’t you send me a response? Why did you instead just twitter that you were about to “debunk a liberal myth on Olbermann”?

Apart from that, I mainly posted three twitter messages from you, and asked the question: Would you label C4P, with whom you exchange twitter messages frequently, simply as “Obama haters”? This question was absolutely justified - and you didn't answer it.

Palingates is not just about Sarah Palin’s faked pregnancy, as the Palinbot-commenters want your readers to believe. In fact, Palingates focuses on a wide variety of scandals in which Sarah Palin is involved. Troopergate, Dairygate, Todd Palin as Alaska’s “Shadow Governor”, and many more, you name it. That being said, I know that Sarah Palin’s faked pregnancy is a true fact:

http://palingates.blogspot.com/search/label/babygate

+++

In addition, Andrew Sullivan published another short post, linking to David Weigel's new post. Andrew Sullivan states that he now thinks that Sarah Palin didn't commit perjury, because he "trusts" Weigel. This followed Andrew Sullivan's first post on the Daily Dish about this matter in which he more critically analyzed Sarah Palin's testimony.

However, I am sure that we can all agree that a final assessment will only be made after the transcript of Palin's testimony in Knoxville has been published.

+++

UPDATE 3:

In a new article from April 29, 2010, David Weigel writes:

"One of the least-commented-on Palin facts of the week was her news conference outside the Knoxville, Tenn., courthouse where the man who hacked her e-mail was being tried. That's right: a news conference. The kind of thing she had not done since losing the 2008 election, the kind of thing she has skipped at every political speech in 2010. And you barely heard about it, because Palin survived it unscathed."

Just for the record - THIS is what David Weigel calls a "news conference":

+++

Websites which linked to this post:

www.memeorandum.com

www.mediaite.com

.

Did Sarah Palin commit perjury during her testimony in the David Kernell trial in Knoxville?

+++Keith Olbermann reported the story on Countdown+++

See our follow-up post with more details and clip

Picture: www.knoxnews.com

+++

Sarah Palin testified in the David Kernell trial in Knoxville on April 23, 2010.

In an earlier post, we reported about the statements she eagerly gave afterwards to the waiting journalists outside. They were certainly delighted that they had the very rare opportunity to communicate with Sarah Palin without having their questions "pre-screened".

Did Sarah Palin commit perjury while giving her testimony in Knoxville? We have to put this as a question, because we don't know the exact wording of all she said and have to rely on news reports for our information.

However, there are strong indications that Palin purposely lied during her testimony.

Let's examine closely some of the statements that Sarah Palin made.

STATEMENT NO 1 - as reported by www.knoxnews.com:

She denied using the yahoo-account to conduct gubernatorial business.

"We know there was an Attorney General's opinion one week prior and a lot of other opinions in the state that, of course, it was proper for me to have a private account," she said.

+++++++++

EDIT:

I was just now in contact with Jamie Satterfield from www.knoxnews.com. I asked her for a clarification regarding what Sarah Palin said in the testimony.

This is what Jamie answered:

"What she said was the people at the governor's mansion sometimes sent her emails relative to issues regarding the mansion and her children. She denied specifically diverting gubernatorial issues to the account."

Sarah, you better call Van Flein right now. ;-)

You might need him.

+++++++++

This statement, if it is reported correctly, is WRONG. Sarah Palin used the yahoo account in question extensively for gubernatorial business.

To be very precise here: We are talking about the yahoo account "gov.palin@yahoo.com", which was "hacked" by David Kernell. That was the account that Sarah was questioned about during the trial in Knoxville.

Fortunately, MSNBC.COM a few months ago received through a FOIA request 3,000 pages of emails from Palin's former administration in Alaska. Had Sarah "forgotten" about that, when she obviously attempted to paint David Kernell's actions in the worst possible light?

Do these emails prove that she used the account for her gubernational business? YOU BETCHA!

Just go to the Crivella West database which was specifically set up for Palin's emails and give in "gov.palin@yahoo.com" as a searchword. You then will receive the impressive number of 28 hits!

In many of these emails members of Palin's administration were sending messages to Sarah's yahoo-account, sometimes VERY important messages (more below). In other cases, Sarah Palin sent emails from her yahoo account which clearly referred to her gubernational business to her staff.

Sarah Palin sent from her "gov.palin@yahoo.com" account messages such as the following examples:

April 12, 2008:

April 12, 2008:

May 13, 2008:

May 24, 2008:

In addition, the published emails prove that Sarah Palin often received important messages on her yahoo account which dealt with her gubernational business. One of the best examples which can be found in this database is an email by Ivy Frye, who on April 30, 2008 sent a comprehensive list of "legislation awaiting action" to Sarah's yahoo account, and noted for a particular bill: "The governor has until Friday, May 23, to sign and line-item veto or veto the bill".

+++

There is another interesting fact which I found while researching this subject. Sarah Palin earlier had a very, very similar looking yahoo account, which she also used for her state business: An account with the address "govpalin@yahoo.com". What's the difference? Well, the "." is missing between "gov" and "palin" in this earlier email address!

I realized this fact when I read a report by Alaska Dispatch from January 2010. Attached to this report were a number of emails from Palin's administration which Alaska Dispatch received from an anonymous source, and which are not part of the Crivella West database. Download these emails HERE.

These emails reveal that Palin first used a "govpalin@yahoo.com" account without the "dot".

Examples:

On February 2, 2007, Sarah Palin then sent a message to her most important staff members and told them that she has to "cancel" her "govpalin@yahoo.com" account and that she will open instead a "NEW personal/private/confidential account" with the address "gov.sarah@yahoo.com". No reason for this change was given in the email.

What happened then later to the "gov.sarah@yahoo.com" account? I don't know. But it appears that Sarah was also was unhappy with the "gov.sarah@yahoo.com" account, and in her unshaken faith to "Yahoo Inc" she then opened at some point the (third!) "gov.palin@yahoo.com" account which she used in 2008 - and which David Kernell eventually accessed after looking up the answers to the "security questions" on Wikipedia.

EDIT:

At first, I accidentally added to this post one screenshot of an email which was sent from the "gov.sarah@yahoo.com" address. Although this address is not subject of the trial in Knoxville, I would like to point out that you get 50 hits in the Crivella West database if you search for this email address! Dates from beginning of 2007 up to end of August 2008! So the incredible Sarah juggled with two different yahoo accounts at the same time. Why are we not surprised?

Here is a particularly good example of an email written by "gov.sarah@yahoo.com" - one of the infamous Dairygate emails, a huge scandal of Palin's administration (read the details of Dairygate HERE).

+++

STATEMENT NO 2 - as reported by www.knoxnews.com and Associated Press:

Davies also sought to use Palin's testimony to show that the answer to the security question that Kernell essentially guessed via Google searches to allegedly illegally access her account - Where did you meet your spouse? - wasn't a secret.

"It wasn't a secret to me," Sarah said, drawing laughter. "I don't know if the rest of the world knew."

This statement, if reported correctly, is also WRONG. Some "digging" is required, but in the end it's not too difficult to find out that this statement is false.

From the time of her nomination on August 29, 2008, Sarah Palin was immediately the subject of intense scrutiny and curious questions. Sarah Palin obviously "forgot" during her testimony in Knoxville that journalists didn't just ask questions - Sarah Palin herself also gave answers in return!

As we already mentioned in our previous post on this topic, Sarah's answer to this particular security question was "Wasilla High" - where Sarah and Todd first met.

So, what was reported about this fact in the media when David Kernell hacked the account on September 15, 2008?

Examples:

People magazine reported on September 15, 2008:

"Palin met husband Todd when both were seniors at Wasilla High School, northeast of Anchorage, the same year the former Sarah Heath cocaptained the girls' basketball team to a state title."

The LA Times reported on September 7, 2008:

"Todd and Sarah Palin are a classic small-town couple. They met at Wasilla High School shortly after he moved here. As the story goes, the then-Sarah Heath was smitten with the basketball star, as he was with her."

But the money quote can be found here:

CNN produced a comprehensive documentary about Sarah Palin called "Sarah Palin Revealed", which aired at September 13, 2008. This documentary was created by Drew Griffin and fortunately the transcript is still available on the CNN website.

Excerpt:

GRIFFIN: By 1987, Sarah returned home in Wasilla, Alaska. To a special friend she met during her senior year of high school.

PALIN: Dad came home from basketball practice and he said -- it was right before school started, and he said, Sarah, there is a new boy in town and he's the best basketball player I've seen in Wasilla, better than -- and he named off some kids. I said, oh, I will have to meet him, the new boy in town.

GRIFFIN: That new boy was Todd Palin, attractive, athletic, charming, a fresh face in Wasilla. Sarah met her match. After Sarah's return from college, the two grew closer.

JOHNSON: Todd, from his fishing boat, had some hand-held radios. And they lived several miles away from each other. They would each sit on the back porch of their homes and talk to each other on the hand-held radios.

Therefore it's clear that Sarah Palin proudly told the journalists exactly where she met Todd! This interview with CNN must have taken place between August 31 and September 13, 2008, most likely several days before the documentary went on the air. It was a large documentary, length 41:30 minutes, which would have needed thorough preparation. The "empty shells" of the youtube clips with this documentary can still be found here - the clips itself were removed in the meantime from youtube.

Therefore Sarah's statement in her testimony in Knoxville "I don't know if the rest of the world knew" is false, because it can be proven that Sarah told reporters at the beginning of September 2008 where she first met Todd.

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STATEMENT NO 3:

a) Version reported by "Associated Press":

The posting of family photos and e-mails on the web fueled rumors that Palin and her husband had affairs and that her youngest child, Trig, was not really her son, she said in court.

b) Version reported by "www.knoxnews.com":

The campaign, in the meantime, was forced to divert attention to the fallout - increased media scrutiny of her use of a free, poorly-protected private e-mail account and a slew of rumors about what the account might reveal.

"Todd and me having affairs," she said of the rumors. "The FBI was investigating me. (Youngest son) Trig wasn't really my son."

c) Version reported by "www.wate.com":

She also said it was shocking and invasive seeing her personal pictures and contacts posted on the Internet, and she spent days correcting the media about assumptions made after this happened.

Palin said some of the rumors included that she was having an affair and that her youngest son, Trig, wasn't hers.

So here we have three versions of this statement. However, there can hardly be any doubt that Sarah Palin expressed in her testimony that the publication of these emails caused the media to take a much closer look at the rumors that Trig is not her biological son.

If we take this statement as fact, then no basis for this assertion is apparent.

The truth is that the rumors that Trig is not Sarah's biological son existed LONG before the day the emails from her hacked yahoo account became public.

The rumors go back a long way - this is extensively documented.

Kyle Hopkins, journalist of the "Anchorage Daily News", wrote in an article called "Rumor patrol -- Baby drama" on August 31, 2008:

"OK - the Palin baby speculation is inescapable at this point. The left-leaning Daily Kos posted an item Friday called "Palin's faked "pregnancy"? Covering for teen daughter?"

It's a version of a rumor - long simmering in Alaska -- that Palin's daughter Bristol was pregnant and the governor somehow covered it up by pretending to have the baby (Trig) herself.

Then the also-left leaning Huffington Post slammed all the speculators saying that Democrats have plenty to target Palin on without the baby drama. "Guys, its a loser. Can we not do this?" writes Bart Motes. And then there's this from the Atlantic Web site, pursuing the questions.

So, time for some rumor patrol. It'd be nice to put this to bed.

The answer here should be pretty simple. It happened or it didn't. For months, we have been getting anonymous people telling us they "know" it's true, or people we do know telling us they've heard it fifth-hand. We haven't seen anything resembling proof. We asked the governor's office, and the governor, multiple times about it."

So Kyle Hopkins made it abundantly clear that they had heard the rumors already "for months".

In a TV appearance a few days later, on September 2, 2008, his ADN colleague Michael Carey said almost exactly the same and gave a few more details:

It is fascinating to read that in the same article in the ADN, Kyle Hopkins also confirmed that Sarah Palin herself was well informed about the rumor that her daughter Bristol is pregnant - even before she had her pregnancy with Trig announced on March 5, 2008:

McAllister was an Anchorage TV reporter before working for Palin. He said Palin once approached him - before people knew she was pregnant - assuming he'd been hearing rumors.

"She said it's not true about Bristol," McAllister said.

At the time, the rumor would have been that Palin's daughter was pregnant.

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Also, already on September 3, 2008, CBC News aired a broadcast asking serious questions about the parentage of Trig:

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Well, from our own investigations we know that this "rumor" that Sarah Palin has faked her pregnancy is true. We have said it many, many times before, and nobody has ever stopped us. We are still waiting for a message from Thomas Van Flein.

The rumors that Bristol was pregnant already existed in Alaska's capital Juneau in December 2007, as former State Senate President Lyda Green confirmed to me when I had a telephone conversation with her in August 2009.

From another source we know that a member of the leadership of the Republican party in Alaska confirmed as a fact in a private conversation in January 2008 that Bristol was pregnant at that time. Other people with direct access to Bristol's circle of friends also let us know confidentially that Bristol is the mother of Trig.

We know - and Sarah knows we know. How inconvenient! ;-)

Sarah never showed the birth certificate or medical documentation to anyone - not to the McCain campaign, not to the media. And you can bet a fortune that she won't do anything like that in the foreseeable future.

See the reporting of Palingates about Sarah's faked pregnancy HERE.

But back to Sarah's statement from the trial: The assertion that the publication of these emails have supported, fueled or even triggered these "rumors" is simply baseless. The rumors existed long before David Kernell hacked Sarah's yahoo account. A connection between these events is not visible.

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Summary:

If we look at Sarah's statements from an objective point of view, provided that the reporting in the news was correct, I strongly believe that many prosecutors would choose "GUILTY". However, this is Sarah Palin we are talking about, the woman who gets away with virtually anything. For how long still? Only God knows!

However, we won't forget Sarah's immortal words:

"I do think there should be consequences for bad behavior."

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Websites which linked to this post:

The Political Carnival

Buzzflash

Reported on "Countdown" by Keith Olbermann

Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Dish

David Weigel - The Washington Post

Jason Easley - politicusa

Nashville Scene

.

Sarah Palin's testimony in Knoxville finished - Afterwards, we get a good look at Sarah's vindictive character - UPDATE!

Sarah Palin already finished her testimony in Knoxville (see links HERE and HERE), and afterwards she made statements which are simply infuriating.

What the heck is she going on about when she said there was"an office being broken in and documents stolen"? First of all, it didn't happen, second of all, she clearly refers to the two girls who have found her contract in a dumpster at CSU Stanislaus - and who were afterwards falsely accused by the University of having "stolen" the documents.

Pictures of the two brave students when they turned over the documents HERE.

This is just disgusting. It's clear that she would like to see these two brave girls, who have crossed Queen Sarah, to go on trial and receive 50 years prison as well!

What's YOUR motivation, Sarah, for having made this comment? Tell us, please!

CSU students Alicia Lewis, left, and Ashli Briggs

with the papers they found in the dumpster

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America gets a good glimpse of the REAL Sarah Palin here - she is a snarky and vindictive liar. Does ANYBODY in America really want this woman, who shows no presidential qualities whatsoever, as a President?

I also would like to add a comment made by our reader "Moon":

"The fact that she couldn't respond to the "Bristol has no phone" emergency for a couple WEEKS makes me wonder how she'd handle a real emergency if she was ever elected to the presidency. The woman lacks any common sense, no matter how much she loves to talk about fixin' all those problems with a dose of common sense. If (and that's a BIG IF!), she actually did give birth to Trig, and really did fly from TX to Alaska while leaking amniotic fluid, that was the biggest breach of any common sense I ever heard of. The entire business of no phone for poor little Bristol alone in the big scary woods, reeks of concocted drama. Do the American people really want a woman who uses an un-secure Yahoo address to conduct state business and can't figure out how to get her pregnant teen a new phone, to be the leader of our country? Astonishing."

By the way: You can see in the videos that Sarah Palin was accompanied by her lawyer Thomas Van Flein in Knoxville. Why, I ask? Was Van Flein there in case things were brought up that they weren't quite prepared to handle?

Here are Sarah's statements in front of the courthouse in Knoxville after her testimony:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Uncut clip with the complete interview after the testimony:

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UPDATE:

Our brilliant reader "Ardiva" sent me the complete documentation regarding David Kernell's email "hack". There are two things I hadn't seen before:

1. The picture with Trig in the plane had the original camera properties on it, which is important for documenting when and with which device the photo was taken.

The properties are:

BlackBerry 8310

Date taken: 16.08.2008 19:28:39

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EDIT: I have now uploaded the original plane picture containing the original data to my flickr - you can see the complete so-called "exif-data" HERE.

Also, thanks to our reader Ardiva, the original picture is now available in a very LARGE FORMAT.

I am talking about this picture:

Screenshot exif-data, taken from photoshop:

Here is a comparison with a picture of Trig at the RNC. Kathleen and I strongly believe that it's Trig in both pictures.

(h/t ThanksABunchJohn)

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2. But what is particularly interesting are the exact circumstances how David "hacked" into Sarah's account. Never in the history of hacking has breaking into an email account been made so easy, thanks to Sarah's pea-brain!

This is how David Kernell did it, in his own words:

"In the past couple days news had come to light about palin using a yahoo mail account, it was in news stories and such, a thread was started full of newfags trying to do something that would not get this off the ground, for the next 2 hours the acct was locked from password recovery presumably from all this bullshit spamming.

after the password recovery was reenabled, it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)

the second was somewhat harder, the question was “where did you meet your spouse?” did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college, if youll look on some of the screenshits that I took and other fellow anon have so graciously put on photobucket you will see the google search for “palin eloped” or some such in one of the tabs.

I found out later though more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower…"

This is the woman who her fans want to get access to the frikkin nuclear codes! Sarah Palin is not even able to imagine that you DO NOT set up security questions for an email account with information that is publicly available on the internet for everyone to see!

Also, as Frank Bailey testified, he already had warned her about the lack of security of these yahoo accounts!

Please! This woman is a moron!

Vindictive + moron + not able to deal with any criticism + nuclear codes = ???

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UPDATE 2:

Our reader Debbie sent me the following message, which I would like to post here without changing it, because I couldn't say it any better myself:

"I tried to play a bit and did a search which got me to http://whitepages.addresses.com.

This site lists 2 entries for the Palin household with a phone number. I do not know if the number is still accurate or when it would have stopped functioning.

Sarah H Palin Residential Listing
1140 W Parks Hwy
Wasilla, AK 99654
(907) 373-xxxx

Todd M Palin Residential Listing
1140 W Parks Hwy
Wasilla, AK 99654
(907) 373-xxxx

The site below shows that this number is a landline plus there is a map showing this landline's location (we don't want to post the full number here on the blog, so I won't include this link - P.)

So, was this phone number in use during the time that the young college student accessed Palin's email account? If so, it looks like both Bristol and Sarah's testimony might not be exactly on the up and up.

Maybe this is something that can be checked out by someone more in the know than I would be?"

EDIT:

A blog post from September 3, 2008 proves that this landline at the home of the Palins in Wasilla already existed in September 2008 and was easy to find via the White Pages!

Sarah: Perjury? I think you should get 50 years, if you ask me!

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UPDATE 3:

WBIR.COM has published court drawings of Sarah - priceless!

Here is another one - h/t Vera City!