Mudflats quotes the latest from the Anchorage Daily News:
With his Troopergate report due Friday, legislative investigator Steve Branchflower appears to have the makings of a fairly complete account, despite weeks of resistance from the Palin family and administration.
Branchflower has, or soon will have, answers from nearly all the people he’d hoped to question regarding Gov. Sarah Palin’s firing in July of former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.
Some of the final witnesses include seven state employees, including the governor’s chief of staff, who lost a court fight to kill subpoenas Branchflower obtained through the Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee to compel their testimony.
This week the seven are answering a list of questions known as interrogatories. The answers are submitted under oath.
Another key witness, Todd Palin, the governor’s husband, also is answering a list of questions in writing, and has a deadline of Wednesday to turn them in.
A legislative panel has scheduled a meeting for 9 a.m. Friday to receive Branchflower’s report on Monegan’s firing and whether Palin or members of her administration abused their powers in pushing for the dismissal of a state trooper involved in a child-custody fight with the governor’s sister.
AK Muckraker points out that even before the McStall campaign decided to pull out all the stops and appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court (scheduled to hear arguments beginning at 3 p.m. today and decide the matter by tomorrow), they were exerting fierce pressure on the Legislative Council not to release the report as scheduled on Friday. AKM has been urging people to ask the council to release the report and not cave into political bullying. You can add your voice in these next couple of crucial days by contacting the council members here. Three council members have already agreed to support the report’s release, but that leaves eleven more whose positions are unknown. AKM has been encouraging non-Alaskans to add their voices, as this is no longer a matter strictly of Alaskan politics, but of national significance with a vice-presidential candidate involved. And if not for McCain’s band of bullies, the report would have gone ahead unimpeded.
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