Palin cleared in second probe into firing

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin did not violate state ethics rules when she fired her state police commissioner and allegedly tried to engineer the firing of her brother-in-law from the Alaska State Troopers, an investigator for Alaska's State Personnel Board found in a report released on the eve of the election.

The exoneration by the State Personnel Board contradicts the findings of an Alaska state legislative investigator, who ruled last month that Palin abused executive power when she and her husband engaged in a campaign to oust Mike Wooten, her former brother-in-law, from state trooper payroll.

The investigations began when Walt Monegan, the state police commissioner, alleged in July that he was fired by Palin for failing to oust the governor's former brother-in-law. Palin denies that Monegan's firing had anything to do with the trooper.

After Palin was selected as Sen. John McCain's running mate, her attorneys attempted to take the investigation out of the hands of the legislative investigator by asking her hand-picked, three-person State Personnel Board to look into the matter.

The legislature's investigator, Stephen Branchflower, found evidence that Palin actively joined her husband, Todd, in pursuing a personal vendetta against the trooper and that she used state employees to try to settle a score in a bitter family feud.

Timothy Petumenos, investigator to the personnel board, said his findings are different because "the wrong statute was used as a basis for the conclusions contained in the Branchflower report" and Branchflower "misconstrued the available evidence."