By Kathleen
The press release cited below was sent to me directly from our friend Andree McLeod.
As also reported by the ADN, Frank Bailey sent a copy of the manuscript for his book, Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin, to the Attorney General who asked for certain confidential information to be removed. Bailey did not remove all of the information identified as confidential, and for this and other reasons the following fines were imposed:
$3,600 for using confidential information in drafting his book; $7,200 for disclosing confidential information to his two co-authors; and $1,100 for publishing confidential information after he was advised it was secret.
Screenshot from the settlement:
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Anchorage, Alaska: Sarah Palin’s top aide Frank Bailey has agreed to pay civil penalties totaling $11,900 to resolve an ethics complaint. The complaint was filed on September, 2010 by Andrée McLeod when she learned that Bailey misused confidential documents and emails he had acquired while he worked for Palin.
“Justice has yet to be served. I have called on the Attorney General to reveal all the public’s documents and emails that Bailey confiscated and shared with others when he left state employment.”
McLeod and members of the media have requested all of Palin’s email communications for the time she was Alaska’s governor. Although some have been revealed, many couldn’t be located because of Palin’s rampant use of private email accounts for official business, and thousands more remain undisclosed asAlaska’s governor’s office cites executive privileges and other delay tactics.
“Every one of those confidential and still undisclosed public documents that were in Bailey’s possession must be made public, immediately, as Bailey broke the chain of custody when he illegally shared them with his co-authors Jeanne Devon and Ken Morris,” McLeod said.
“This is the second time that Sarah’s go-to guy has been found to have crossed the line. The first was back in November of 2008 when I filed another complaint against Sarah and her staff, including Bailey,” McLeod said.
McLeod continues, “This agreement proves, yet again, that Sarah Palin’s account of her role in reforming Alaska’s government while governor is truly the only real ‘false narrative’ being bandied about.”
# # #
The initial September, 2010 McLeod complaint.
We say that all the emails should be published now - without exception.
You never know what nuggets one could find!
Note by Patrick:
In order to avoid a misunderstanding, let me just say the following: We are very grateful that Frank Bailey and his co-authors published "Blind Allegiance", as the book provides unique insights into the "real" Sarah Palin. The book didn't get the attention it really deserved - however, the dreadful controversy with Joe McGinness also significantly contributed to the fact that the book was partially ignored.
If Frank Bailey had just handed all the emails over to the State of Alaska, then the Alaskan government would have probably redacted (=censored) a huge number of them. This can still happen, of course. The leaked manuscript and the published book provided us with invaluable information, for example about the fact the Sarah Palin couldn't even prove that she was pregnant while she was supposedly pregnant with Trig - and was also desperate at the same time to find ways to fight the rumours.
Pretty, pretty strange if you supposedly carry a huge baby in your belly, or supposedly gave birth just a few days ago...But the media just ignored all of this, and rather presented the former AP-reporter Steve Quinn as a "crown witness" for the fact that Sarah Palin was indeed pregnant - when in reality Steve Quinn himself was labelled as a "cheerleader" for the Palin administration by Palin's closest staff in the published emails, just to give one example, and also had a love affair with Sarah Palin's top aide Ivy Frye! Needless to say that these facts were ignored by the media as well, which makes Justin Elliott's "definite debunker" in "Salon" the biggest embarrassment ever of this distinguished liberal website. When it comes to Sarah Palin, even liberal journalists are willing without hesitation to ignore facts and reason.
So I can see that Frank Bailey was between a rock and a hard place. It was a difficult choice. My hope is that we will now see all the emails, with only very small redactions, and they should prove very interesting indeed, as Sarah Palin has more secrets than the CIA (almost).
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Update by Patrick:
In the comments, I had the following exchange with Phil Munger from Progressive Alaska:
Philip Munger Today 09:35 AM
I beg to differ with my good friend Patrick on both the quality of Blind Allegiance and to the reasons - he seems to place a degree of blame on the McGinniss controversy - the book failed. It was hastily and poorly written by a team that never had any chemistry that could make the product into a resonant statement. Additionally, as Geoffrey Dunn so clearly wrote soon after BA came out, it is the third Troopergate coverup.
I applaud comments here and at the post at IM that reach out to Bailey to release all he stole. Maybe he could turn it over to wikileaks for free.
I doubt he will, but we should try to encourage him.
Andree, as always, is one of the few true heroes we have here in Alaska.
My reply was:
Patrick - Politicalgates Today 12:54 PM in reply to Philip Munger
Phil, it's of course true that the book had flaws, as our friend Geoffrey Dunn also pointed out, but it still had a lot to offer, as it contained damning information, especially emails, which could be found nowhere else. It certainly still served as an eye-opener for many people. In this tiresome, endless fight against the lies and manipulations of Sarah Palin it allowed a rare view on the workings of her very own "spin machine." The authors "blew it" and for example got into an amateurish confrontation with Joe McGinniss and others. My hope now is that some positive result will follow, and that we will see many more emails.
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This is a very controversial issue, and it seems difficult to come to a consensus. We have seen a clash of personalities and opinions in the past as far as Frank Bailey's book was concerned, and the controversies still linger on. Maybe there will never be a resolution. I my view it's important to look forward and to try to use this "crack" in the wall which has been caused by Bailey's book - the "crack" in the "wall of secrecy" which the State of Alaska has built around Sarah Palin, declaring everything "private" or "confidential" which might expose Sarah Palin's numerous secrets. After all, even if Sarah Palin is gone, her influence can still be seen, also due to the fact that Sean Parnell took over a considerable number of Palin's closest staff members. These people have of course no interest in seeing their former boss disgraced.
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Update 2 (by Patrick):
I looked into "Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin" again, and these are two of my "most favourite" emails by Sarah Palin:
From: Sarah
To: Scott Heyworth
Cc: Todd Palin
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 10:19 AM
Subject: Todd's son
Scott:
Todd just told me you had spoken with him awhile back and reported that some law enforcement friends of yours claimed some dumbass lie about Track not being Todd's son? This really, really disgusts me and ticks me off.
I want to know right now who said it, who would ever lie about such a thing... this is the type of bullshit lie about family that WILL keep me from running for Governor. I hate this kind of crap. I thought it was bad enough that my kids have been lied about recently regarding illegal activities that they had NO part in whatsoever. But a stupid claim like one of our kids isn't fathered by Todd?
I want to know NOW what this latest b.s. is all about because I want to get to the bottom of this garbage rumor mill. People who lie like this may know me well enough to KNOW THAT I WILL ALWAYS PUT FAMILY FIRST, AND IF UGLY LIES LIKE THIS ARE BELIEVED BY ANYONE AND ADVERSELY AFFECT MY HUSBAND AND KIDS... I WILL PULL OUT OF THE RACE BECAUSE IT'S NOT WORTH IT - AT ALL - TO LET MY FAMILY BE VICTIMS OF DARK, UGLY POLITICS LIKE THIS.
She addressed this "lie" also in a follow-up email to "a large list of supports", as Frank Bailey reports:
This reminds me of the allegation that was ― "anonymously" leaked to the media that falsely accused me of having a felony on my record by attaching a false court document to the lie that was sent to the press. It‘s also reminiscent of the false allegations that my children aren‘t really mine and my husband‘s. Oh, and of course, the ol‘ ― "I saw her on a train headed to Seward with a guy she‘s having an affair with" lie that also got back to me. Oh please. This aspect of politics stink, this is why good folks sometimes don‘t offer themselves up to serve in public office. But back to the real subject here. If this is all they got on me, it‘s pretty pathetic. I‘ve been warned that party operatives would dig as deep as they could to try to destroy my reputation. It‘s almost funny that this is all they‘ve got. Let me help them out a bit and make their search for ―"dirt" a little easier. I got a ―"D" in a micro-econ course once in college, 20 years ago, Todd and I eloped – we didn‘t have a real wedding, um, I‘m not perfect, I make mistakes everyday. Heck, today I hollered at the wrong child when I accused one of not taking out the trash on their day to do so. I was wrong. I apologize. That‘s about it. All the skeletons are out of the closet.
Frank Bailey himself offers some interesting, although in my view also slightly "bizarre" thoughts about these two telling emails and writes in "Blind Allegiance":
Defensive emails like this did more to breathe life into speculation than end it. That Sarah raised sordid issues to a previously unaware audience generated new questions. Personally, I never made the connection nor did I read the blogs that did so. Neither did I follow up and wonder who Track‘s father was if not Todd? Or what guy on what train? But thousands (eventually millions) of others did.
The rumours about Track parentage are true. As I already revealed at "Palingates" in 2010 and early 2011, Todd is not the biological father of Track. His real father is Curtis Menard Jr., who was officially Track's Godfather and died in a mysterious plane crash in 2001. We can only speculate which other dark family secrets are connected with this story. It is no surprise at all that Sarah Palin freaked out in these emails!
Just as with the allegation that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy with Trig (which is also a true fact), we never ever heard anything from Sarah Palin's lawyers. No retractions was ever demanded. There was just big, long silence. This is not surprising at all, as our sources regarding the pregnancy as well as Track's parentage were excellent.
So Sarah Palin's reaction to the rumous in the emails quoted above is very telling. If one of her secrets is brought up (and there are many of them), then she screams and rages until hopefully the whole affair will calm down again, but in fact, there is nothing she can really do, no court action etc. - because the claims are true. That's a pattern we have seen over and over again. It's Sarah Palin's very own way of "proactive defense." And with the US media fast asleep as far as Sarah Palin's private scandals are concerned, this strategy works very well.
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Update 3 (by Patrick):
There is another extremely interesting email exchange in "Blind Allegiance", one which also has been largely overlooked, like so many other exchanges, although it's more relevant than ever. This exchange doesn't concern her private scandals, usually my favourite subject, but a man that Sarah Palin cuddled up to during recent weeks - Newt Gingrich.
In June 2009, as Frank Bailey explains in the book, Newt Gingrich "landed on Sarah's enemy list." Sarah was supposed to be the keynote speaker at an annual congressional fund-raising dinner on June 8, 2009 in Washington DC.
Two days before, on June 6, 2009, Geoffrey Dunn published an article in Huffington Post and showed that Sarah Palin, well, recycled (=plagiarized) an older article by Newt Gingrich and used parts of it for one of her speeches. If this article by Geoffrey Dunn in Huffington Post or her "hesitation" to accept the invitation, as Bailey mentions, was to blame, is not known. But fact is that Sarah was kicked out on short notice and was replaced with Newt Gingrich. Naturally, the famous Governor was furious and wrote in an email on June 7:
From: gsph
Subject: Fw: Newt
I don't know why we have to protect the elites who do things like this so we don't "ruffle feathers- by keeping it to ourselves. Newt "uninvited" me yesterday to speak at tomorrow's NSRC [NRSC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee]. I was the surprise guest . . . I know Meg [Stapleton] leaked it to Politico, then would get up to do a surprise speech and introduction of Newt. So I went from being the invited keynote speaker back in February, to just the surprise introducer of the speaker this month, to the hack-of-the-bus'er ("sit down and shut up") the day before the event. One of the organizers told Meg last night that Newt pulled the plug. said he didn't want me to "steal the show". . . . maybe there's something others see in Newt. . . . Keep this confidential until we figure out how I'm supposed to explain flying all the flippin' way across the country—leaving my baby at home—to be at this dinner, then we get accused of dodging the substantive events like the NSRC, when in reality they kicked us to the curb. I hate politics.
Later that day, another message from Sarah followed:
Yes, (Newt/GOP) are egotistical, narrow minded machine goons . . . but all the more reason God protected me from getting up on stage in front of 5000 political and media "elites" to praise him, then it be shown across the nation. At some point Newt would have shown his true colors anyway and we would have been devastated having known we'd earlier prostituted ourselves up in front of the country introducing him and acting like that good ol' rich white guy is the savior of the party.
Does Newt Gingrich actually know that Sarah Palin called him an "egotistical, narrow minded machine goon" - and expected he would "show his true colors?"
Sarah, what are Newt Gingrich's "true colors?"
Sarah, if you "hate politics", maybe you should just quit.
Annoy a Palin, quote her emails.
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