Palin asks state board to take over trooper probe

-- Republican vice presidential pick Sarah Palin has asked Alaska's Personnel Board to take over an investigation -- currently being handled by the state Legislature -- into her July firing of the state's public safety commissioner, her lawyer said Wednesday.

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Palin's attorney, Thomas Van Flein, filed complaint papers Monday night with the state attorney general's office to request the investigation be taken out of the hands of the Legislature. The attorney general's office has referred the matter to the Personnel Board, all three members of which were first appointed by Palin's predecessor.

The move comes as Palin, who was elected governor in 2006, prepares to accept the No. 2 slot on the Republican ticket at the party's convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sen. John McCain announced Palin as his running mate last Friday.

In a statement issued to the media along with the complaint, Palin said she requested the new probe "to put these matters to rest."

"If the true facts are evaluated by an impartial fact-finder, Governor Palin believes it will find no conceivable violation of the Ethics Act," her request states.

The probe stems from Palin's firing of Walt Monegan in July. After his dismissal, the ex-public safety commissioner said he had felt pressured by the governor's office to fire Palin's ex-brother-in-law, state trooper Mike Wooten, who had been through a messy divorce and child custody battle with Palin's sister.

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"The people of Alaska -- and of the nation -- deserve to have a decision from the proper tribunal putting their minds at ease that suggestions of misconduct that have circulated on the Internet and in some media outlets are not true," Palin said in her statement.

There was no immediate response from state Sen. Hollis French, who is managing the investigation launched in July by the bipartisan Legislative Council. Monday, he told Van Flein that the Personnel Board would not have jurisdiction over the matter unless a complaint was filed with the attorney general and refused to share copies of witness statements with the governor's attorney.

"I think you would agree that it would be highly unusual for an investigator to share information with one of the targets of the investigation," wrote French, a Democrat. "I am unaware of any precedent for such an arrangement."

Van Flein said Palin wants the probe managed "professionally," and the case belongs with the Personnel Board.

"We're not making this up," he said. "This is state law that the Legislature enacted that they're not following."

The Personnel Board's three members were first appointed by Gov. Frank Murkowski, whom Palin unseated in a Republican primary in

Source Cnn.com