Palin Was Warned Over Troopergate

An attorney who acted as an informal ethics adviser to Sarah Palin urged her to apologize for her role in firing Alaska's safety commissioner before it grew into a scandal, the Wall Street Journal reports. "The situation is grave," he wrote shortly before Palin was picked for the GOP ticket. The safety commissioner has accused Palin of having him fired because he refused to ax a state trooper who divorced Palin's sister.

The former US attorney and co-author of a report that served as the foundation for Palin's Alaska ethics bill believes Palin is now taking the wrong approach to the "Troopergate" probe by insisting the state's personnel board rather than the legislature investigate it. The governor has insisted the commissioner was fired because of a budget dispute.
(More Troopergate stories.)