A McCain spokesman said Wednesday that, while Van Flein was originally hired last month by the Alaska Department of Law to represent Palin and her office, that arrangement has been changed over the past week and he is now being paid only by Palin and her husband — not state funds. He has not billed the state for his work, the spokesman said.
Back to O'Callaghan: He's been in Alaska since August as part of McCain's rapid response team:
Ever since last month, when he landed in Alaska as part of a McCain "rapid response" team dispatched from campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va., O'Callaghan has been helping to direct a hardball legal strategy aimed at thwarting inquiries into the Alaska governor on all fronts.
In that capacity, O'Callaghan, working with Van Flein, devised a plan that involved shifting the investigation away from the Alaska Legislative Council—a bipartisan panel that had authorized the probe in a unanimous vote on July 28—and into the hands of the Alaska Personnel Board, a body that is ultimately answerable to Palin herself.
O'Callaghan is also part of this effort:
Then this week, Van Flein (again assisted by O'Callaghan) filed a new motion with the Personnel Board. This one argued that, after a review of the evidence, including internal e-mails within the governor's office, the governor's lawyers had determined there was "no probable cause" to pursue any ethics inquiry into Palin at all. As a result, it argued, the previous motion for an ethics inquiry (which Van Flein himself had filed less than two weeks ago) should be dismissed.
Asked why the ethics motion had been filed with the Personnel Board in the first place, O'Callaghan said that was the "proper place" to conduct any ethics probe—and in the meantime, the governor's lawyers needed the time to review the e-mails and "figure out" the evidence relating to the Monegan firing. Now that they have done so, he said, there is no further need for the matter to be pursued. "There was no Ethics Act violation and there is no need to go forward with this," he said.
So, O'Callaghan convinced Van Flein to reverse the action he took less than two weeks before. And even O'Callaghan doesn't expect the investigation to go away:
Even O'Callaghan acknowledged today that Palin's motion to dismiss her own ethics complaint against herself is not likely to immediately end the matter. The Personnel Board has already appointed its own investigator to look into the Monegan firing, and that work, will at least for the time being, proceed until the Board can take up the new motion.
Contrary to right wing spin reports, the deciding vote on the Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee to issue the 13 subpoenaes Friday to Palin's husband and other state employees was that of a Republican from Wasilla.
The swing vote to issue the subpoenas came from state Sen. Charlie Huggins, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla, who said: "I say, let's just get the facts on the table, the sooner the better.") They voted to do so after Steve Branchflower, the special counsel hired to conduct the probe, presented what he said, was new evidence into an alleged attempt by Palin's office to interfere with a workers' compensation claim filed by Wooten.
A state contractor, who Branchflower declined to identify by name, and who handled the workers'-comp claim, testified that her boss had told her "something to the effect that either the governor or the governor's office wanted this claim denied," the special counsel said.
TrooperGate is no longer just about Palin's possible abuse of power in seeking the removal of her brother-in-law. It's now about her and the McCain attempts to derail the investigation.
McCain-Palin, Bush-Cheney, what's the difference?
