Palin Allies Start New Legal Fund
After an ethics probe yesterday found Sarah Palin's legal defense fund to be illegal, Palin's allies are launching a second defense fund.
The initial fund, the Alaska Fund Trust, was established in April 2009 to help Palin, then the governor of Alaska, with her mounting legal fees. An ethics complaint was filed by a resident who said Palin was misusing her official position. An investigator for the state Personnel Board said Thursday that Palin acted in good faith but inappropriately used the word "official" on the fund's website, wrongly implying it had Palin's endorsement as governor.
Palin's attorney said she'll return the $390,000 collected from the fund, the Associated Press reported. The governor cited her legal fees as one of the reasons for her resignation in the summer of 2009, and she's said she has at least $500,000 in fees to pay.
"Sarah Palin's enemies have scored a limited victory in their vicious campaign to smear, bankrupt, and force this dedicated public servant and conservative leader out of politics," a message on the website of the new defense fund reads. "They have successfully questioned her prior legal defense fund--a fund that mirrored John Kerry's fund and Bill Clinton's fund. So a new fund was necessary to make sure Sarah Palin can continue to speak the truth to Americans."
The site, which is soliciting donations, points out that the Alaska attorney general does not routinely represent the governor in ethics cases, so Palin has had to pay for her own defense in such cases.
"Not only was Sarah Palin required by law to respond to each and every lawsuit filed against her by left-wing activists, but she also had to personally foot hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills to defend herself," it says.
Meghan Stapleton, Palin's former spokesperson, explained the case surrounding the first legal fund in a lengthy note on Palin's Facebook page.
She capped off her note with a bit of commentary, arguing that Palin's resignation was the right move for the politician and for the state: "The state's bills would have amounted to millions upon millions more and her personal legal bills would be personally insurmountable," she wrote. "I don't know who would want to hold office under these circumstances and with loopholes our Alaska legislators refuse to close."
