Palin supporters set up legal expense fund
Written by Janet
Gov. Sarah Palin’s friends and supporters in Alaska set up a legal expense fund Friday to help her pay more than $500,000 in legal bills racked up defending ethics complaints – including one she filed against herself when she was a Republican vice presidential candidate.
One of her longtime friends, Kristan Cole, will be the trustee of the legal expense fund, which launched its Web site Friday morning. The Alaska Fund Trust modeled itself after the legal expense funds of other well-known political figures, including former first lady and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sen. John Kerry and even former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.
Cole said the group decided to start the fund to help Palin defend herself against what she described as “the onslaught of frivolous attacks against her.
Donations to the fund have been capped at $150 and the fund will disclose each quarter the names of all donors – something it does not have to do. Lobbyists, corporations, labor unions and non-U.S. citizens cannot donate to the fund.
Money raised by the expense fund will go to legal bills incurred by Palin, her family and her staff, Cole said. They picked a $150 cap, Cole said, because they wanted a lower amount that would “make it available to as many Alaskans as possible.”
Palin owes more than a half-million dollars to an Anchorage law firm that has been defending her against the ethics complaints – which Palin herself said last month had become “political blood sport” allowing “only the independently wealthy or those willing to spend their income on legal fees” to serve in office.
Most of the money appears to be owed to the Alaska law firm of Clapp, Peterson, Van Flein, Tiemessen and Thorsness. The firm defended her in the Troopergate controversy, which grew from her dismissal of the state’s public safety commissioner.
The most recent ethics complaint against the governor came this week, from Sondra Tompkins of Anchorage, who describes herself as an advocate for children with disabilities and the mother of a special-needs child.
In her complaint, she says Palin abdicated her duties by attending out-of-state political events at a critical time – the end of the legislative session. Palin last week went to Indiana for two events, a Right to Life banquet and a breakfast for families with Down syndrome children. Her political action committee and the hosts of the events paid Palin’s way, said Meghan Stapleton, who worked for the McCain-Palin campaign and now serves as a spokeswoman for the Palin family and the governor’s political action committee.
Palin decided to permit the creation of the legal expense fund after one of her fans, Clayton Paslay, said he would use his own political group to help her. Paslay’s organization, called Free American Citizens, was created to support his favorite causes and conservatives, including Palin and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Paslay said he decided to ask people to donate to his fund after hearing Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly make a pitch to viewers to help Palin pay her legal bills.
- Posted in: Politics
- Tagged: ethics complaints, legal expense fund, Politics, Sarah Palin
Newsdesk International 
Sarah Palin defends trust fund as legal
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says a trust fund that has come under state scrutiny is perfectly legal and is not under her control.
Palin released a statement calling the Alaska Fund Trust a standard fund, similar to ones used by other politicians, as a repository for private donations to help pay her legal bills and not something she could dip into.
“I am informed that this fund was created by experienced attorneys in D.C. and was modeled after other similar funds established for senators and others,” the statement said. “The fund itself was not created by me nor is it controlled by me.”
Palin attorney Tom Van Flein told ABC News Wednesday that the fund is controlled by trustee Kristan Cole, a personal friend of the former Republican vice presidential candidate.
The Washington Post had reported that an investigator for Alaska’s Personnel Board had concluded in a report this month that Palin likely benefited personally from the fund. Van Flein said disbursements from the fund had been put on hold pending the outcome of the board’s inquiry.
The trustee for a legal defense fund set up to help Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said the former vice presidential candidate has never been involved with the trust or accepted money from it to pay her legal bills.
“The governor is not, was not and has not been involved in this trust,” Kristan Cole of Wasilla said Wednesday.
Cole, a local real estate agent and Palin friend, said she had never talked about the trust fund with Palin until Tuesday, when a report by an independent investigator was obtained by The Associated Press.
The account, called the Alaska Fund Trust, was created and vetted by a team of lawyers from around the country who are experts in state and federal law, Cole said. The only lawyer who has ever questioned the fund’s legality is Thomas Daniel, the investigator hired by the state personnel board, she said.
Daniel, an Anchorage lawyer, said in the July 14 report that he found probable cause Palin had violated ethics laws by trading on her position as she sought money for legal fees.
Cole lashed out at the news media for disclosing the contents of the confidential report, which she said was leaked illegally.
“We have witnessed time and again the blatant abuse of a process when it comes to people filing these complaints and illegally discussing them and leaking them to the press,” Cole said at a news conference at her real estate office in Palin’s hometown.
The latest leak “crosses the line,” Cole said, adding that the trust is reviewing its legal options for “reputational harm” caused by Kim Chatman, the Eagle River resident who filed the ethics complaint that led to Daniel’s finding.
Jon Givens, an Anchorage attorney who represents the trust, said it is based on similar accounts created for prominent politicians such as Hillary Clinton, Ted Stevens and John Kerry. “If those trusts don’t violate the ethics rules of society, why should this one” be considered improper? he said.
Those funds are all based on federal law. Palin is accused of violating state ethics law.
Palin’s friends and supporters created the trust fund, limiting donations to $150 per person. Cole declined to say how much the fund has raised, but said about 90 percent of the contributions so far are from out of state.
“How can there be intent to influence a governor in Alaska with a $5 voluntary donation from Kansas?” she asked.
At least 19 ethics complaints have been filed against Palin, most of them after she was named the running mate for GOP presidential candidate John McCain. Most of those have been dismissed, although one was resolved when Palin agreed to reimburse the state more than $8,000 for the costs associated with nine trips taken with her children.
Palin supporters say the legal fund is needed because of a quirk in Alaska law that prevents state officials from defending the governor against ethics allegations.
“Legitimate public expenses should be borne by the public, not by the governor personally,” Givens said.
Palin says she owes more than $500,000 in legal fees, and she cited the toll of the ethics probes as one of the reasons she is leaving office on Sunday.
Chatman said she was not sympathetic to the governor’s plight.
“I honestly believe her legal bills are the result of her actions,” she said.