Here's what the Huffington Post reported:
Thousands of donors who contributed to a $390,000 legal defense fund for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will get their money back after an investigator said Thursday the fund was illegal because it was misleadingly described on a website.
State Personnel Board investigator Timothy Petumenos said the Alaska Fund Trust inappropriately used the word "official" on its website, wrongly implying that it was endorsed by Palin in her role as governor.
But Petumenos also found that Palin – the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee – acted in good faith and relied on a team of attorneys to make sure the fund was lawful and complied with the Alaska Executive Branch Act.
So, according to Alaska Ethics Laws, the fund was illegal because of how it was presented and Palin gets off on a technicality because she said that it was the lawyers that were at fault. Is this woman ever accountable for anything?
Here's where we get a true sense of how far conservatives are willing to go to bat for Palin.
Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air thinks he's the one to determine when ethics laws should be changed and who they should apply to. After all, no one in the conservative realm should be accountable for their actions - and that goes double for Palin.
...the probe has now concluded, and the only change Palin will have to make is to return the money the fund received before July 26, 2009, when she resigned as Governor, and find other trustees. As far as an ethics slam goes, this isn’t even weak tea. It’s more an indication that Alaska really needs to address its Byzantine ethics regime, which forces public officials to privately fund their own defense and then makes the legal code surrounding that effort so confusing that three top-notch law firms couldn’t figure it out.
The truth of the matter is that Palin didn't have to create a private defense fund while she was Governor. For that matter, she didn't have to quit - which leads many of us to believe that there was much more verifiable weight to the complaints being leveled against her. Not only that, but considering the position that Palin was putting herself in not only in regards to potentially being the VP of the United States, but as someone that continues to boast that she cleaned-up corruption in her state, she really botched this one. If she's going to make such claims, one would think that she would have the "executive experience" to know what is and what isn't going to fall into a category of illegal.
But we all know that Caribou Barbie is never accountable for anything. From her packing her kids around on official trips while governor, to accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in wardrobe from the RNCC, to even being accountable for not being able to finish her term as Governor. It's truly amazing how conservatives are more than willing to shield their own from the light of truth.
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