An independent investigator has found evidence that Gov. Sarah Palin may have violated ethics laws by accepting private donations to pay her legal debts.

The report obtained by The Associated Press says Palin is securing unwarranted benefits and receiving improper gifts through the Alaska Fund Trust, set up by supporters.

An investigator for the state Personnel Board says in his July 14 report that there is probable cause to believe Palin used or attempted to use her official position for personal gain because she authorized the creation of the trust as the ‘official’ legal defense fund.

A former Supreme Court Justice of the Third Judicial Circuit of the State of New York was charged today with attempted extortion and federal program bribery, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division announced. Thomas J. Spargo, 65 was charged in an indictment returned today by a federal grand jury in the Northern District of New York.

According to the indictment, while Spargo was a state Supreme Court Justice in 2003, he allegedly solicited $10,000 from an Ulster County, N.Y., attorney who had cases pending before the judge. The indictment further charges that Spargo solicited the money by causing the attorney to fear that Spargo would use his official acts and influence to harm the attorney if he was not paid and, conversely, to help the attorney if he was paid.

Who is Spargo?

Spargo, who came to the bench after a high-profile career as an elections lawyer and Republican Party advocate, also was criticized for engaging in a range of prohibited political conduct. But the most serious charges, and the ones the commission said warranted his removal from the bench, centered on an allegedly escalating pattern of misconduct after he came under the watchdog agency’s scrutiny for political misconduct.

Spargo first appeared on the commission’s radar at a time when he was a part-time town justice and full-time elections lawyer and political consultant with deep ties to the GOP. In his role as advisor to the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush, Spargo was shown on national television partaking in a boisterous demonstration during the infamous Florida recount.

In addition, while sitting in town court, he presided over cases presented by the Albany County District Attorney’s Office without disclosing on the record that the district attorney had been his client in a political matter and still owed him $10,000 in legal fees.

Then, while campaigning for Supreme Court in 2001, Spargo courted voters by giving out doughnuts and jugs of cider, buying rounds of drinks for all the patrons of a bar and handing out to potential voters $5 coupons to a convenience store.

In other words, your standard issue conservative Republican.

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens was convicted of seven corruption charges Monday in a trial that tainted the 40-year Senate career of Alaska’s political patriarch.

The verdict, coming just days before Election Day, adds further uncertainty to a closely watched Senate race. Democrats hope to seize the once reliably Republican seat as part of their bid for a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Finding #1: “Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.”

ABC: Troopergate Report: Palin Abused Power

Sarah Palin abused her power when she fired her Public Safety Commissioner this July, a state investigation has concluded.

The Alaska legislature voted to release the several hundred page report on the “Troopergate” scandal, a state kerfuffle which has come to haunt Gov. Sarah Palin’s vice presidential bid.

AP: Troopergate panel: Palin abused power

A legislative committee investigating Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has found she unlawfully abused her authority in firing the state’s public safety commissioner.

The McCain campaign told reporters the fees were irrelevant because Davis “separated from his consulting firm … in 2006,” according to the campaign’s Web site, and he stopped drawing a salary from it. In fact, however, when Davis joined the campaign in January 2007, he asked that his $20,000-a-month salary be paid directly to Davis Manafort, two sources who asked not to be identified discussing internal campaign business told NEWSWEEK. Federal campaign records show the McCain campaign paid Davis Manafort $90,000 through July 2007, when a cash crunch prompted Davis and other top campaign officials to forgo their salaries and work as volunteers. Separately, another entity created and partly owned by Davis—an Internet firm called 3eDC, whose address was the same office building as Davis Manafort’s—received payments from the McCain campaign for Web services, collecting $971,860 through March 2008.

The lobbying firm of the man Republicans say John McCain has chosen to begin planning a presidential transition earned more than a quarter of a million dollars this year representing Freddie Mac, one of the companies McCain blames for the nation’s financial crisis.

Timmons & Co., whose founder and chairman emeritus is William Timmons Sr., was registered to lobby for Freddie Mac from 2000 through this month, when the federal government took over both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Newly available congressional records show Timmons’s firm received $260,000 this year before its lobbying activities were barred under terms of the government rescue of the failed mortgage giant. Timmons, 77, is listed as a lobbyist for Freddie Mac on the company’s midyear financial-disclosure form.

Then he hired him as his campaign manager.

As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.

In three reports delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest sources of revenue other than taxes.

‘A culture of ethical failure’ besets the agency, Mr. Devaney wrote in a cover memo.

The reports portray a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch.

Travel records from the governor’s office show that the state has spent at least $31,800 on dozens of airline tickets for the family, and more for meals and hotels.

Records show the family has traveled with Palin for events such as the Alaska Federation of Natives convention in Fairbanks last fall and to shoot official first family photos in Juneau, to draw raffle tickets at an event in Anchorage and to tour a teen center spearheaded by the Juneau Christian Center.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a ‘per diem’ allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

Of course, this is the more of the same behavior we have seen from the same party as Ted Stevens, Don Young, and other Republican miscreants.

Oh I forgot: Shame on the Washington Post for being biased, mean, and sexist for actually vetting Sarah Palin instead of relying on the McCain campaign to just write the story for you. Naughty!

UPDATE: Apparently we now need to add the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal to the Liberal Media listserv. Or McCain/Palin lies too much for even the WSJ to ignore.

GOP vice presidential pick Sarah Palin accepted at least $4,500 in campaign contributions in the same fundraising scheme at the center of a public corruption scandal that led to the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens.

The contributions, made during Palin’s failed 2002 bid to become Alaska’s lieutenant governor, were not illegal for her to accept. But they show how Palin, a self-proclaimed champion for clean government, has been part of an Alaska political system that is now under the cloud of an ongoing FBI investigation.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began building clout in her state’s political circles in part by serving as a director of an independent political group organized by the now embattled Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.

Palin’s name is listed on 2003 incorporation papers of the “Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.,” a 527 group that could raise unlimited funds from corporate donors. The group was designed to serve as a political boot camp for Republican women in the state. She served as one of three directors until June 2005, when her name was replaced on state filings.

Palin’s relationship with Alaska’s senior senator may be one of the more complicated aspects of her new position as Sen. John McCain’s running mate; Stevens was indicted in July 2008 on seven counts of corruption.

“The old John McCain wouldn’t have allowed one of Jack Abramoff’s top cronies to raise money for him. But this time around, it’s clear that Senator McCain is willing to do whatever it takes to win–even if that means embracing President Bush’s policies, his tactics, and now his disgraced fundraisers. The American people want a real change, not the same old Washington politics that Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed perfected,” said Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor.

Of course, the old John McCain was one of the Keating Five so that may be a bit generous.

CREW on Reed/McCain

Reed lost his 2006 campaign for Georgia lieutenant governor in large part because of details about his relationship with Abramoff — much of the information uncovered by McCain’s Indian Affairs Committee investigation into the wide-ranging lobbying corruption scandal.

The Senate probe discovered $4 million in payments Reed accepted to run a bogus anti-casino campaign aimed at reducing gambling competition. An Indian tribe with a competing casino made payments to Reed, which according to the Senate investigation’s final report, were “passed through” Abramoff’s firm, Preston, Gates, Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, and another organization, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform.

On the campaign trail, McCain often touts his work tackling Abramoff’s corrupt lobbying practices as evidence of his commitment to cleaning up Washington and a straight-shooting style that transcends politics.

Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday revealed an audio recording that shows an aide pressuring the Public Safety Department to fire a state trooper embroiled in a custody battle with her sister.

Palin, who has previously said her administration didn’t exert pressure to get rid of trooper Mike Wooten, also disclosed that members of her staff had made about two dozen contacts with public safety officials about the trooper.

The bizarre thing is this might make Palin more likely to be McCain’s running mate.

Despite what appears to be a middle-class lifestyle, the couple has written $61,600 in checks to John McCain’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee, most of it within days of McCain’s decision to endorse offshore oil drilling.

At a June fundraiser, the Rocchios joined top executives at Hess Corp. — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Hess, his wife, Susan, his mother, Norma Hess, and six other officials in giving a total of $313,500 to a joint McCain-RNC fundraising committee, Federal Election Commission records show.

The donations, first traced by Campaign Money Watch last week, were part of $1.2 million in oil industry contributions to McCain’s Victory ‘08 Committee, 73 percent coming after McCain reversed his long-held opposition to offshore oil drilling. The non-partisan watchdog group said oil executives and their spouses from Colorado, Mississippi, Louisiana, California, Indiana, New Jersey and Florida also donated.

More details:

Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the U.S. Senate and one of the chamber’s most powerful members, was indicted Tuesday in Washington, a result of a years-long investigation into corruption in Alaska politics.

The seven-count indictment, charges Stevens with making false statements by failing to disclose things of value he received from the Veco Corp., an Alaska-based oil services compmany, and from its CEO, Bill Allen, over an eight-year period.

The indictment charges that among the undeclared items were substantial improvements to Stevens’s home in Girdwood, Alaska; automobile exchanges in which he received new vehicles that were worth far more than the old ones he exchganged; and household goods, including a Viking gas grill.

According to Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, McCain’s “finance co-chair Tom Loeffler['s] … lobbying firm has collected nearly $15 million from Saudi Arabia since 2002 and millions more from other foreign and corporate interests.” Another McCain aide, finance director Susan Nelson, was paid $ 15,000 a month by Loeffler’s firm while she was on the campaign payroll even though “Federal election law prohibits any outside entity from subsidizing the income of campaign workers.” Time and again, McCain demonstrates that his calls for higher ethical standards seem not to apply to him and his campaign.