Legal News

?Caught in a Swirl,? Alaska AG Resigns Amid Troopergate Flap

By Ashby Jones

Associated Press

Alaska state Attorney General Talis Colberg, a major figure in Alaska’s abuse-of-power investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin speaks at a news conference in Anchorage, Alaska, Sept. 26, 2008. (AP Photo/Al Grillo)

Post election, the nation mostly turned its sights away from the “Troopergate” scandal that plagued Alaska Governor Sarah Palin during last year’s presidential runup. But up in Alaska, the situation remains as hot as ever.

The latest news: Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg, appointed by Palin in 2006, has resigned in the wake of continued battles between state legislators and Palin over the Troopergate investigation of last fall. Click here for the Anchorage Daily News’s coverage; here for a nice LAT piece.

According to the ADN piece, state legislators of both parties were angered over Colberg’s attempt to quash legislative subpoenas in last fall’s investigation of whether Palin abused her power by pressing for the firing of an Alaska state trooper who was her former brother-in-law.

Anchorage Democratic representative Les Gara charged that Colberg “chose an allegiance to the McCain campaign” by declining to investigate Gara’s suspicion that McCain/Palin campaign workers tampered with witnesses in the Legislature’s inquiry.

In explaining Colberg’s decision to resign, Governor Palin told the ADN: “It is a harsh political environment right now. You saw what he went through these last couple of weeks with speculation that a couple of the lawmakers wanted to continue to grill him, a couple of the lawmakers not believing, it seems, what he had to do.”

Colberg did not respond to repeated requests for comment Tuesday. Rick Svobodny, a deputy attorney general in the criminal division, has been appointed acting attorney general.

So who was this Talis Colberg, you ask? Several quoted described him as a quiet, academic type, perhaps not cut out for the rough-and-tumble (who knew?) world of Alaska state politics. He had been in private practice in the governor’s hometown of Wasilla when Palin appointed him attorney general.

Said Jay Ramras, a Republican representative from Fairbanks: “He went from running a one-man shop on worker’s compensation to being responsible for 500 attorneys. And he was doing OK in a really tough job. . . . He’s a very nice, thoughtful, really academic fellow . . . who got caught up in a swirl that was much larger than him.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 11, 2009 (boomark / email).