John Coale, a Washington lawyer who helped Palin set up a legal-defense fund and PAC, tells NEWSWEEK the fund is "well on its way" to paying off $500,000 in legal debt from the campaign and another $100,000 in bills incurred later, leaving questions about how big a part money woes played in her decision to resign.
Ummm...if she can rack up $500,000 in legal bills in 8 months, what would her legal bills be if she stayed on another 18 months? If she is accumulating what calculates out to be roughly $63K a month, in 18 months she will have over $1M in addition to the $500K. Is spending $1.5M -2M on frivolous complaints a good use of money? As she racks up legal bills, that means she has to go beg more people for money to pay it off. I don't blame her for wanting off that merry-go-round...especially considering 2 additional complaints have been filed since she announced her resignation. It doesn't appear as if the complaints were going to go away.
Here's where the article starts to turn into nothing:
One thing is clear: Palin is fuming at the McCain camp, which she believes saddled her with all that debt. At the time John McCain tapped Palin, she was using Alaska state funds to pay the lawyer she hired to defend her against ethics charges. McCain aides, worried that that could raise ethical questions, put an end to the payments.
Really? How is that clear? I'm assuming being the stellar journalist Mark Hosenball is, he spoke with the Governor when writing this article and that is where he is getting his information. Oh wait, no it's not. It's just more "super secret, anonymous McCain campaign workers". If Palin is fuming at the McCain campaign, I would imagine it would have more to do with stories coming from said campaign workers than paying off her legal bills.
Here's where things get testy: Coale says the McCain campaign, and later the Republican National Committee, led Palin to believe that they would pay her bills, but never did, causing Palin's debt to pile up. But two former senior McCain officials, who asked for anonymity to keep political peace, say there was no such promise (online finance records show no payments to Palin's lawyer).
What is Mark Hosenball getting at here? If, according to the first part of the article, she has plenty of money in the fund created to help pay off her legal bills, then why would she be mad at the McCain campaign or the RNC? Wouldn't Palin want the bills paid, regardless of who pays them. Does it really matter if the money to pay the bills comes from her legal defense fund or the McCain/RNC campaign? If the bills are getting paid, the bills are getting paid.
This article makes no sense. It begins by talking about how Palin has enough money in the defense fund she created to pay off her legal bills and asks, "so what is the real reason she resigned"...then it spirals into some nonsense about how she's mad at the McCain campaign. If the thesis of the article is about "the real reason Palin resigned", we are to conclude it is because she is mad at John McCain.
And that makes perfect sense.
The most telling part of the article can be found in the last sentence:
Palin's spokeswoman, her lawyer, and an RNC spokeswoman didn't respond to requests for comment.
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