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Todd Palin responds in affidavit

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Associated Press

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s husband defended his role as a close advisor to his wife Wednesday but adamantly denied that he meddled in her administration to try to settle a family dispute.

The Republican vice presidential nominee and her husband, Todd, are the focus of an abuse-of-power investigation by a legislative panel. The panel is expected to meet Friday and release a potentially embarrassing report into her firing of the state’s public safety commissioner -- unless the state Supreme Court intervenes, as six Republican lawmakers asked it to do Wednesday. The court said it would rule promptly.

“I have heard criticism that I am too involved in my wife’s administration,” Todd Palin wrote in an affidavit provided to the Associated Press. “My wife and I are very close. We are each other’s best friend. I have helped her in her career the best I can, and she has helped me.”

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The Palins are accused of pressuring Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with the governor’s sister. When he resisted, Monegan says, Gov. Palin fired him.

Gov. Palin has said she fired Monegan after a series of budget disputes.

Todd Palin’s affidavit responded to written questions from legislative investigators.

Until Gov. Palin became John McCain’s running mate, she had pledged to cooperate with the probe, authorized by the bipartisan Legislative Council, made up of 10 Republicans and four Democrats.

Now, she says that its investigation has been compromised by politics and that she will only cooperate with a separate investigation by the Alaska State Personnel Board, whose members she can fire.

In his affidavit, Todd Palin described his former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, as a violent, unstable man who threatened the family’s safety, zapped his stepson with a stun gun and unfairly collected disability. Todd Palin said he was frustrated that Wooten kept his job and complained to senior officials in his wife’s administration. He complained to his wife so much, he said, she told him to drop it.

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