A MESSAGE FROM THE TRUSTEE–KRISTAN COLE
I am Kristan Cole, and I voluntarily and proudly agreed to serve as Trustee for the Alaska Fund Trust. However, at Sarah Palin’s request, we are going to stop collecting funds in the Alaska Fund Trust and start collecting funds to pay her legal expenses with the Sarah Palin Legal Defense Fund. We are not legally obligated to do so, but we do so on our own accord out of respect for the woman for whom we intended to help.
Pursuant to an agreement with the independent counsel Tim Petumenos, The Alaska Fund Trust will be contacting donors who made contributions prior to July 27, 2009 in order to refund the money donated. Money donated after that date is not subject to any such restriction. While I concur with the Trust lawyers that this Trust is fully compliant with all federal and state laws, and I believe the investigator has misinterpreted Alaska law, it is both pragmatic and economical to voluntarily agree with the restrictions and not waste Trust money in a legal proceeding fighting over the validity of this Trust.
This Trust was created for one reason–to help Sarah Palin–who was being attacked by left wing extremists, and who were abusing Alaska law by filing one frivolous complaint after another. These false and malicious political attacks cost Sarah Palin money to defend against. It is a shocking miscarriage of justice to have the investigator conclude that a sitting governor has to incur personal liability to defend herself against malicious and abusive attacks, and to conclude that a governor in that position can’t raise money from the public to help defray these costs. In fact the Alaska law specifically allowed Governor Palin to personally and directly solicit donations up to $150 each with no public reporting and she could have personally solicited donations in excess of $150 if she reported them and did not use her public office to do so. AS 39.52.110-130. It is simply legally unsound to suggest a trust could not do for Sarah Palin what the statute allowed Sarah Palin to do directly herself. A team of lawyers and over 4 law firms cleared the trust and it was reviewed by law professors prior to the launch of the trust in 2009. To our knowledge, no other similar trust fund has ever been ruled invalid under any state or federal law. Many federal office holders have legal defense funds, and federal law also prohibits an office holder from using one’s office for personal gain. The trust was modeled after many national political figures’ legal defense trusts. In fact language in John Kerry’s trust is identical to language in Sarah Palin’s trust yet none has found his trust to violate any law. Legal defense trust exist for other governors, judges, senators, congress persons, presidents and other political figures. The following is a small handful of political figures with legal defense trusts: John Kerry, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Ted Stevens, Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama. Yet no other legal defense fund has been ruled to violate any prohibition on public officials using their public office for personal gain by raising funds for their legal defense. This unique and unprecedented decision appears specially created for Sarah Palin.
The first investigators confidential preliminary report is leaked. The replacement investigator holds a press conference to announce his conclusions publicly from an investigation required to be confidential by law. However when The Attorney General dismissed a frivolous complaint against the trust a few weeks ago no press conference occurred. When the dozen other frivolous complaints against Sarah Palin were dismissed there was no press conference. Why is Sarah Palin treated differently? Thus the most prudent course of action is to not waste time or money fighting with an investigator but to simply raise the funds to pay the legal fees which was the entire point of the trust in the first place.
It is not worth another penny we have collected, nor another minute of our time, to fight over this matter, which was put together by a team of nationally prominent lawyers from the Lower 48 with experience in creating such trusts. We stand by Sarah Palin.
Kristan Cole, Trustee, The Alaska Fund Trust