Going Rogue: Palin Charged $50,000 By McCain Campaign In Vetting Fees (Updated)
News about Sarah Palin‘s much-anticipated memoir is slowly trickling out. The AP has apparently got its hands on an early copy and can confirm some of the rumors: it was not smooth sailing between Palin and McCain’s campaign staff; Palin still harbors some ill-will towards Katie Couric. But here’s a new one: Palin was apparently on the receiving end of a $50,000 bill from the McCain campaign for the costs of vetting her. A disclosure which is amazing on a number of levels (I, for one, was unaware that the cost of vetting was the responsibility of the vetee) not the least of which is that is begs the question: what vetting?
More from the AP piece below, you can read in full here. Also, released today some clips from Palin’s interview with Oprah, during which she only had nice things to say about Levi Johnston (video below excerpt).
**Update via Marc Ambinder:
Without having read the book, and without knowing precisely what the AP is summarizing, it’s hard to know what this charge entails. (Note: the AP originally reported that Palin was given a bill for $500,000.)
It’s not legal for general election matching funds to pay for pre-emptive legal defense; the McCain campaign did not believe it was legal for GELAC funds — a separate account that paid for fundraising complaince — to pay for the investigations either. But vetting is a poor word to choose. The McCain campaign footed the bill for Art Culvahouse’s investigation of Palin before she was elected. Palin was urged by campaign lawyers to set up a legal defense fund to pay for the investigations and ethics complaints that had nothing to do with her presidential bid.
“I can confirm that she was not billed for any vetting costs by the campaign,” said Trevor Potter, the campaign’s general counsel. “I do not know if she was billed by her own lawyer for his assistance to her in the vetting process, but from the excerpt that has been read to me by the AP, it sounds as if that is what she is describing.”
From the original AP story:
Written with Lynn Vincent, “Going Rogue” is folksy in tone and homespun. For example, Palin says her efforts to award a license for a massive natural gas transmission line through Alaska was turning a pipe dream into a pipeline. She writes in awe about how the McCain campaign had hired a New York stylist who had also worked on Couric.
Taken aback by all the fussing, she wondered who was paying for the fancy clothes — family members were told it was being taken care of or was “part of the convention.”
Palin shares behind-the-scene moments when the nation learned her teen daughter Bristol was pregnant, how she rewrote the statement prepared on her behalf by the McCain campaign — only to watch in horror as a TV news anchor read the original McCain camp statement, which, in Palin’s view, glarmorized and endorsed her daughter’s situation.
Palin laments that she wasn’t allowed to bring up loads of family members to the stage while McCain gave his election night concession speech, the vice presidential candidate having found out minutes earlier that she wouldn’t be permitted to give her own speech.
Related: Filmmaker John Ziegler has personally interviewed Sarah Palin and has a much different take on Going Rogue and the AP report about it. Read it here.
