As Research Director and Senior Policy Adviser to Joe Miller for US Senate, I had a front-row seat for an extraordinary piece of Alaska history. Central to the drama of one of the most hotly contested campaigns in recent memory was an incident that happened more than two years before the campaign even commenced. Joe Miller’s work as an Assistant Attorney and Contract Counsel for the Fairbanks North Star Borough as described by his former Borough boss, Rene Broker, in an October 2010 article in the Alaska Dispatch was “at a very high level and he did very good work.” She also said in a letter to the state’s Judicial Council that Joe Miller was one of the top three attorneys she had ever worked with.
However, there was one blemish on his otherwise very impressive record of service, a disciplinary action incurred while he was employed at the Borough. In spite of an explicit “right to privacy” in the Alaska Constitution, members of the Alaska media would sue to force Joe Miller’s confidential personnel file into public view, a judicial decision that should make every public employee in this state shudder.
Here is the summary of the infraction from Mr. Miller’s personnel file: “You accessed three Legal Department employee computers for a non-borough related purpose and then you were dishonest both about your conduct and your reasons for the conduct. Shortly after this incident [read 10-15 minutes], however, you completely admitted the wrong doing, acknowledged the inappropriateness of your actions, and have fully accepted responsibility.” Ms. Broker concluded, “I believe that thiswas an isolated event.”
Lisa Murkowski, and her astroturf front Alaskans Standing Together, would build a whole campaign around knowledge of this incident, illegally leaked by a Borough employee, incessantly calling Miller a liar. Then in a brazen public character assassination, Murkowski closed the KTUU debate in October by asserting that due to this indiscretion, Joe Miller was unfit to serve in the United States Senate. Those who knew of his honorable military service and impeccable judicial and legal record were appalled.
During last fall’s election, Murkowski also regaled Joe Miller for an indigent fishing license purchased LEGALLY some fifteen years earlier, falsely suggesting he had broken the law. His real crime: being poor, and not well-connected. In a press release, her spokesman Steve Wackowski sneered, “No true Alaskan would hurt everyone else by poaching.” Yet when the senator’s staff is caught red-handed poaching, there is no outrage. In fact, quite the contrary. He is praised for his “work for Alaska.” One thing we learned from last year’s campaign was that anything Lisa Murkowski does is, by definition, “good for Alaska.” I suspect Arne Fuglvog’s poaching too was, somehow, “good for Alaska.”
Fast-forward nine months. Lisa Murkowski’s top fisheries aide, Arne Fuglvog, has pleaded guilty to major commercial fishing violations and is headed to federal prison. The plea agreement was signed on April 8, 2011.
Naturally, folks wanted to know why the senator would continue to employ an admitted criminal at taxpayer expense. She initially refused to answer questions about when she became aware of Fuglvog’s situation, her spokesman claiming that it was “an ongoing legal matter.” Was the senator’s spokesman suggesting that Murkowski is part of the ongoing legal case?
After being hounded by the media for four days, and significant public pressure, she decided it was alright to talk after all, but claimed not to have known about the agreement until the day Fuglvog resigned. More than three months after the plea agreement was finalized! Really?
Upon further questioning, she added that he had told her a month earlier that he was going to enter a plea agreement, admitting guilt. If the senator is to be believed, he never mentioned that he had already pleaded guilty months earlier. Murkowski explained that Fuglvog was allowed to keep his job after she became aware of the situation because he was “innocent until proven guilty.” There’s just one slight problem with her statement, one is not innocent upon confession.
When pressed about when she knew about the federal investigation into Fuglvog’s crimes, she proffered a vague allusion to her former chief of staff having mentioned it possibly in December 2010, adding the she didn’t know “much more beyond that.” Truly an amazing lack of “intellectual curiosity” and moral compunction for a United States Senator! Especially so, when one considers the that the reputation of Alaska was at stake, and her own office could be embroiled in scandal due to her actions, or lack thereof.
The Anchorage Daily News issued an editorial in response to the senator’s statement proffering, “Murkowski’s explanation that these things ‘can go on for years or turn out to be nothing at all’ is stunning. Shrug off a criminal investigation of one of her staffers?” They concluded, “her account is at best a description of her own inadequacy and poor judgment.”
But there are other troubling facts casting serious doubt on the senator’s veracity. Representative Barney Frank’s office has stated pubicly that they were aware of the investigation at least as early as the spring of 2009. Apparently, that is precisely why Fuglvog withdrew his name from consideration to be the NOAA’s Fish Czar, a position for which he was recommended by Senators Murkowski and Begich. No later than May of 2009, United Fishermen of Alaska, an organization who backed Murkowski strongly in the 2010 election cycle, was informed by John Enge that Fuglvog had committed serious crimes. Rumors of Fuglvog’s crimes were also said to be swirling around the southeast fishing community by the time of his withdrawal from consideration for the NOAA’s top fisheries job. Local talk show host and columnist Shannyn Moore, in a piece published last Saturday in The Anchorage Daily News, dialed up the heat by reporting that she forwarded information relating to Fuglvog’s criminal activities to both Senators Murkowski and Begich more than two years ago. Other media personalities have privately admitted knowing about the situation for just as long.
We are being asked to believe that Senator Murkowski sponsored Fuglvog for a job as the Federal Fish Czar, he had to withdraw his name from consideration due to a federal investigation into criminal activity, and she didn’t know? I have worked in high-level government offices, which I can assure you, are almost always the first to know about these things. How is it that knowledge of the investigation was so widespread as to almost be common knowledge and the senator wasn’t in the know? How could she possibly have plausible deniability? How could she not have known? I must admit, the level of credulity it would take to believe the senator’s claims simply escapes me.
Why has the media apparently decided to let the whole thing go? And why do they continue to let Murkowski skate on her inconsistencies and misstatements yet again? And further, why do they refuse to expose the senator’s rank hypocrisy? Could it be that they are primarily driven by ideology?
It has always been my inclination to offer the benefit of the doubt, but Lisa Murkowski has called for a higher standard. And as the good book says, “with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged.” The senator has claimed Joe Miller’s minor peccadillo at the borough disqualified him for public office. Now she has covered for, and perhaps even promoted, a known criminal, paid him at taxpayer expense, and chosen not to come clean about what she knew and when she knew it. So by the senator’s own standard of judgment, is Lisa Murkowski unfit to serve in the United States Senate? I’m still waiting for a resignation, but I won’t hold my breath.
Read more at RED COUNTY HERE.
