The liberal blogosphere was abuzz Friday with news that a friend of Sarah and Todd Palin had tried to seal his divorce records.
Surely, the netroots speculated, that friend must be the unnamed business partner who this week’s number of the National Enquirer alleges—without proof so far—was romantically linked to Palin. The McCain campaign’s characterization of the story as a “vicious lie” seemed to only fuel more speculation.
And then the moment of truth, as the motion to seal was denied.
The filings, housed in a district courthouse in this town about eight miles east of the Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, contained a lot of hot news—presuming, that is, you’re interested in the child-custody agreement reached by Scott Richter and his ex-wife Deborah Richter, or in the former couple’s holdings, which include a recreational property that Scott owns with Sarah and Todd Palin.
That hasn’t stopped a stream of journalists and couriers from NBC, the Los Angeles Times, Court TV and other outlets (including this reporter, presently serving as Politico’s Alaskan bureau) from making their way to the Palmer courthouse to photocopy, for 25 cents a page, the 75 or so pages in the Richters’ marriage dissolution file.
Hence, Scott Richter’s motion this week to seal the file, in which he wrote, “I am friends an (sic) landowners in a remote cabin property with (the Palins) and as her campaign moves forward, my phone #’s and addresses are being used thru this file to obtain unwanted contact daily. My cabin life and private life is extremely important to me and my young son, who find ourselves and our lives disrupted by such contact.”
The judge was not sympathetic, writing in a Thursday ruling “there is no legal basis for the request.”
(For the record, Richter, who valued the property he co-owns with the Palins at $12,000, did not return messages left by Politico Northwest at the phone numbers listed in the records.)
Those who couldn’t make it to the Palmer courthouse in person were out of luck for much of Friday, since the court’s website crashed from all the traffic directed to it by a link on Andrew Sulivan’s blog.
The Palin sleuthing in and around Wasilla is getting a little ridiculous, said T.C. Mitchell, an Anchorage Daily News reporter who covers Wasilla and Palmer and was waiting in the Palmer courthouse clerk’s office to make copies of the Richters’ file. He had been there earlier in the day and inspected the most pertinent parts, but wanted to make sure he didn’t miss a peripheral detail and get scooped by the suddenly ubiquitous national press.
Mitchell said the Daily News received a call from a media outlet seeking the rules of the Miss Wasilla Pageant, presumably to determine whether Palin cheated when she won it in 1984.
Politico
9/6/8
