Lawyers and Troopergate

[Blue_In_AK]

From the Anchorage Daily News http://community.adn.com/adn/node/131730

From David Hulen in Anchorage --

Writing on Alaska Dispatch, Anchorage lawyer Don Mitchell raises a couple questions:

> Is McCain-Palin campaign attorney Edward O’Callaghan, who's in Alaska on leave from his job as a federal prosecutor in New York, violating Alaska law by giving legal advice without being licensed to practice here?

The pickle O’Callaghan’s wagging tongue has gotten its owner into is that, pursuant to Alaska Statute 8.08.230, a person who is not a member of the Alaska Bar who while physically present in Alaska “engages in the practice of law” is guilty of a class A misdemeanor. And in Alaska the “practice of law” includes “rendering legal consultation or advice”.

So Edward O’Callaghan is a self-confessed miscreant. It would be interesting to know what John McCain thinks about having a criminal serving on his legal team. It also would be interesting to know whether Talis Colberg, Sarah Palin’s attorney general, intends to prosecute O’Callaghan. And if he doesn’t, why not?

> What was Attorney Gen. Talis Colberg's legal rationale last week when he informed the Legislature that state employees would not comply with the Troopergate subpoanas?

As the chief law enforcement officer of the State of Alaska, Attorney General Colberg has a duty to advise state employees to comply with the law. If in his letter Attorney General Colberg had informed the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that after having carefully studied the doctrine of separation of powers that the Alaska Supreme Court has determined is an implicit part of the Alaska Constitution, the Legislative Council action that granted the Judiciary Committee jurisdiction to conduct the Troopergate investigation, and the procedure the Committee employed that resulted in the issuance of the subpoenas he had concluded that, as a matter of law, the subpoenas were invalid, and he had then explained the legal reasoning he had employed to reach that conclusion, I would have no complaint, even if I disagreed with that legal reasoning.

But in his letter Attorney General Colberg offered no rationale, much less a legal rationale, for his decision to direct state employees not to comply with subpoenas lawfully issued other than to say that Governor Palin has “strongly stated that the subpoenas issued by your committee are of questionable validity.”