1st Look At Palin's "Going Rogue" UPDATE: Team McCain Calls BS On The Vetting Payment

She takes the expected and well deserved shots at Katie Couric and Charlie "Never Heard Of It" Gibson.

Unexpected...the McCain camp didn't pay for legal bills related to her vetting. Really?

[S]he says that most of her legal bills were generated defending what she called frivolous ethics complaints, but she reveals that about $500,000 was a bill she received to pay for the McCain campaign vetting her for the VP nod. She said when she asked the McCain campaign if it would help her financially, she was told McCain's camp would have paid all the bills if he'd won; since he lost, the vetting legal bills were her responsibility...

...She writes at length about Couric. She says that the idea to meet with Couric came from McCain campaign aide Nicolle Wallace, who told Palin that Couric — also a working mother — liked and admired her. It would be a favor to Couric, too, whom Palin notes had the lowest ratings of the network anchors. Wallace said Couric suffered from low self-esteem. And Palin replied that she almost began to "feel sorry" for Couric.

She alleges that Couric and CBS left out her more "substantive" remarks and settled for "gotcha" moments. She writes that Couric had a "partisan agenda" and a condescending manner. Couric was "badgering," biased and far easier on Couric's Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden.

The way that is written it's not clear if she incurred the legal expenses preparing materials for the campaign to review or if the campaign or its lawyers charged her for work they did vetting her.

Either way, it's idiotic to stick her with the bill.

UPDATE: Oh boy, here we go.

A senior McCain campaign official tells First Read that Palin's charge isn't true. The $500,000 charge came from Palin attorney Thomas Van Flein, and much of it had to do with Van Flein's work on the infamous Troopergate investigation that began before McCain selected her as his VP.

This senior McCain campaign official says they considered the $500,000 bill from Palin's lawyer to be exorbitant -- plus, even if they wanted to, they couldn't use their general-election funds to pay for it (remember that McCain accepted some $84 million in federal funds for the general election).

"Everyone thought it was ridiculous," the senior McCain official tells First Read.

Two things.

One...the AP may have mangled the quote from the book. It's not like that never happened. Though the "senior McCain official" seems to know all about it so something along these lines happened.

[See the update at Hot Air, The AP quote was inaccurate, it was 50K]

Second thought...Really? Just when the focus is on the idiocy of the Democrats and their health reform schemes, we're going to reply the '08 campaign?

Awesome! Because you know things were so much better then than they are starting to go now.

As for Couric...never, never, never feel sorry for someone in the media when it comes to business. It will bite you in the ass. Every time.

Below the fold, Palin and Oprah excerpts.

posted by DrewM. at 06:23 PM

| Access Comments