2:35pm UK, Monday October 06, 2008

Seven Alaska state employees have agreed to testify in an investigation into whether Sarah Palin abused her powers as state governor.

Sarah Palin speaks at a rally in California

The Republican vice presidential nominee is accused of firing a commissioner who refused to dismiss her former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, from his position as a state trooper.

Ms Palin is the focus of a legislative inquiry over her firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan a year after she, her husband and key advisers began questioning him about getting rid of a state trooper who had gone through a nasty divorce with her sister.

Mr Wooten was involved in a bitter child custody battle with the first-term Alaska governor’s younger sister at the time.

Politicians ordered seven state employees to testify, but they challenged the subpoenas.

Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg said the employees had now decided to give evidence.

The legislature’s investigator, retired state prosecutor Steve Branchflower, is expected to complete his report by Friday into whether Ms Palin abused her power in the case, dubbed “Troopergate”.

She insists that she sacked Mr Monegan not because he refused to fire the trooper, but as a result of disagreements over budget priorities.

Mr Wooten had already been reprimanded when Ms Palin became governor in 2006 over incidents reported by her family filed the previous year.

Ms Palin has admitted talking to Mr Monegan about the matter but says it was only in the context of security concerns for her family.

Mr Monegan has said that although Ms Palin never directly told him to fire Mr Wooten, the message was clearly conveyed through repeated messages from her, her husband and three members of her Cabinet.

He told the Washington Post that he took his duties seriously, saying: “I would willingly die for the governor, but I would never lie for her.”

The new momentum to the investigation came as the battle for the White House took a bruising turn with just weeks to go before polling day.

Ms Palin accused Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama of “palling around” with terrorists because of his association with William Ayers, a former member of the radical 1960s group the Weathermen, who placed bombs at the Capitol and Pentagon buildings.

Mr Obama counterattacked by saying Republican rival John McCain was more interested in a smear campaign than fixing the US economy.

The Obama campaign unveiled an ad saying Mr McCain was one of the “Keating Five” senators who met federal regulators on behalf of a California savings and loan institution that collapsed in 1989.

The ad paints Mr McCain as unwilling to regulate the financial industry.

With Mr McCain losing ground in opinion polls, a campaign strategist was quoted as saying he needed to “turn the page” on the economic issue and make the election about Mr Obama’s experience and character.