Despite her pre-V.P. promises to cooperate with the investigation, Sarah Palin looks to be stonewalling the trooper gate investigation. You’ll recall that this is the matter where she is alleged to have brought government resources to bear in attempting to have her sister’s ex-husband fired. The head of the police force didn’t fire the trooper, and the head of the force was subsequently fired. The legislature opened an inquiry.

Initially proclaiming her willingness to cooperate with the investigation, Palin has become recalcitrant since McCain nominated her as his vice-presidential running mate. She lawyered up with an attorney named Thomas Van Flein who apparently started trying to throw sand into the gears of the investigation. The Senate Judiciary Committee, via Senator Hollis French, told him (and I’m paraphrasing here), to get bent (pdf), and if Palin didn’t cooperate as promised, the subpoenas were going to start flying. Now, TPMMuckraker reports that a key witness backed out of a scheduled deposition. Palin-aide Frank Bailey canceled his deposition yesterday.

Bailey is central to the case. In phone recordings released last month as part of a parallel probe by the state Attorney General, Bailey suggested that Palin and her husband wanted trooper Mike Wooten — who has been embroiled in a messy family dispute with the Palins — removed from his job.

“The Palins can’t figure out why nothing’s going on,” Bailey told a trooper official. “I mean he’s declared bankruptcy, his finances are a complete disaster, he’s bought a new truck. All kinds of crazy stuff. He doesn’t represent the department well. The community knows it, but no action is being taken.”

The strategy is reasonably transparent here: prevent anyone from testifying under oath to the effect that Palin abused her authority, at least until the election. The parallels to the Bush administration’s firing of Attorneys General for political reasons are fairly evident. Hard to run on a platform of mavericky change when folks are reminded of that bit of ugliness.

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Update Just after I posted this, I ran across this fairly remarkable audio with Republican pundits Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan characterizing the Palin pick as “gimmicky” and “political bullshit” and confirming that Palin wasn’t the most qualified when they were off the air — but apparently the microphones were still recording.