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Tuesday, Oct 19, 2010 1:39 PM UTC

In reversal, Miller admits ethics violation

Joe Miller takes to CNN to acknowledge that he was disciplined for using his employer's computers for politicking

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Topics: 2010 Elections, War Room, Joe Miller,

In reversal, Miller admits ethics violationFILE - In this Sept. 16, 2010 file photo, Alaska Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller gestures in Juneau, Alaska. (AP Photo/Chris Miller, File)(Credit: AP)

One week after he declared that he and his wife were “the most disclosed couple in Alaska politics” and that he would no longer answer media questions about his past, GOP Senate candidate and Tea Partier Joe Miller acknowledged on CNN last night that he was disciplined for ethics violations while working at the Fairbanks North Star Borough in 2008. 

“The event in question is something that happened during my time off. So it was during my lunch hour,” he said.

He was working as an attorney at the borough at the same time as he was working to oust the then-chair of the state GOP. The Anchorage Daily News has the details on what happened:

A Republican activist from Kodiak said Miller’s father, Rex Miller, told him last week that Miller was caught using other borough employees’ computers for online political polling. He said Miller emptied the caches on the computers of his borough colleagues “so the users wouldn’t know what he had done.”

This is something of a vindication for Alaska Dispatch, the news website that has been leading the way on the Fairbanks story, and that broke the news of the ethics violation last week, prompting Miller’s declaration that he would not answer more questions about his past. (That’s the same website whose editor was handcuffed by Miller’s guards Sunday while he was trying to ask a question about this story.)

There is still the outstanding question of why Miller left the borough job in 2009, and news organizations have sued to get his personnel file.

Here’s the video of the CNN interview:

 

Justin Elliott

Justin Elliott is a reporter for ProPublica. You can follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott.

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