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Juneau's lone senator said Wednesday that he stands by legislative investigator Stephen Branchflower's finding that the attorney general's office "failed to substantially comply" with a requests for state documents.

"I think it is fair to say they were dragging their feet," said Sen. Kim Elton, who is the chairman of the Legislative Council that oversaw the investigation. He added that the attorney general's office showed a pattern of not cooperating with Branchflower's investigation.

But in a letter sent to Elton dated Tuesday, a senior assistant attorney general said his department had fully complied with Branchflower's requests for state documents, and the investigator's finding saying otherwise had "no basis in fact."

"The Department of Law completely and timely responded to all of Mr. Branchflower's documents request," Senior Assistant Attorney General Michael Barnhill said in the letter to Elton. "(The Department of Law) sought to diligently respond to the Legislature's document requests in this matter, and has not permitted its disagreements with the investigation to interfere with the obligation to respond."

Branchflower was tasked in July by the Legislature to investigate Gov. Sarah Palin's dismissal of her former commissioner of public safety, Walt Monegan, in a political drama that's been dubbed Troopergate.

Palin initially supported the Legislature's investigation, but changed course after she was picked in late August to be Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate. She has said the investigation was biased.

Branchflower's report, which was made public last Friday, concluded that the governor abused her power by allowing her husband, Todd Palin, and staff to pressure Monegan to fire her former brother-in-law, state trooper Mike Wooten. He also found that the attorney general's office had only handed over e-mails of "limited probative value" and withheld a significant amount of e-mails related to his investigation.

"Although I do not assert any bad faith on the part of the attorney general's office ..., it does seem there has been an unusual delay in material that was requested by me in writing two months ago," Branchflower said in his report.

But the attorney general's office said that's a flat-out lie.

Barnhill provided Elton a copy of e-mails showing that he regularly updated Branchflower with progress reports and that the state completed Branchflower's requests by Oct. 8, two days before the report was released.

The e-mails Barnhill included also show he and Branchflower went back and forth for weeks discussing whose e-mails should be searched and what search terms should be used. The search terms were eventually limited to "Todd" and "Wooten" for a number of upper-level state employees' e-mail accounts.

The information Barnhill included shows that the attorney general's office claimed "privilege" on a number of e-mails that resulted from those searches, including all e-mails from the accounts of Attorney General Talis Colberg, Palin's Deputy Chief of Staff Randy Ruaro, and Department of Administration Commissioner Annette Kreitzer.

The Alaska Supreme Court has ruled that the governor has a right to assert a "deliberative process privilege" on certain state documents, a law designed to let public officials receive candid advice from their staff and consultants regarding matters of the state without fear of that advice going public.

But Elton said Alaskans should be skeptical of any privilege claims made in regard to the Troopergate investigation.

"I guess they are asking us to believe that what the attorney general found on privilege was more accurate than what the attorney general found on subpoenas," Elton said, referring to the fact that the attorney general's effort to resist legislative subpoenas was dismissed in court.

In his report, Branchflower questioned the governor's ability to extend her deliberative process privilege to state documents that were sent to Todd Palin. Republican watchdog Andree McLeod has made the same argument to the governor in a public records request appeal, saying that Todd Palin is a member of the public and any state documents shared with him have to be shared with the entire public.

Branchflower asked Colberg if he had "any explanation for why (Todd) was included in the distribution of what appears to be state business."

Colberg responded, "No."

Assistant Attorney General Jan DeYoung said Wednesday that the governor's privilege claims were not waived when Todd Palin was included on state e-mails, but declined to explain why.

• Contact reporter Alan Suderman at 523-2268 at alan.suderman@juneauempire.com.