Heath and Palin Family Friends - The Clues They Gave Us

If you’ve read any recent postings here at The Palin Place, you know I believe Sue Williams was (as she presented herself to be) a person reporting first-hand reactions of people with personal connections to the Heaths.

Ms. Williams was a modern day Paul Revere, warning the lower 48  “The Stupid One’s Running! The Stupid One’s Running!” (That’s my paraphrase, of course.  The actual comments from Mudflats’ thread August 30 and 31, 2008 are available for your own interpretation  on my post last week, “The Insiders: MeAgain and Sue Williams.”)

Because some of what she said ran against popular belief and against what was “known” at that time, bloggers and readers questioned her facts and her credibility. General consensus in the blogging community after much discussion was that Sue couldn’t be trusted as a reliable source and she was left behind. I think that was a mistake, and today I’m focusing on why I don’t have a problem with the contradictory stuff.

Trig – Sarah’s or Bristol’s?  Between her first comment and her last the very next day, Sue Williams opened her mind to the possibility that Trig was born to Bristol. How did that happen? By listening to friends of the Heaths! That’s huge.

It wasn’t by reading our blogs. It wasn’t the tons of photographic evidence we found, studied, laid side by side, and diagnosed. It wasn’t Levi slipping up on Larry King  - none of that had happened yet. Sue Williams decided Trig might be Bristol’s because she listened to what insiders (Heath family friends) said the day after Sarah became the VP nominee. Wow.

Bristol was pregnant at sixteen: This is another important gem that got lost three years ago in the detritus of blog thread commentary:  friends of Heaths said Bristol got pregnant when she was sixteen.

Who among us doesn’t think Bristol was pregnant at sixteen? If you’ve read any anti-Palin blog since September, 2008, you’ve seen the Alaskan First Family Christmas picture taken September 2007. Bristol was 16 in that picture. She has no waist; her dress is tight around a large stomach. That photo has been compared to the June 2007 MySpace picture from Sammy Becker’s page and the transition would make any reasonable person think it possible that the governor’s sixteen-year-old daughter was pregnant. 


All Sue was saying was that she heard that Bristol got pregnant at sixteen when listening to friends of the Heaths!

They weren't talking about the Tripp pregnancy if they were people who actually knew Bristol and the Palins. Bristol was definitely seventeen when she got pregnant with Tripp, regardless of whether it was February (as I believe), March or April. So  “sixteen and pregnant” doesn't match the then-current pregnancy. Sue says 16 more than once after being engrossed in gossip with close friends of the Heath. The woman was repeating what she heard from friends of the Heaths.

Sue was not part of the chosen few. She was friends with friends, and as such, she probably was a bit on the outside of it all; she probably listened without questioning, wondered but not asked, and interpreted what she heard by assuming the Palins were normal people. A fake pregnancy is not normal, she would not have been thinking in those terms purely on her own.

Two easy to understand possibilities I see here - Sue could have heard both ages, sixteen and seventeen, and not given it much thought, assuming it was the Tripp pregnancy and Bristol turned 17 somewhere along that timeline.  

Or she could have wondered about the references to  sixteen and pregnant and kept her thoughts to herself, not close enough to these people to pry. 

Part of that scenario, could be and understandable avoidance of the subjects of abortion and adoption. If Bristol was pregnant at sixteen, but didn’t have a baby…it wasn’t Sue’s place to ask. If Bristol was pregnant at sixteen and gave up a baby, it still wasn’t Sue’s place to ask.

Sue had no business getting into questions about Bristol being pregnant at 16. Close friends of the Heaths said it, that’s all she was saying to us.  I repeat: What’s important, and got lost three years ago is that friends of Heaths said Bristol got pregnant when she was sixteen.

Bristol was pregnant at seventeen.  It was confusing in 2008 when SW said Bristol was pregnant at 16 and then said 17. Confusing. Some people thought the RNC pregnancy was a fake. But time proved otherwise. So Bristol was, in fact, pregnant at seventeen while her mother was running for Vice President and Sue had that right. 

Still, Sue mixed and interchanged the two ages, and that says to me she hadn’t caught on that Trig was Bristol’s. She heard stories from Heath friends, and when things didn’t add up, she made reasonable assumptions – perhaps the friends misspoke, they were mistaken, or Bristol had had a birthday.

I can imagine that it was a slip when they said sixteen. They knew it was true, but they shouldn’t openly talk about it in front of Sue Williams (and perhaps others). We’ve seen Levi and his family trying to walk that line. They want to complain about the Palins but they can’t spill the beans and say – for example - Trig is Bristol’s. But they slip up, and we hear things that don’t fit the Palin/Johnston propaganda. Everyone can site one or more of these “slips.” 

So if the Johnstons can’t keep from slip-ups, how could the friends have done any better while in shock from the nomination announcement?  They probably slipped. Sue heard sixteen and Sue heard seventeen. It would be harder to believe she didn’t.

What Willow’s Boyfriend Knew In April 

I’ve said it before. Levi’s book Dear in the Headlights contains statements that can be used to support my theory that Bristol became pregnant in February 2008.  It’s all in my post “Hockey Sticks and Pregnancy Sticks.”

Email from Sarah’s now released collection, available at msnbc's website include April messages about the rumors about Bristol.  One dated April 2, 2008 from Parnell to the governor has the subject “Bristol” and the simple message “That’s just sick and vicious. We bargain for some of that, but our kids??” 

Since then we’ve also learned that Willow is a tattle-tale. That girl is endlessly threatening to “tell.”  Bristol says it in her “memoirs” and Levi in his “tell-all.” Even in “Going Rogue,” Sarah has Willow pointing out that her mother is “porking up.” Willow has a big mouth and doesn’t show restraint. She was the one who started last year’s Facebook homophobic rant, which I refuse to link to on this blog.

So when Sue Williams said Willow’s boyfriend was talking about it in April, Sue Williams was telling it as it was. We didn’t like it, it didn’t fit with what we all thought we knew. So, we killed a potential “golden goose.” 

How many semesters along was Bristol?  Three! Read it below:

Look, all I can tell you is Bristol is pregnant. Have you never lived in a small town? When one hears this “rumor” (and okay, I admit, I never heard it straight from Sarah’s mouth) but have heard it from close to 20 people who are all long time friends of the family. Maybe they are all lying – and have been lying since April of this year when Willow’s boyfriend (Willow is the 8th grader) wouldn’t shut up about how Bristol was pregnant.

Bristol was in her third trimester late in August.

Bristol would have been in her third trimester if she delivered in November, and I’m going to continue to work on figuring out which November day she had Tripp. That poor kid, just like his older brother, will never get to celebrate his real birthday until we finish our work.  (Don’t you feel noble?)

Levi and Bristol’s wedding plans:

Sue felt sorry for Bristol – a girl who would “be known the world over as the seventeen year old unwed – then quickly wed senior-in-high-school-homeschooled-teenage mom.”

 

…yesterday in Ohio…Trig’s blanket was strung across her entire abdomen and torso, but, when she walked down the stairs from the stage, in a profile shot, it was very clear to see she is well into her third trimester of her pregnancy.

It has come out in the past couple of days that she and her high school boyfriend had a quickie wedding …

This “fact” of a quickie wedding became another stumbling block people for early Truthers.  Today, we have the benefit of combining the facts below to weight the likelihood that Sue at least heard there was a quickie wedding:

• ·     Sarah’s answer to her own out-of-wedlock pregnancy was a quickie wedding
• ·     Sally Heath got pregnant and then got married
• ·     Track’s girlfriend Britta Hanson got pregnant in late 2010 and the Palins released a photo of a supposed May 2011 wedding with no guests and not even a full complement of immediate family members.  Everything about it was suspicious and to this day there is no documentation to support the Palin’s claim that it was a legal wedding.
• ·     Britta Hanson’s father is a minister and was reported, via the Palins to People Magazine, to have performed the wedding of Track to his bride.
• ·     Sarah is very religious and her church sees marriage first and foremost as a covenant with God
• ·     If the wedding ceremony performed by a minister for Track and Britta had no government sanction, then it is possible that Levi and Bristol had the same thing done at one time, perhaps even by the same minister.
• ·     Levi said he proposed to Bristol in June 2008 and she accepted.
• ·     Levi wore a wedding style band Bristol bought for him.
• ·     Levi lost the ring in the summer of 2008 and replaced it with a tattoo of Bristol’s name.
• ·     Bristol wore a diamond from Levi on her left ring finger
• ·     Mercede Johnston said on her blog that Levi and Bristol “planned to wed twice but both times failed.” (This was one month before the famous re-engagement of July 2010).
• ·     On August 5, 2007 Sarah sent an email to have “wedding to attend in Wasilla” added to her calendar for August 30, 2007. (This would be when Trig was still a bun in the oven. Was this one of the two times Sadie said they "planned to wed"?)

·       On September 4, 2008, Sarah was the VP nominee for the Republican party.   She was in over her head. She had everything to learn about international affairs. She was constantly being coiffed and clothed by professionals. Yet,  she  took the time to read and forwarded to staff in AK,  an email with the subject line  Wedding Dress.   

    An apparent stranger had made an offer : “Dear Governor Palin, We have heard of your daughter’s current situation and would love to provide her with one of our wedding dresses for her wedding for free…we have many customers in the same situation. Because many women find it difficult to find a dress designed for their growing shapes…” 

    See? A wedding (very soon) was not out of the realm of possibility even though Sue W had heard it was a recently done deal.

·      Maybe I dreamed this one, because I can’t find it now, but I recall that there was one email in the bunch released from the Palin administration days, that was written by Sarah suggesting (to Todd, most likely) that the kids get married on August 29, 2008 – the Palin’s anniversary. 

·      In Game Change by Heilemann and Halperin, we learn “The first thing Palin told [the attorney hired by McCain to vet VP candidates] on the phone that Wednesday night concerned a matter that she’d left off her questionnaire (and neglected to tell Schmidt and Salter [McCain’s senior staffers who met with her in Arizona].  Her teenage daughter, Bristol, was pregnant out of wedlock.  “Is she getting married?” he asked, then added, jokingly, “Is she getting married tomorrow?” (pg 362)

When I look at all of that, I have no issue with Sue Williams’ saying she heard there was a quickie wedding.  Gossip isn’t science, but it usually has roots in some amount of truth. The marriage rumors had roots in Palin/Heath family values and in things Sarah very likely shared with close family and friends. Right down to that “funny” comment by the vetter. Bet old Chuck Heath got a chuckle out of that and repeated it for an audience. What a guy, that Chuck.

I have no problem with Sue Williams AT ALL.  Makes me want to take another look at MeAgain.  But not until Sue’s posts are done. And that won’t be until I’ve covered CBJ  and TRIG. 

Hope you enjoyed this. Comments and add-ons and ideas welcome!

More to come.