“This was used successfully against Sarah Palin to hound her out of office in Alaska.”
Was Sarah hounded out of office? IIRC, she freely resigned her government job (Governor) to run with Juan McCain. Did she run again, and win, another office?
She certainly was persecuted mercilessly in many other ways — every possible other way — to put her in her place. A great scenario would’ve been that the McCain-Palin ticket wins, the Big C takes away Juan, and Palin moves up. Just like with Trump, her own party tried to destroy her, and pretty much succeeded.
As I recall, she said she was leaving as governor after only two years in office because she could not afford her legal defense against Democrat critics.
The Law in Alaska at the time, prohibited the department of Law from providing Sarah Palin with legal assistance, but required it to sue Palin when anyone brought a claim.
For example I remember she attended a snow mobile race in which her husband has racing. It was really cold and at some point she put on her husband’s jacket.
She was then sued because the jacket had ‘snowcat’ decals and supposedly she was promoting their brand while Governor.
The numerous lawsuits paid for the prosecution by the Alaska government and paid out of her own pocked as Governor bankrupted her, she was over $500,000 in debt in legal fees when she finally threw the towel and quit as Governor. She was basically run out of that office.
The next year they changed the laws in Alaska to prevent this lawfare abuse from taking place again.
Later she wrote a book in hopes of getting money to pay her delinquent legal bills, and got a 12 million advance for the book, so at least she was able to recover financially from being penalized to run as Alaska Governor.
I have always thought that Trump was being targeted the same way Palin was. I view Trump as Palin 2.0. The lawfare was successful then and could have been successful now if Trump did not have millions in his bank acount to cover his legal expenses.