Todd Palin Plays Down Angry Joe Miller Email

Todd Palin has released a statement addressing a leaked e-mail exchangehe had with GOP Alaska Senate nominee Joe Miller in which Palin angrily complained that Miller did not say that Sarah Palin was qualified to be president when he was asked.

Sarah Palin had endorsed Miller, and in his email, Todd Palin sarcastically asked if "this endorsement stuff" will "be completely one sided."

"Sarah spent all morning working on a Face book post for Joe, she won't use it, not now," Todd Palin wrote. "Put yourself in her shoe's Joe for one day."

The leaked emails show Miller forwarding the message with a note reading "This is what we're dealing with...Holy cow." He said the email reflected a "complete misconstruction" of what he had said.

The new statement, which was given to the conservative Weekly Standard, would seem to support that notion. Sarah Palin linked to the statement on Twitter this afternoon with the words, "There's no 'there, there' but the lamestream media will keep on tryin.'"

"My family has worked hard in supporting Joe Miller, so when I heard he'd said something less than supportive of my wife's efforts, I responded," Todd Palin says in the statement. "But it turns out we'd gotten our wires crossed and Joe hadn't said anything like what I'd been told."

"So there's no story here except the fact that the press put our personal emails online again, and again couldn't even be bothered to conceal our email addresses or take any steps to protect our privacy," he adds.

The liberal Alaska blog that posted the exchange, The Mudflats, did, in fact, block out the e-mail addresses of the participants, but Politico notes that the initial version was poorly redacted and that the e-mail addresses were visible to anyone who dragged a cursor over the blacked-out lines.

Palin's endorsement of Miller over her political rival Sen. Lisa Murkowski helped propel Miller to a surprise victory in the GOP primary. Her last Tweet about Miller, however, was September 2nd, weeks before the leaked email exchange took place.

Liberal media watchdog Media Matters is suggesting that the email exchange raises questions about a "presidential endorsement quid pro quo."

"The e-mail from Todd Palin, if authentic, seems to confirm that Sarah Palin is at least doing some early work towards running for president in 2012, while being employed by and regularly appearing on Fox News as a political analyst," the group says. "At the same time, Palin is promoting candidates like Miller on-air at Fox, and according to the email, her husband at least seems to expect that when asked (by a Fox anchor) if Palin is qualified to be president, they should be answering in the affirmative."

UPDATE: Appearing on Fox News today, Miller gave Sarah Palin a less-than-unequivocal endorsement.