Did Palin Use GOP Funds to Buy Her Children Underwear?

Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress at 2:02 PM on November 10, 2008.

After controversy erupted over Gov. Sarah Palin's (R-AK) largely unauthorized spending spree, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) announced that she would no longer be wearing the expensive clothing: "Those clothes, they are not my property. ... I'm not taking them with me."

Palin, however, did take some clothes with her. The Republican party is planning to dispatch a lawyer to Alaska to "inventory and retrieve the clothes still in her possession." According to Palin's father, Chuck Heath, the governor spent the weekend separating out the GOP-bought clothes, including underwear for her daughters:

Palin's father, Chuck Heath, said his daughter spent the day Saturday trying to figure out what belongs to the RNC.

"She was just frantically...trying to sort stuff out," Heath said. "That's the problem, you know, the kids lose underwear, and everything has to be accounted for.

"Nothing goes right back to normal," he said.

Reports initially revealed that the RNC spent $150,000 on clothes for Palin from high-end stores. More recently, however, it has come out that after campaign aide Nicolle Wallace told Palin to "buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist," the governor "began buying for herself and her family." In the end, she spent "'tens of thousands' more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost."

While there was considerable attention given to the clothes bought for Todd Palin, there have been fewer mentions of what was bought for their daughters. (At one point a picture emerged of Piper Palin carrying an expensive designer handbag, although it was later called out as possibly being a fake.)

One top McCain aide justified the Palin shopping spree by saying that someone needed to "spruce her up for national television." It's unclear how purchasing undergarments for her children fits into this goal. Inquiries by ThinkProgress to the RNC have not yet been returned.

Tagged as: gop, children, donations, money, clothes, palin, chuck heath