In Sarah Palin’s bizarre, rambling statement on Friday announcing that she was quitting her job as governor of Alaska, she claimed that a series of investigations into ethics charges filed against her and her staff had been too costly to state taxpayers and to herself personally:

PALIN: The ethics law I championed became their weapon of choice. Over the past nine months I’ve been accused of all sorts of frivolous ethics violations — such as holding a fish in a photograph, wearing a jacket with a logo on it, and answering reporters’ questions.

Every one — all 15 of the ethics complaints have been dismissed. We’ve won! But it hasn’t been cheap — the State has wasted thousands of hours of your time and shelled out some two million of your dollars to respond to “opposition research” — that’s money not going to fund teachers or troopers — or safer roads. And this political absurdity, the “politics of personal destruction” — Todd and I are looking at more than half a million dollars in legal bills in order to set the record straight. And what about the people who offer up these silly accusations? It doesn’t cost them a dime so they’re not going to stop draining public resources — spending other peoples’ money in their game.

However, last Wednesday, two days before the governor’s announcement, the Juneau Empire reported that records released by the state government under a public information request revealed that there had been 13 investigations — not 15, as Palin claimed — and that the total cost of all the investigations had been $296,042, not “some two million dollars,” as she also claimed.

The Juneau Empire also found that the most expensive investigation of Gov. Palin was a probe into the “Troopergate” scandal that the governor filed against herself.

On Oct. 10, 2008, just one month before the presidential election, a bipartisan investigative committee in the Alaska Legislature released a report on its probe into the scandal that found that Palin had unlawfully abused her power as governor in the dismissal of a high-ranking state official who had refused to fire a state trooper who was the abusive husband of Palin’s sister.

Gov. Palin immediately self-reported the charges against her to the state’s Personnel Board — “an independent agency composed of members appointed by the governor,” according an official state website — with the hope of getting an opposite finding before the election.

Less than a month later, on Nov. 7, 2008 — the day before the presidential election — the board released its report clearing the governor of all charges. Palin waived confidentiality so that the findings could be made public.

According to Juneau Empire reporting, the cost of the Troopergate investigation launched by Palin herself was $187,797 — nearly two-thirds of the nearly $300,000 total cost of all 13 ethics investigations into the governor and her staff.

And while $500,000 in legal fees is a big expense for the governor of a small state, Palin is not likely to face bankruptcy any time soon. Not only did she and her husband claim a net worth of well over $1 million in their disclosures forms during the presidential campaign, Palin recently signed a book deal estimated to be worth at least $7 million. (Other sources say $11 million.)

In reality, the costs of the investigations had nothing to do with Palin’s decision to resign. After all, in her statement she suggested that all the charges have been resolved, which means the costs to the taxpayers and herself are no longer mounting. (And if some ethics probes are still underway, her resignation will not necessarily put an end to the cost to run them or respond to them.)

What is really behind this is the fact that Sarah Palin can’t tolerate the criticism the investigations imply. Her purpose in bringing them up in her statement was to remind her followers that she is a victim — of Beltway Republican operatives, GOP pols in Alaska, Democrats everywhere who oppose her Christian nationalist ideology, late-night comedians who make jokes about her family, the liberal media and even lowly left-wing bloggers.

In fact, if you distill Sarah Palin’s resignation statement down to its essence, her message to her followers is clear: “I’m the biggest victim on the planet. Vote for me.”