Palin ‘snorted cocaine off oil drum’, book says

SARAH PALIN’S husband jumped to her defence yesterday after an upcoming book claimed the Republican snorted cocaine off an oil drum and had a pre-marital fling with an African-American basketball star.

The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin by Joe McGinniss — who moved in next to Palin’s home in Alaska last year as part of his research — comes out in the US on Tuesday, as the Tea Party darling ponders whether to formally seek the Republican presidential nomination.

“This is a man who has been relentlessly stalking my family to the point of moving in right next door to us to harass us and spy on us to satisfy his creepy obsession with my wife,” husband Todd Palin said. “His book is full of disgusting lies, innuendo, and smears.

“Even the New York Times called this book ‘dated, petty’, and that it ‘chases caustic, unsubstantiated gossip.’”

Citing unnamed “publishing sources”, the National Enquirer said McGinniss claims Palin had “a steamy interracial hookup” with Glen Rice less than a year before she and Todd eloped in 1988.

Sarah Palin was then a local TV sports reporter just out of college, and Rice — now a retired NBA all-star — was in Alaska with his Michigan college team for a tournament, it said.

“Todd was very much in the picture at the time and the couple married just nine months later,” the tabloid said, adding that McGinniss quotes Rice as confirming the one-night stand.

McGinniss also writes that both Palins “dabbled” with cocaine, and that before she became Alaska’s governor in 2006, Sarah Palin was seen snorting cocaine “off an overturned 55-gallon oil drum while snowmobiling with pals”.

McGinniss is the author of several bestsellers, including The Making of a President in 1969.