A Bethel jury delivered a verdict of “guilty” on 14 counts of sexual felonies against 49-year-old John Mark Hammonds, an elementary school teacher and coach at the Akiachak school.
Hammonds, who also acted as a self-proclaimed pastor in the village of Akiachak in southwest Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, faced charges related to sexual abuse and assault of two victims.
The convictions stem from incidents that occurred in 2021 while Hammonds was teaching at the Akiachak school.
In addition to the 12 counts related to his time as a teacher, the jury found him guilty on two additional counts of sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree for incidents that took place in Wasilla in November 2019. Hammonds was convicted of one misdemeanor count that occurred while he was in custody.
The 15 counts brought against Hammonds include two counts of sexual abuse of a minor in the first degree, one count of sexual assault in the first degree, eight counts of sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree, two counts of sexual assault in the second degree, one count of enticement of a minor, and one misdemeanor count for unlawful contact while in custody at Goose Creek Correctional Center.
The trial lasted three weeks, during which the Bethel jury heard testimony from 32 witnesses. Among those who testified were three child forensic interviewers, two nurse practitioners, seven teachers and/or administrators, and four Alaska State Troopers. The jury also heard from six children and their parents, making it a comprehensive and emotional trial.
The case was investigated by the Alaska State Troopers, with Assistant Attorney General Bailey Woolfstead from the Office of Special Prosecutions’ Rural Prosecution Unit leading the prosecution. Paralegal Bethany Kaiser of the Bethel District Attorney’s Office also assisted in the legal proceedings. Alaska State Trooper Coby Sutton, the investigating case officer, played a vital role throughout the trial.
Hammonds is currently being held without bail until his sentencing, scheduled for Jan. 19, 2024. If convicted, Hammonds faces a sentencing range of 40 years and 5 days to 595 years.
Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming has a 70% approval rating in the Cowboy State, which makes him currently the most popular senator in America, according to state-by-state surveys that Morning Consult Pro conducted April 1-June 30 in all 50 states.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, made the top-10 approval list, coming in at No. 8 with a 61% approval, 27% disapproval and 12% no opinion.
On the other side of the spectrum, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky., is America’s least liked senator among his constituents. Only 32% approve of the job he is doing, while 61% disapprove and 7% don’t have an opinion.
“His current position is in line with his standing in the first quarter of 2023, driven by his continued poor standing among Republican voters following his 2020 re-election,” Morning Consult Pro reported.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who is considered the Senate’s most vulnerable Democrat, is just one up from the bottom in popularity. Some 55% of West Virginia voters do not approve of his job performance, and only 39% approve. He has not said whether he will seek reelection or perhaps run as a candidate under the “No Labels” party, a growing third-party movement.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who left the Democratic Party to become an Independent, is also suffering, with 43% approving, 42% disapproving and 15% undecided.
Sen. Ted Cruz has seen his fortunes fade, with a 48% approval and a 43% disapproval in Texas.
In the chart below, readers can pore through the raw data from the poll. The numbers, left to right after the names, show Sample Size, Approval, Disapproval, and No Opinion. They are alphabetical by state. More information is atMorning Consult Pro.
JPMorgan Chase has canceled the business and personal accounts of renowned medical doctor and vaccine skeptic Dr. Joseph Mercola and his Florida-based health business, Mercola Market, according to a letter that Mercola shared. JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in America, with $3.26 trillion in assets.
At the same time it notified Mercola that his business is not welcome, the personal accounts of the company’s CEO, Steven A. Rye, his wife, and the company CFO, Amy Legaspi, were also closed by the bank.
Mercola is the author of a best-selling book, “The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing The Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal.”
In the forward of his book, presidential candidate and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy writes, “An eloquent, charismatic, and knowledgeable [critique] of a corrupt system.”
The bank’s decision, without a specific reason, was detailed in letters and materials shared with Must Read Alaska.
Sent on July 13 to Dr. Mercola at his Mercola Market, JP Ogan Chase notified the company of the account closures with a deadline of Sept. 10 for Dr. Mercola to pull all of his funds out. CEO Steven A. Rye, CFO Amy Legaspi, and their respective spouses received notifications to close their personal accounts by Aug. 11.
The lack of a clear explanation from Chase for this action has increased suspicion about the weaponization of financial institutions in America during the Biden Administration.
The bank cited “unexpected activity on this or another Chase account” as the reason but failed to provide further details.
The lack of transparency has fueled speculation of the bank targeting Dr. Mercola, who was an early vocal critic of the federal government’s efforts to tamp down the Covid-19 pandemic, including the use of experimental, briefly tested vaccines. Mercola sells supplements online and is an advocate for natural health approaches to Covid.
Mercola, in a public response to the letter he received, says that his challenge of the official narrative of the government health bureaucracy is the probable reason, and he compares it to the social credit system used by authoritarian regimes such as China.
His concerns are supported by other recent bank actions of Chase, and he specifically points to the bank holding the accounts of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, even after Epstein was convicted.
Earlier this year, the powerful bank agreed to pay a $290 million to settle a lawsuit tied to its association with Epstein, who ran a now-notorious sex resort that marketed young girls to older, powerful men, on his private island. Former President Bill Clinton and others were guests at Little St. James, where Epstein enslaved girls as young as 12, allowing the richest and most powerful men in the world to have their way with them, shielded from the eyes of paparazzi.
Chase announced in 2020 that it would no longer lend to oil companies exploring or doing business in the Arctic because of climate change.
Chase is also the subject of complaint by a coalition of attorneys general, including Alaska’s Treg Taylor, for discriminating against Christian groups by shutting down or refusing to open their accounts.
Weaponizing financial services is showing up with greater frequency. In Canada, banks shut down the accounts of companies and individuals who supported the truckers anti-mandate protest in 2022, at the same time Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suspended civil liberties.
What makes this even more draconian for Mercola is that the closure of the accounts extends to some employees, their families, and people with no connection to Mercola’s opinions on health.
A new law signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 2 explicitly prohibits financial institutions from denying or canceling services based on political or religious beliefs. While this law could potentially protect individuals like Mercola and his employees, its effectiveness is untested, and no established procedures are in place to enforce it the law. Mercola said he is hoping the state’s attorney general will take up the case against Chase.
Mercola is a board certified family physician and author who has treated 25,000 patients from around the world. He encourages and educates people about safe and inexpensive nutritional, lifestyle and exercise options to radically reduce their risk of dying prematurely from dangerous drugs and surgeries.
The New York Times and other regime media have written critically of him, most recently in February of 2022:
“The article that appeared online on Feb. 9 began with a seemingly innocuous question about the legal definition of vaccines. Then over its next 3,400 words, it declared coronavirus vaccines were ‘a medical fraud’and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease,” The New York Times wrote.
“Instead, the article claimed, the shots ‘alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.’
“Its assertions were easily disprovable. No matter. Over the next few hours, the article was translated from English into Spanish and Polish. It appeared on dozens of blogs and was picked up by anti-vaccination activists, who repeated the false claims online. The article also made its way to Facebook, where it reached 400,000 people, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool.”
“The entire effort traced back to one person: Joseph Mercola.
“Dr. Mercola, 67, an osteopathic physician in Cape Coral, Fla., has long been a subject of criticism and government regulatory actions for his promotion of unproven or unapproved treatments. But most recently, he has become the chief spreader of coronavirus misinformationonline, according to researchers,” The New York Timeswrote, authoritatively in 2022.
In the days leading up to the Biden administration’s historic release of 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in late 2021, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm held multiple conversations with China National Energy Administration Chairman Zhang Jianhua.
This discovery, found on internal Energy Department calendars acquired by Americans for Public Trustand reported first through Fox News Digital, raises questions regarding the potential influence of Chinese officials on the U.S. energy strategy during the Biden Administration.
Granholm’s discussions with Jianhua, a senior figure within the Chinese Communist Party, were held on Nov. 19 and Nov. 21 of 2021.
Only two days after the second conversation, the Biden administration made its announcement to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in an effort to counteract rising gas prices. This release, totaling 50 million barrels, marked the largest withdrawal from the reserve in U.S. history.
Last year, a Washington Free Beacon story focused on 1 million barrels of the reserve’s oil that was sold to Unipec America, a subsidiary of Chinese government-owned oil and gas company Sinopec. The organization has connection to the president’s son, Hunter Biden, who was part of BHR, an investment company that had a stake in a Sinopec subsidiary.
In 2020, the New York Times wrote that “Companies associated with Hunter Biden or his business partners have struck several deals involving China over the past decade.” As of 2022, Hunter Biden still had a minority stake in BHR, although Hunter’s lawyer told the New York Timeslate in 2022 that he no longer had any financial interest in the company, either directly or indirectly.
“No evidence has emerged that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. traded favors with the Chinese government to help his son Hunter,” the Times wrote in March of 2020, during the election cycle.
Americans for Public Trust is not so sure.
“Secretary Granholm’s multiple closed-door meetings with a CCP-connected energy official raise serious questions about the level of Chinese influence on the Biden administration’s energy agenda,” APT Executive Director Caitlin Sutherland told Fox News.
Sutherland further criticized the Secretary, suggesting that instead of working toward American energy independence, Granholm seems to be echoing Chinese energy rhetoric, remarking that “we can all learn from what China is doing.”
Sutherland continued: “The public deserves to know the extent to which Chinese officials are attempting to infiltrate U.S. energy policy and security.”
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve level has now dropped below 350 million barrels of crude., down 27% from what is was one year ago, due to continual sell-offs of oil by the Biden Administration, and continued cancellations of buy-backs.
Rep. Mary Peltola, the only member of Congress representing Alaska, skipped out on voting to protect the Strategic Petroleum Reserve from being sold off to China earlier this year, and later said it didn’t matter how she voted since the Senate is controlled by Democrats and the bill would die there.
On Saturday, Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed into law Senate Bill 119, State Identification Card for Prisoners, which unanimously passed the Alaska Legislature in the final days of the 2023 regular session.
SB 119 provides easier access to identification cards for reentrants upon release, granting them an important tool for re-entry.
SB 119 grants the Department of Corrections statutory authority to issue state IDs to anyone leaving their custody who does not have an ID in their possession.
The bill received support from the Department of Corrections under the leadership of Commissioner Jen Winkelman and was carried by a bipartisan team from both chambers.
Sen. Robert Myers speaks during the signing ceremony for SB 119, with Rep. Andrew Gray, cosponsor of the legislation, appearing to have a bird on his shoulder. (It’s a metal sculpture behind him, and in the photo at the top, the bird’s wings can be seen around Sen. Scott Kawasaki’s head).
“In order to find housing, in order to find work, in order to open a bank account, a photo ID is required,” said Rep. Andrew Gray (D-Anchorage) who sponsored the House version of the bill. “I hope this legislation enables folks re-entering society to accomplish these basic tasks and avoid homelessness and recidivism.”
Sen. Robert Myers (R-North Pole), who sponsored Senate Bill 119 said, “Reentry is an essential part of public safety. Ensuring reentrants are supported during their transitional period helps improve community well-being and public safety. By providing reentrants with a valid form of identification upon their release we also provide the individual with an essential tool for basic life.”
A teenager who went through a horrific experience in which San Francisco doctors “transitioned” her with chemicals and surgery to appear as a male, is now on the speaking circuit, telling America that the transgendering of minors must stop.
Chloe Cole is the featured keynote speaker at the Alaska Family Council’s Aug. 16 and 18 summer events in Wasilla and Anchorage.
Cole had a mental health crisis as a child. Doctors at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco diagnosed her with gender dysphoria when she was 9 years old, and began treating her at age 12 with puberty blockers, testosterone treatments, and a double mastectomy.
At age 16, when she realized she had been medically abused, she detransitioned and became an activist in defense of children who face the same situation. Now at the age of 19, she describes herself as a former “trans kid.” One who is on a mission to save others.
“Chloe Cole has a story to tell. She’s the victim of a woke agenda and a woke medical community, and she isn’t staying silent,” says Jim Minnery, president of Alaska Family Council. “Her story is powerful, and it’s one the Left doesn’t want you to hear – which is why we are giving you an opportunity to hear from her.”
Cole recently testified in front of Congress about the dangers of medically treating children with what the medical community and activists benignly call “gender-affirming care.” Her testimony can be heard in this C-SPAN clip:
These seasonal events by the group raise funds to support the mission of Alaska Family Council. This event does not include dinner and is more of a lecture format.
Past keynoters include well-known names such as Dennis Prager, Will Witt, Louisiana Rep. Katrina Jackson, Kimberly Strassel and Suzanne Downing. Tickets and table reservations for the Wasilla and Anchorage lectures, as well as more information about the events, can be found at this link.
Alaska Family Council is a family-centered nonprofit that believes life should beprotectedfrom the time of conception to the end of natural life; marriage isbetween one man and one woman as the essential element of the family; strong families are essential to a strong and healthy society; First Amendment religious libertiesare critical to our freedom as a people and must be protected and defended; and that parents have a right to guide their children’s lives and to responsibly direct every aspect of their education and care.
Supporting the work of Alaska Family Council can also be done directly, even if attending the dinner is not in your plans. The link is here.
Those interested may also support Chloe Cole’s work as an activist directly through this link.
Tyson Wright, outreach manager at Operation Underground Railroad, is the featured speaker at 7 pm on Aug. 7 at the School of Government, a gathering of politically interested Alaskans who meet in Palmer at Real Life Church.
Operation Underground Railroad is the anti-child-exploitation group featured in the movie, “Sound of Freedom,” which has sold over9 million tickets since its debut last month, now passing $100 million in box office revenue.
Wright started as a volunteer for Operation Underground Railroad in 2015 and is now a full-time team member.
“We go to the darkest corners of the world to assist in rescuing children from slavery and ensure ongoing aftercare, provide cutting edge tools and resources to U.S. law enforcement throughout the United States, while strengthening preventative efforts that benefit at-risk children worldwide. We will not give up and will continue to go to the darkest place until light is restored and every child is protected,” the group states on its website.
Operation Underground Railroad says it has been part of over 4,000 operations and 6,500 arrests of people exploiting children in the sex trafficking trade. More than 7,000 children have been rescued. The organization also provides robust aftercare programs for survivors that include basic support, therapy, and medical care.
“Sound of Freedom” is an independently produced movie that was financed mainly by a group of wealthy Mexicans for $14.6 million. The liberal media bashed the movie as advancing a “QAnon-worthy theory” about global child trafficking.
Even the Anchorage Daily News sideswiped the movie as a “faith-based child trafficking film,” a curious description, instead of calling it a film exposing actual crimes against children. But it has turned out to be one of the hit movies of the summer of 2024.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report that 11 Chinese and Russian warships were spotted off the coast of Alaska, not far from the Aleutian Islands.
According to the Journal, U.S. experts said it was the largest such flotilla to approach American shores. Although the ships never entered U.S. territorial waters, they were shadowed by four U.S. destroyers and P-8 Poseidon aircraft.
“It is a historical first,” said Brent Sadler, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a retired Navy captain to the newspaper. “Given the context of the war in Ukraine and tensions around Taiwan, this move is highly provocative.”
Two of the three members of the Alaska U.S. Congressional Delegation issued responses to the report.
U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and longtime advocate of upgrading the military’s presence in Alaska, posted a statement on the social media platform X:
“The incursion by 11 Chinese and Russian warships operating together – off the coast of Alaska – is yet another reminder that we have entered a new era of authoritarian aggression led by the dictators in Beijing and Moscow,” Sen. Sullivan wrote. “In recognition of this reality and our state’s unrivaled strategic location, for years, I’ve been pressing the Navy and each successive administration to commit to a greater Naval, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps presence in Alaska, more Arctic-capable vessels, and more infrastructure to host these assets, like the deep-water port of Nome.”
Sullivan reminded readers that last summer, the Chinese and Russian navies conducted a similar operation off the coast of Alaska and that President Joe Biden had a weak response.
“Given that our response was tepid, I strongly encouraged senior military leaders to be ready with a much more robust response should such another joint Chinese/Russian naval operation occur off our coast,” Sullivan said. “For that reason, I was heartened to see that this latest incursion was met with four U.S. Navy destroyers, which sends a strong message to Xi Jinping and Putin that the United States will not hesitate to protect and defend our vital national interests in Alaska.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski also issued a statement: “We have been in close contact with leadership from Alaska Command for several days now and received detailed classified briefings about the foreign vessels that are transiting U.S. waters in the Aleutians.”
Murkowski noted that Alaska is in close proximity to China and Russia.
“Incursions like this are why we are working so hard to secure funding and resources to expand our military’s capacity and capabilities in Alaska, and why our colleagues must join us in supporting those investments,” she said.
Murkowski is in Ketchikan this weekend for the Blueberry Festival and a charitable fundraiser for cancer research. Sullivan is finishing his required annual U.S. Marine Reserve training.
Rep. Mary Peltola issued no statement. She is believed to be out of the country during August recess.
On Friday, former President Donald Trump wrote on TruthSocial a statement: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
Later on Friday, the Biden Administration’s special counsel Jack Smith asked the federal judge overseeing former Trump’s most recent federal indictment to issue a protective order, saying that what Trump wrote was a threat.
Smith also said the judge needs to put a gag order on Trump, so he won’t talk about the case in public.
On Saturday, the federal judge agreed and slapped an order on Trump to shut up about any trial evidence he knows about in his upcoming election interference case.
District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling agreed with Smith, based on Trump’s prolific social media history.
“Such a restriction is particularly important in this case because the defendant has previously issued public statements on social media regarding witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him,” Smith wrote. “If the defendant were to begin issuing public posts using details — or, for example, grand jury transcripts — obtained in discovery here, it could have a harmful chilling effect on witnesses or adversely affect the fair administration of justice in this case.”
Trump’s legal and campaign team argue that what Trump said was not a threat; it’s political speech, protected by the First Amendment. In fact, Trump said nothing about the trial in his social media post, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
“This is a fast-moving railroad without any concern for justice,” said Trump attorney John Lauro.
“The Truth post cited is the definition of political speech, and was in response to the RINO, China-loving, dishonest special interest groups and Super PACs, like the ones funded by the Koch brothers and the Club for No Growth,” the Trump campaign said.
On Fox News, Jesse Watters, noted that such things have always backfired against the Biden Administration: “So far, Biden’s attempts to arrest Trump are backfiring. Trump is now demolishing the Republican Primary Field. The harder the Washington establishment tries to separate Trump from the people, the tighter that bond becomes.”
