A drug investigator says authorities delayed the arrest of a woman tied to Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s family until after the November election, in which Palin was the Republican vice presidential candidate, a newspaper reported.
Sherry Johnston — whose son Levi Johnston is engaged to Palin’s daughter, Bristol — was arrested on Dec. 18 on six felony drug counts.
She is accused of selling Oxycontin, a strong prescription painkiller, and pleaded not guilty on Monday.
Investigator Kyle Young sent an e-mail to the Public Safety Employees Association saying the search warrant of Johnston’s house was delayed for political reasons, the Anchorage Daily News reported on Monday.
“It was not allowed to progress in a normal fashion, the search warrant WAS delayed because of the pending election and the Mat Su Drug Unit and the case officer were not the ones calling the shots,” Young wrote in the Dec. 30 e-mail.
The warrant was delivered the same day as Sherry Johnston’s arrest.
Public Safety Commissioner Joe Masters insisted the case was handled fairly and said no one in the governor’s office knew troopers were investigating until Sherry Johnston’s house was searched.
After the house was searched, Masters said he called Palin’s chief of staff, Mike Nizich, to alert him of a potential media frenzy.
Colonel Audie Holloway, the troopers’ director, also vigorously disputed that there was anything irregular in how the case was handled.
A message left for Young with his union was not immediately returned on Monday.
Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin recently announced the birth of their son. The baby, Tripp, is the governor’s first grandchild.
Also on Monday, Levi Johnston’s father, Keith Johnston, said his son quit his job as a North Slope oil field worker after questions arose in a weekend newspaper column about Levi’s eligibility to work as an apprentice electrician without a high school degree, the Anchorage Daily News reported on its Web site.
There was no phone listing for Keith Johnston.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS