Introduction and Context for the Story

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is September 19, 2023, and we are in the middle of a few weeks of, I don't know how else to call it, Mormon mayhem.

John Dehlin [00:00:15] If you've been following the eight passengers Jody Hildebrandt story, it's a major national story that has been sweeping the headlines worldwide. It's about to get bigger. Major media outlets are talking about it. And if that weren't enough, we interviewed David Archuleta's mom this week. And if that weren't enough, Tim Ballard, you know, in Operation Underground Railroad and Mitt Romney News is just swelling the news media, at least here in Utah. As we've covered and as we covered yesterday, Senator Mitt Romney decided to not run for re election here in Utah. And then Sean Reyes, Attorney General, Utah. Sean Reyes indicated that he wasn't going to run for Mitt Romney's Senate seat and instead he had a warrior hero friend who was going to run, which we all kind of knew was going to be Tim Ballard.

John Dehlin [00:01:15] And so as we covered yesterday, those of us who are have concerns about Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad. As soon as we were starting to fret that Tim Ballard might successfully become the next US Senator from Utah, Vice News dropped some articles.

John Dehlin [00:01:37] And the articles, there's at least three articles that are probably worth mentioning. The first is the Mormon Church denounces Tim Ballard's morally unacceptable activities. And then there are a couple more that dropped as well, dealing with allegations regarding.

John Dehlin [00:02:01] I'm sorry, I got those a tiny bit out of order. The first that dropped was, was one about. No, I'm sorry, that is right. The first one was Mormon Church announces Tim Ballard's more of the unacceptable activities. Then they then two more articles dropped as well.

John Dehlin [00:02:19] One on Tim Ballard's allegations against our founder Tim Ballard and of of a nature regarding kind of sexual harassment in the workplace while he worked at Operation Underground Railroad. And then the third has to do with these sort of secret operatives for our groping the breasts of underaged girls on one of their jumps. And you know, we did our best to kind of summarize all the Mormon nuances of the story yesterday as the best we could. But what we really wanted to do was to get the reporters themselves from Vice News here on the podcast to, to talk about everything they've learned. And so we are so thrilled to bring back onto Mormon Stories Podcast and Hannah Merlin and Tim Marchman of Vice News. Hey guys, welcome back to Mormon Stories.

Vice News Reporters on Their Investigation

Tim Marchman [00:03:18] Hi Don hey, thanks for having us back.

John Dehlin [00:03:22] It's. It's so my pleasure. And there's so much that we want to talk about today. I've got a huge set of slides. Let me just start by asking you first, Anna, and then you, Tim, anything you want to say just to begin with, about what, what this has been like for you, knowing that we're going to kind of go into the details throughout the episode. Anna, why don't we have you start and if you don't have anything, that's okay too.

Anna Merlan [00:03:49] Well, you know, obviously this is the culmination of a lot of reporting that we've done over the last several years into our. It's not just us though. Crucially, Lynn Packer, who has reported on our for at least a decade, was the first person to break the sexual misconduct story.

Anna Merlan [00:04:08] And the second thing is just really why we're here today, which is that we know that there are a bunch of questions about our reporting and how we got some of the things that we got. And while we can't speak to all of that in a public setting, this seemed like a really good way to respond to some of those questions. We know you have a big audience in the LDS community, including people who might not approve of you personally. And so this felt like a good sort of time and place to, to try to figure out what people's continued questions and concerns still are and see if we can address those.

John Dehlin [00:04:42] Excellent. Yes, and thank you for that important shout out to Lynn Packer. I would love to have him on as well soon. Tim, we note that you are not joining us through video. I imagine there are safety concerns, but maybe there are privacy concerns as well. But Tim, anything you want to add as a beginning starting point?

Tim Marchman [00:05:05] Oh, yeah. I mean, first off, I, Yeah, I just don't, I don't like being on video for whatever reason, even when it's not public. It's just, it's just a hang up. So thanks for bearing with me and I hope that doesn't put anyone off too much.

Tim Marchman [00:05:16] I echo everything Anna said and you know, I just want to say it's, it's, it's sad. These are sad stories to be reporting. There are, you know, vulnerable, vulnerable women and children in particular and harmless family members and harmless people who have donated, put their hearts into work. Our does like a lot of people affected by that. So, you know, it's, it's just, it's, it's not any, it's. These aren't stories you take any pleasure in publishing or are excited about, but they're important ones, and we're continuing to report on this. We do have more. More stories coming, and a lot of people are now willing to talk to us who haven't previously been.

Tim Marchman [00:06:00] I think partly because we've put new information out there that kind of compels them to speak. And in some ways, I think that the extraordinary statement that the church gave us last Friday has had some people kind of reconsidering their evaluation of Ballard of OUI and just made them a little more willing to talk. So we have more stories that we're very close to publishing. I think we'll probably have one tomorrow.

John Dehlin [00:06:34] More? Are you kidding me? More? We just had three.

Tim Marchman [00:06:37] Yeah, I think. I think, you know, I don't. I don't like to talk about a. Reporting too much before we've reported it, but I think in my opinion, the stories we have coming are as significant as the ones we've published, maybe more so. So, you know, we're just going to keep working on those and, and try to get back to everyone who's reaching out to us, so, so we can talk to them.

John Dehlin [00:06:57] Just.

Tim Marchman [00:06:57] Just a lot going on. But, you know, as Anna said, we've been reporting on this for a number of years, so it's a. It's a good problem to have that we don't just have enough. We don't quite enough have, have enough hours in the day to do some of the stuff we want to do.

John Dehlin [00:07:10] Well, thank you. Thank you so much to the both of you for the work you're doing. It's weird because we have, you know, newspapers in Utah. You know, we have the Deseret News and we have the Salt Lake Tribune, but ironically, they're not super interested in the story, and they haven't really been. They'll kind of occasionally report some of the things you guys report. But it's just weird that Mormon and Utah journalists don't seem to really be caring. Do you guys have any thoughts on that? Or even reflections or maybe you can't even on it.

Anna Merlan [00:07:42] The last. So the last couple weeks they have certainly been on it, and Robert Gerke at the Salt Lake Tribune specifically wrote a couple of really good columns about this. Yeah, I. I would say that both the Tribune and Deseret perhaps haven't covered it extensively for a number of years, but, you know, they're busy. They have a lot going on. But I would say that the last couple weeks they have been very, very, very on the ball with this coverage, and so have other Utah news outlets. So I definitely don't want to cast aspersions on anybody there.

Tim Marchman [00:08:13] Yeah, I would say I just want to add to that. You know, I wouldn't have any particular criticism for, you know, outlets in Utah because it's always hard to decide what you're going to prioritize. You have limited resources, no matter how big you are, a lot of stuff to cover. It's a big state. And these are outlets for, you know, cover not just what's going on in Utah, but all around the world. And specifically, they're important. You know, we know they're really important audiences or papers for the LDS community, which is global, in addition to covering what's going on in Utah. So they have a.

Tim Marchman [00:08:42] You know, they have a big remit. I would just add that I've seen this in the past in other stories that I've worked on, whether as a reporter or an editor. Sometimes it's an advantage to be from outside.

Tim Marchman [00:08:53] It gives you a little different perspective. Some people are more willing to talk to you. Some. Some less. But. But, yeah, I wouldn't say the fact that, you know, someone from Philadelphia and someone from LA have gotten all this is any bad reflection on. On the press in Utah. And they've certainly been covering things a lot more aggressively recently.

Anna Merlan [00:09:11] Yeah, definitely not from la. I will note I live in la, but I'm not.

Tim Marchman [00:09:15] I'm not from Philly either, but in Philly.

Anna Merlan [00:09:18] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:21] Aren't you, like, a Wiccan princess or something? Anna, isn't that. What was it?

Tim Marchman [00:09:25] What was it?

John Dehlin [00:09:26] I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

Anna Merlan [00:09:29] Apparently, this was a piece of scuttlebutt that was going around. Someone said it to me. Someone said it to Tim. We thought the person who said it to me had gotten it from the person who said it to Tim, but that was not the case. So just to clarify, I have nothing against Wiccans or Wiccan priestesses, if that is a thing, which I don't think that it is. But there has been some inaccurate speculation, I think, based on my appearance, that I'm Wiccan, which I'm simply not. I'm Jewish. I. I don't know where that came from. So if for some reason that has been scaring people, I can set your mind at ease on that.

John Dehlin [00:10:07] Yeah. And. And I'm not trying to trash the Salt Lake Tribune or the Deseret News, other than to say, as someone who lives in Utah and is Mormon, it is weird. It's. I'm grateful that y' all are covering this. And I agree with the point about outsiders. It is weird to have people outside the state and outside of the faith tradition seem to care more about a really important story in your state than people in the state and in the tradition. And I'm sure there's good reasons why, but it is a little weird. But I'm also super grateful for it. And I. And I also agree there are really important advantages.

John Dehlin [00:10:43] So really quickly, I want to welcome all our livestream people, both on YouTube and on Facebook. We already have a very large audience. We would love those of you who are joining us to like this episode and to subscribe to us on YouTube or on Facebook. That helps with the algorithms. We really will appreciate the super chats if people want to donate. And you know, that will make your questions more prevalent. But whether you donate or not, I'm going to be monitoring along with Maven, the questions, comments that people ask. And we hope to integrate those live stream comments because oftentimes that makes these interviews more rich.

John Dehlin [00:11:23] So thanks for everyone for the support. If it's all right, I'll jump into the slides. Is that all right, everyone? Okay, so the first story that broke, I believe last week was Mormon Church Denounces Tim Ballard's Morally Unacceptable Activities. And the biggest, the biggest, perhaps the biggest part of this story hasn't actually been the denunciation of Tim Ballard, been how the church handled the statement.

LDS Church Apologists and Official Statements

John Dehlin [00:11:51] And so what I wanted to do was play a clip from some of the Mormon Church's leading apologists. And I've already shared with y' all some other clips from these guys. It's a podcast formerly known as Midnight Mormons. But I just want to give the viewers and the listeners the sense of how the Mormon Church's decision to release this statement impacted its faithful orthodox believing members, led to a lot of confusion. And then I want to discuss whether or not it's possible that confusion was actually intentional. So let me just roll this clip as we do.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [00:12:33] Many of our anti Mormon debunkings is there's all of these recycled lies that just come back every seven to 12 years.

Video Clip 1 [00:12:40] Okay.

Video Clip 1 [00:12:40] It's almost like Anti Mormon has its own. Anti Mormonism has its own canon of just like these debunked tropes rear their head once every decade and, and you know, they get kind of put in their place for a while, but then just, you know, when somebody hasn't heard, heard of them for a decade, they. They come back and they're all based on a lie, based on a lie, based on a lie that Dates back to, like, somebody who threw something really quickly together in 1838 to write Mormonism Unveiled because they were losing so many converts to the Mormon Church.

Video Clip 1 [00:13:07] Right.

Video Clip 1 [00:13:08] You're saying that there's a lot of anti O tropes that kind of just get repeated and keep coming back once a year against Tim Ballard that seem to date back to a Vice News article that is based off of nothing.

Video Clip 1 [00:13:22] True.

Video Clip 1 [00:13:23] What.

Video Clip 1 [00:13:23] What are you saying? Is this all fabricated nonsense? Tribalism?

Video Clip 1 [00:13:26] What?

Video Clip 1 [00:13:26] Clarify that. That article, which is cited almost in, like, in every single sound of freedom

Video Clip 1 [00:13:32] o Tim Ballard hit piece.

Video Clip 1 [00:13:34] It will be cited or it will cite something else that cites it. That was my trouble.

Video Clip 1 [00:13:40] I.

Video Clip 1 [00:13:41] They're. They're all saying the church denounces Tim Ballard and it's in VICE News. So I'm trying to find the actual church statement. Yeah. But I can't find it anywhere. So can I give you my impression of that? Because as I've been searching through you, like you mentioned that Kwaku. From what I saw, it seems incredibly misleading of Vice to have said that a church, like, official issued a statement about this because it looks like they emailed somebody who emailed them back saying something. Right. Not an official church statement. Public, publicized, anywhere.

Video Clip 1 [00:14:15] Yeah, yeah. That's the issue.

Video Clip 1 [00:14:16] We can't find it anywhere. And like, I'm looking for and from the First Presidency. So the Salt Lake Tribune is turning this into a. Oh, an official church announcement denounces Tim Ballard. Like. Tim, that's not even close to what's happening. This is what the Desert News article says. And I got to tell you, I'm pretty confused here, but it seems like they're quoting. This is a little bit poorly written because they're quoting a statement that was already made by the church.

Video Clip 1 [00:14:39] And here it is.

Video Clip 1 [00:14:39] It says President B. Okay, so Desert News is quoting Vice News just as Tommy Stevenson says. Read that whole paragraph.

Video Clip 1 [00:14:46] Yeah.

Video Clip 1 [00:14:47] It says Vice News article is based on records obtained from a now closed Davis county investigation. The Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints released a statement in response to the report first published by Vice. The full statement from the church reads. Wait, that's not true. First published by Vice is the part.

Video Clip 1 [00:15:03] Go back.

Video Clip 1 [00:15:03] I. I put the Vice article into this. Vice is totally lying. They're abusing the word statement. If you look at the Vice article that they're referencing when I put it in the discord. Okay, here it is. To be fair, they didn't say official statement. Didn't they? Yeah, but they know what they're doing.

Video Clip 1 [00:15:21] I know it's just Samantha.

John Dehlin [00:15:23] Okay. And I apologize for some of you. If the audio is low there. I have it maximized on the link. And so that's just the best I could do. Maybe we can try and fix that in post production. But the question. I think the first, you know, there.

John Dehlin [00:15:39] I think, you know, there's. There's some stuff that was really weird about this statement. And let me just share some stuff that I shared yesterday. It was weird that a formal statement from a Mormon perspective. I think it was weird that the statement was released first to Vice News of all, you know, venues. Why not Deseret News? Right. Why not LDS Newsroom?

John Dehlin [00:16:02] That there was no name associated with the statement, that it eventually got leaked other networks and finally the author of the statement got dripped out. It's weird that the Church still hasn't made a formal statement. And it's obviously weird that they slandered one of its most faithful defenders without getting their ecclesiastical leaders involved. So what can you guys do about telling us the story behind the statement? What's the story?

Anna Merlan [00:16:29] Yeah, can you put that slide back up? I'd like to respond to a bunch of misinformation in here.

John Dehlin [00:16:34] Okay.

▶ Video Clip 2

Video Clip 2 [00:16:35] If I may. So, first of all, and this is to be candid, like, I think our main reason for wanting to talk today is because the amount of misinformation going around about what is a very standard report reporting technique and, you know, like, very standard order of operations has turned into this big mess. Okay? So first of all, VICE released this, or excuse me, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints released this statement to us in response to request for comment that Tim sent them. Quite a bit of time went by between our request for comment and the Church getting back to us with this statement.

Video Clip 2 [00:17:12] This was not rushed. This was not panicked. This was not something that, you know, we got through some sort of backdoor means. We asked the church for comment. We got the statement several weeks later. They asked for it to be attributed to a spokesperson. This is pretty common, especially when someone is speaking institutionally and not personally. My strong sense is that probably the media relations department of the church had a sense of what was going to happen here with this particular spokesperson now that his name is out there.

Video Clip 2 [00:17:46] Again, I'm speculating they didn't release this statement on the LDS newsroom because the LDS newsroom issues press releases. This is not a press release. This is a response to a request for comment. I can't find any evidence that LDS newsroom ever runs the comments that they give to news Outlets. So there's a very big difference between a press release and a statement to a news outlet. A press release is a piece of pr. A statement to a news outlet responds to our reporting. I don't know what to say about the claim that they haven't made a formal statement. They did. They gave us a statement, and then it did not leak to other networks or news outlets.

Video Clip 2 [00:18:25] Those news outlets, the Trib, Deseret News TV stations, asked if our statement that we ran was legitimate, was really from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and confirmed that it was. They got the same statement from the church, and they ran it. Nothing leaked. So I think the important thing for me here is that there is no kind of weird backdoor dealings here. There is no leaking. There is no subterfuge. Like, we have been super clear about how we got this, and so have these other outlets. You know, you can look on Twitter and you can see that, like, the editor of Deseret News is clarifying that this is.

Video Clip 2 [00:19:00] Is also how he got it. So the idea that was promulgated in that podcast that something strange is happening or something unusual. What is unusual is the church giving us, as an outside news outlet, this statement. I understand that. I really don't want to downplay how surprising it is because it was surprising for us, too.

Video Clip 2 [00:19:20] But the idea that there is anything sort of sketchy or questionable about the statement is just sort of not where it is. Sorry. Tim, do you have anything you want to add?

Video Clip 2 [00:19:30] Yeah, I have a few things I want to add. First off, what I heard in that podcast. I'm sorry, it. It cost me 40 IQ points and I didn't have them to lose. I just can't believe that there would be five people having a conversation that inane. It's embarrassing to listen to. We are legally, ethically, and morally obligated to approach people about whom we're reporting for comment. And the substance of our report was about the relationship between Elder Ballard and Tim Ballard, as described in a tranche of documents that we got under a public records request. We are not just going to dump that information online without giving everybody involved every chance to give us additional information, context, clarify things, dispute things, push back, say what they want to say.

Video Clip 2 [00:20:12] That's journalism. It's very, very basic. There was no way we were going to publish that story without giving Elder Ballard every chance to comment. The official way to get to him for comment is to go to the church. We went to the church through the email address that we've communicated with Them before, which is on their website.

Video Clip 2 [00:20:32] We asked our questions, we made them aware of what we were planning to publish. We awaited a statement from them. We were surprised by the nature of the statement, but the reason they gave it to us is that this is not a matter of them proactively going out and deciding out of nowhere one day to say anything about Tim Ballard. They were asked specific, highly detailed questions about the relationship between Elder Ballard and Tim Ballard. And this is how they chose to respond. That's it. There is nothing unusual about it. This happens all the time. It is routine. It has happened with us in the church before when we've approached them for comment, where the church, institutionally or individual people in the church need to be approached for comment.

Video Clip 2 [00:21:12] And while I know that look, people aren't, not most people aren't reporters. And they're legitimate questions they're going to have. And we are happy to explain that process to anyone who asks. Really like people have just randomly emailed us about this and we're happy to talk to them about it. The reason I'm. I'm a little head up about it is that it's clear that there's become over the last few days a discourse based on a complete lack of understanding of the most basic information about how journalism works. And so everybody is talking about whether an official statement from the church that the church has confirmed is official many times to many outlets, is actually an official statement from the church.

Video Clip 2 [00:21:59] And they're not talking about the important stuff we reported in that story. And I think it's ridiculous. Now, are there other issues attached to that statement like why would it come out? Or are there different factions in the church who, you know, might be, you know, trying to, you know, might there be pro or anti Ballard factions or all things? Those are all completely legitimate subjects of discussion. I don't know that I have a ton of insight into them. What I can offer is the insight we've just given, which is that this was a completely normal and routine interaction between a media outlet and a subject of coverage.

Requests for Comment and Industry Responses

Tim Marchman [00:22:34] And that while I was surprised at some of what they said in their statement, I'm glad they engaged it rather than just saying they didn't have anything to say about it. Because the, the information in our story about, you know, the ties between the Ballards is, is really interesting and in some cases quite bizarre. It involves, among other things, according to a county investigator, a psychic medium who claims to be able to communicate with the prophet Nephi being the principal source of operational intelligence for our's overseas paramilitary missions. And according to a witness, Tim Ballard, you know, basically saying that Elder Ballard was aware of that, like that's the reason.

Tim Marchman [00:23:19] That's one of the reasons we had to ask this. We need to get reaction from, from, from Elder Ballard and from the church about that. We did. We got the statement. There's clearly been a break between the two of them. There was, you know, a statement about morally unacceptable activities. They have not clarified what morally unacceptable activities that those are. And I hope they tell us or another outlet exactly what they were referring to there because it's a, it's a heavy charge against a member of the church.

John Dehlin [00:23:48] Absolutely. You've sort of addressed this a little bit. But Paul asks, can you have them clarify how much detail they sent to the church in soliciting the comment? And I'm guessing there's going to be stuff you can't talk about, but I think that's a great question.

Anna Merlan [00:24:02] Right. So I saw another question in the chat because I am looking at it asking like why we won't show folks like the exact email the request for comment we sent to the church. So there's a couple of things there. One that is, that is work product that that is a like private communication and it contains in some instances stuff that we haven't reported, reported on yet or haven't reported on publicly. Right. So we cannot possibly put that stuff into the public view without doing the kind of fact checking and asking for comment that we have been doing by asking the church, by asking Mr.

Anna Merlan [00:24:37] Ballard and you know, the Spear Fund and his sort of personal representative for comment on these things. Right. So requests for comment are meant to help us in the production of an article. That being said, like I can tell you that both Tim and I have a pretty strong sort of ethic to not surprising the subject of our reporting when they read an article. So the church was aware because of our request for comment. We detailed everything that we were planning to report about the relationship between Elder Ballard and Tim Ballard, the claims that Tim Ballard has made throughout and what those looked like. So, so it's very detailed.

Anna Merlan [00:25:20] I wouldn't say necessarily honestly that the statement that the church gave us answered all of our questions, you know what I mean? Like they didn't answer them in enough detail as for instance Marchman is saying. I'm going to say Marchman rather than Tim because I think it gets a bit confusing between Tim Ballard and Tim Marchman and I don't want there to be any confusion there. That's good.

Anna Merlan [00:25:40] Right. So you Know, as Marchman is saying, they didn't specify to us what they meant by, you know, immoral behavior, immoral activity, whatever the specific phrasing was that they used, and I wish they had. Right. Because that is also the subject of a bunch of speculation what exactly they meant when they said, you know, immoral. So, yeah, I understand why people want as much detail as possible, but this is why we issued the full statement from the church as soon as we got it. The day after we got it. We put it up the instant we possibly could because we understood that it was newsworthy, that it was meaningful to folks within and outside the community, and that it was of, you know, strong public interest and public concern. So that's. That's what I can share.

John Dehlin [00:26:27] Yeah.

Tim Marchman [00:26:27] The only thing I'd have to add to that is it's just. It's. It's a little bewildering to be treated as if we're not providing transparency here when it is as transparent as it could possibly be. The only thing we have. We published the full statement. The questions that the Church was asked to respond to are implicit in the article because the point of reaching out to them was to make sure they were aware of reporting that, you know, a very senior figure in the Church needed to respond to you. That was based on public records. That's it. The only reason the spokesperson wasn't named was because we agreed with them not to.

Tim Marchman [00:27:02] And, you know, as Anna said, that's very, very common. And the point of that is to make clear that the statement is coming from the institution. It's not just the church. That happens all the time with big technology companies, with the offices of politicians, with manufacturers, with just every kind of institution you could name. So, yeah, there's just. There's. This is truly a case where there's no there there. And as much as I'm happy to clarify, does feel like.

John Dehlin [00:27:33] Right.

Tim Marchman [00:27:33] A lot of this is disingenuous and meant to distract from the substance of the story.

John Dehlin [00:27:37] Well, well, that's. That's what I was going to say next is. What's most frustrating for me is, you know, maybe two or three things, but one is that immediately, once, you know, Doug Anderson was revealed as the author of the statement, kind of all the conspiracy theorists, Mormons, you know, started saying that Doug Anderson was acting in a rogue way.

John Dehlin [00:28:00] It allowed them to redirect the attention away from the top leadership and say that it was Doug Anderson acting rogue, which, you know, does. Does lead to some theories that, you know, maybe the Church is going to throw Doug Anderson under the bus in some way.

John Dehlin [00:28:18] But, but what's even more frustrating for me is the fact that number one, it, it created a bunch of ambiguity. Two, like you said, it took people's attention away from the substance of the story and caused them to question the validity of the statement.

John Dehlin [00:28:36] But then number three, it, it also it, it appears as though it could have been done by design because we all know that the Mormon Church is really trying to delicately balance it's far right and it's far left.

John Dehlin [00:28:51] Obviously the far left is going to really care about sexual abuse and, and, and assault and those types of things. But the far right loves Tim Ballard and the far right loves Elder Ballard and the far right doesn't want to think that, you know, Sound of Freedom or Tim Ballard or ur have any problems. And they certainly don't want to think that we, one of their apostles is going to be publicly condemning one of their heroes. But by the church not formalizing the statement, by them keeping it ambiguous, releasing it to you and then allowing all this confusion to fester, it's almost playing into their hands.

Analyzing the Deseret News Coverage

John Dehlin [00:29:33] And so what I want to do really quickly is have y' all comment on this Deseret News article that appeared this morning. And Doug, you said that Tim, Tim, you said that your head was kind of swimming when you read this. The article released by the Desert News this morning. Tim Ballard, former CEO of Operation Underground Railroad Issues response to Church Statement and the Deseret News wrote in response to the reports first published by Vice, the church released a statement which reads in part, the church Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints never endorsed, supported or presented our Tim Ballard or any projects associated with them and clarified that once it became clear Tim Ballard had betrayed their friendship through the unauthorized use of President Ballard's name for Tim Ballard's personal advantage and activity regarding his morally unacceptable President Ballard withdrew his association.

John Dehlin [00:30:23] And to me this was the most mind blowing part of the entire article. It then added the Deseret News independently verified the legitimacy of the statement issued by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And then it provides a link to, to the full statement. Now I can tell why that blew me away. Let me have you guys go first and tell me if that blew you away.

Anna Merlan [00:30:48] I mean I was glad that they, that they confirmed independently and said in their article like they're clearly responding to the concerns of the community, you know, that the statement might not be legitimate. And I'm very glad that they did that. I suppose so, you know, that's what I would say about it. Tim, I'm sorry I cut you off.

Tim Marchman [00:31:06] No, no, no. I was just going to say exactly the same thing. I'm very glad they did. You know, one of the, one of the things I always say is you don't have to trust us, you don't have to believe us.

Tim Marchman [00:31:16] Look at the documents we're citing. Look at the statements of the subjects of our reporting that we get from them when we, you know, make them familiar with our reporting. Ask them yourselves. It's good for other outlets to independently verify information to address concerns they may be hearing from their audiences.

Tim Marchman [00:31:35] I guess the thing that made made my head explode was that it was necessary because what they were basically doing was responding to Ballard's statement and said, which he said he didn't believe that the statement was authentic, which it absolutely was. And by the time he had said that it had been verified by many, many outlets.

Tim Marchman [00:31:53] So it's, it's just kind of an unfortunate situation that's not uncommon where you have a public figure who, you know, things are reported about him. He doesn't want to discuss that and so he wants to discuss anything else. I think it speaks for itself that this is the thing Tim Ballard wants to discuss and he doesn't want to discuss. The records we obtained that show an associate of his trying to strong arm, you know, a third party into investing in what he portrayed as a for profit company that would control Ballard's various anti slavery non profits in which he claimed that Elder Ballard is a partner.

Tim Marchman [00:32:28] I don't see Tim Ballard wanting to have a detailed discussion of that topic or why an associate of his would have been doing that or why, you know, there would be detailed records related to that in files from a joint criminal investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Davis County Attorney's Office. That is the sort of thing we're talking about here. He can talk about the legitimacy of the statement or you know, issue basically fan fiction about the church's PR office all he wants, and I encourage him if that's what he wants to do. But I think there are more substantive matters to discuss.

John Dehlin [00:33:05] Well, you know, I think Mormons when they're looking for an official statement that sort of has been approved by the highest up leaders of the church, I think they expect that statement to come from Mormon newsroom. And I think many of us feel like this is a big enough and a significant enough story that it warrants that level of, of, of attention. And so people are just asking, is the Mormon Church trying to play Games here, which you may or may not know it sometimes tends to do where it's very controlled about where it sends a message, where it doesn't. Oftentimes it wants to make statements that placate the public or it's left.

John Dehlin [00:33:46] But it doesn't want the broad general membership to know that it made any statement. And so it's very careful when, where it delivers a message so that the, let's say, the critical mass of orthodox and believing members don't ever learn about it. And so I know you guys can't speculate, but do you have any thoughts on why the church hasn't released a statement or a statement like it, or even a stronger one through the church newsroom? Because that would eliminate all doubt. And if you have any thoughts about whether it's playing games here in terms of how it's trying to control who hears about this story, I mean, we

Anna Merlan [00:34:24] can't possibly speculate about what the Mormon Church is or is not doing. You know, as far as we're concerned, we asked for a statement and they gave us one. I understand that it's surprising. I understand that it's unprecedented. I understand that, you know, generally the church doesn't speak this directly about a member, but that is quite simply what happened. You know, I see somebody in the chat asking, you know, what about these, these for profit companies, you know, and at the bottom of the story where we talked about this church denunciation, this church statement, you know, we talk about this convoluted scheme that was proposed to have this entity called slave stealers, which would have been a for profit company, control these various nonprofits, including O.

Anna Merlan [00:35:13] So, you know, if you're curious about that, you can look, look at our reporting. You can look at this sort of whiteboard drawing that we have published a couple of times ourselves. And then Lynn Packer has also published in his reporting that, you know, Tim Ballard is said to have drawn during a meeting a few years ago to show the ways that he envisioned these for profit and nonprofit entities being connected and linked back to sort of him personally. Like for us, the, as Tim was saying, the kind of like scuttlebutt about how this statement happened and why it happened really draws attention away from the kind of nature of this reporting.

Anna Merlan [00:35:48] That said, I understand why this is confusing for people. You know, as Tim said, we have been doing a lot of engaging on Twitter when people email us, just trying to explain as straightforwardly as we can, because in the gap, in the absence, when we don't try to make clear how good journalism works and how asking for comment works. We have people like the podcast hosts that you referred to earlier, who are just making stuff up, just saying wild things, you know, claiming that VICE would publish a false statement from the church, maybe because we're not subject to defamation laws. Like, please, this is crazy stuff.

Anna Merlan [00:36:31] This is really, as Tim said, this is fan fiction. This is. Is outer space, and this is just not linked to observable reality as we know it and can prove.

John Dehlin [00:36:42] Yeah, and I've asked you this before, but unfortunately, you're. You're the ones doing the great reporting on this. But the way that. The way that your reports are often being discussed and received in the faithful orthodox believing Mormon community is that VICE news reporters are anti Mormon and probably pedophiles. And so I'm frustrated because I think y'.

Anna Merlan [00:37:04] All.

John Dehlin [00:37:05] Y' all are doing great job. I think everyone's media outlets all over the world are quoting, you know, your reporting. And yet within my community, y' all are being dismissed as anti Mormons and as pedophiles. It's probably not even necessary for you to ingratiate or dignify those accusations. But do you. Do you want to say anything about that? Because it is the predominant. It is the predominant response by faithful believing Mormons.

Tim Marchman [00:37:36] Yeah. I mean, it's. In some ways, it feels almost beneath our dignity to even have to say, but neither of us are pedophiles. Neither of us harbor any animus towards Mormons or towards the church. And further, you know, I would add, Anna is Jewish. I'm Catholic. You know, we are members of religions and religious traditions that are often stigmatized. You know, I don't want to say that Catholics are hiding in the streets as people come to get us or anything like that, but are often portrayed as, you know, agents of a foreign power or other strange things historically.

John Dehlin [00:38:14] And.

Tim Marchman [00:38:14] And that kind of bias, you know, predominates today. And so, you know, it's just ridiculous, and we can say that it's not true. And further, that we're extremely aware in our reporting that we are, you know, among other things, reporting on a faith that is not ours and that we don't have, you know, the kind of visceral familiarity with that we. We may have with our own. And so we try to be careful and respectful to talk to people who know a lot more about us to make sure that we're contextualizing things accurately and to, you know, to own up when. When we get things wrong.

Tim Marchman [00:38:48] That's fine. We welcome that pushback. We welcome. When. When people say, you know, we're phrasing things in a way they don't like, or we're missing this bit of context. And, and that happens a lot, you know, in. In all kinds of reporting. You. You can't be an absolute expert on anything. But I really think that, you know, our. Our reporting speaks for itself. And, you know, to. To the extent that anyone does need to hear that, we are. We are not anti Mormons, we are not pedophiles. We are not pro pedophiles.

John Dehlin [00:39:20] Okay?

Tim Marchman [00:39:21] We're just reporting the facts as accurately and as. With as much nuance as we're capable of respond.

John Dehlin [00:39:30] I'll just say macro Grams writes. Thank you, Tim and Anna. We need reporting from anyone who will do it responsibly. Go ahead, Anna.

Anna Merlan [00:39:37] Thank you. I mean, I don't know what Tim is talking about. About being members of stigmatized religions. Obviously, everyone loves the Jews. We're doing great. We've had a great, great run. Sorry, that's. That is a joke.

John Dehlin [00:39:52] Yeah.

Anna Merlan [00:39:52] But, yeah, I think, unfortunately, this is something that has started to become more common. I write a lot about conspiracy theories and conspiratorial thinking, and this is unfortunately, like, an aspect of doing that. If you write about certain people who are not being truthful or not, you know, sort of presenting the full truth to the public, you very predictably get accused of being a pedophile. This used to be an accusation that was, like, beyond the pale. This was something that would have been incredibly surprising to hear or be accused of. And now it is. It is something that is very casually thrown at us on Twitter.

Anna Merlan [00:40:36] And again, I want to kind of walk people back in terms of understanding, like, how serious this crime is and how serious it is to call someone that. To accuse someone of that. It is really like, I want people to be discerning with their words.

Anna Merlan [00:40:52] But that being said, like, I understand that in some cases this is just folks lashing out. This is a confusing situation. This involves criticism of a person and a group that they, you know, perhaps have really respected for a long time. And so I understand that.

Anna Merlan [00:41:10] That this is just hard for them and that in some cases, people are just going to jump to a kind of conspiratorial explanation for what's going on. And there's not a lot we can do about that. We can only hope that we can reach the folks who are in currently a frame of mind to be a little bit more discerning and to look at the facts as we actually have them.

Tim Ballard Denies All Allegations

John Dehlin [00:41:32] Well, speaking of people with a discerning frame of mind. Let's jump to Tim Ballard's response to your articles. This is going to be super short, but I'm going to play what Tim has to say about your reporting.

Tim Marchman [00:41:49] You heard that?

Anna Merlan [00:41:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:51] It's not true. Nothing's. Nothing in here is true, Leo. So there. There it is. Nothing in there is true. And Leo confirms it. Yeah, I wish.

Tim Marchman [00:42:06] I wish what we had to report wasn't true. And that's something when we have uncomfortable or sensitive accusations to put to somebody that we're always hoping is that there's some piece of context missing. I've certainly had that happen in my career. I know Anna has as well, where you. You think you have a story, you go to somebody for comment or response, and they say you're misreading a document, or here's this other piece of information that contradicts that, or, you know, oh, I can. I know who told you that, and it's true. But if you have this other piece of information, you'll see it doesn't look that bad.

Tim Marchman [00:42:38] What happens is you end up changing the story or not publishing it. Like, I love when there's a contentious story or story that would present unflattering information about somebody, if, you know, they just come back and say that's not true. Like, how can I work with you to show you that the information you have is wrong or needs more context.

Tim Marchman [00:42:55] That's what we want. We want to publish accurate information. So this kind of blanket statement that nothing you hear is true, the unfortunate thing about that is that it is true. We have evidence showing it, and Mr. Ballard is made aware of the questions we have, as he will be with future stories, precisely because we actively want exactly the kind of information I'm talking about that would show us we're taking something out of context, that we're lacking a crucial bit of information, or, you know, that our sources are wrong, that our sources have an agenda. You know, anything like that that would get us further to the truth, we'd be happy to take from him.

John Dehlin [00:43:33] He.

Tim Marchman [00:43:33] He simply hasn't done so yet. We hope he participates in the process with future stories in a substantive way that'll, you know, show, show us we're off if we have something unflattering to say about him. But I, you know, we. We've been reporting on him for a number of years, and I think it's more likely that he'll take a blanket approach of nothing you hear is true, no matter how evident how much evidence There is to the contrary that we present. And, you know, I'm sure he has some supporters who, they'll just take his word on that and not pay too close attention to the evidence we're presenting. And there's not too much you can do about that. We can't make him engage in, in the process. He has a right to not do so and then to give a speech in Boston saying mean things about us. I mean, it's fine.

John Dehlin [00:44:20] Yeah. I mean, I've been trying to think about a hashtag like Mormon Trump or something. There's this, there's this idea and you know, people hate. I don't like to get political. I don't like to bring politics into this stuff. But there's this dynamic where when someone's accused of something, they say it's all false. I'm great and I don't care what the evidence is, whether it's, you know, you know, a really good example of that is, you know, the election denying that's going on. And it almost, to me, it just almost feels like Tim Ballard is bringing that approach here to Utah. And, and it's a little bit disturbing.

John Dehlin [00:45:04] We're definitely going to get to the ballot. The M. Russell Ballard business connections with Tim. Before we get there, I wanted to quickly just talk about the investigation. There was a, a local news reporting that came out last night from ABC4 News that was entitled Nothing Will Change My Core Beliefs. Tim Ballard issue statement Calling LDS denunciation alleged. And I just want to play that clip really quick and have y' all respond to it.

▶ Video Clip 3

Video Clip 3 [00:45:34] And now we begin tonight with an update on the Tim Ballard story regarding his affiliation with the Church of Jesus

Video Clip 3 [00:45:41] Christ of Latter Day Saints and his former employer, Operation Underground Railroad. ABC has received a new, new statement tonight from Ballard. Now, we verified that it indeed came from Ballard by his email address, ABC4. Sarah writer joins us live in studio to break down his new response.

Video Clip 3 [00:45:59] Tim Ballard, the former CEO of nonprofit anti sex trafficking organization Operation Underground Railroad, issuing a response to recent allegations regarding the Church of Jesus Christ at Lary Saints calling his activities morally unacceptable. This week, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints released a statement denying their association with the former CEO of Operation Underground Railroad, Tim Ballard. This comes after Ballard claims that he and church leader M. Russell Ballard were close friends and counseled with each other regarding operations of Underground Railroad missions. The church denied Ballard's claims in this statement issued Friday, saying they never endorsed, supported or represented Tim Ballard or any project associated with him.

Video Clip 3 [00:46:41] They also say Tim Ballard betrayed and Russell Ballard's friendship and use his name for his own financial and personal interests. Monday night, Ballard released a lengthy statement of his own through his new anti trafficking organization, the Spear Fund, where he says evil pedophiles will stop at nothing and they have allies in government, in the media and big corporations and even in public institutions. They continue to lie and attempt to destroy my goodness name and defame my character and they never stop. Ballard then goes on to say the church never affirmed their statement about him, writing it has been alleged that an LDS Church spokesperson issued a statement about me through a tabloid that is often hostile to people of faith.

Video Clip 3 [00:47:19] My church has not publicly verified the statement's authenticity. We did reach out to the Sphere Fund for additional comment but have not heard back. We also reached out to the church and have not heard back either. We will keep a close eye on this story and bring you the latest developments. Sarah.

John Dehlin [00:47:35] So a couple things are interesting to me about that story. The first is that he's saying anyone who criticizes him or disagrees with him is a pedophile. That's that type of Trumpian defense which is just smear everybody. Nobody has anything legitimate to say and I'll destroy you if you criticize me. And I just think that's problematic, putting politics aside, just that tactic. But the second is he is basically challenging the Mormon Church and he's saying, hey Mormon Church, you didn't really make that statement.

John Dehlin [00:48:07] I'm going to continue to foster uncertainty and doubt. And it seems like what he's doing is trying to force the church's hand to really either cause them to recede into ambiguity so that he can continue the narrative amongst his believing followers that the church really had nothing to do with it. Sort of this deep state sort of ideology. Now inserting that into the Mormon Church almost.

John Dehlin [00:48:34] Yeah. But also it seems like he's kind of almost taunting the Mormon Church to come at him with more overt and you know, hardcore statements that are explicitly against him. What do you, what do you all think about that?

Tim Marchman [00:48:51] I think it's a little bit odd just because we know it was an official church statement. And so if what he is trying to do is get a more fulsome version of that statement from the church, maybe there's a way to go about it. I don't, I don't really understand it. I, I am confident that the statement we were given by a church church spokesperson in response to the questions we asked about the relationship between the two Ballards accurately represented the church and I presume accurately Represented what Elder Ballard would. Would have to say. I don't, I don't know if Tim Ballard wants him to get in front of a camera and say the same thing.

Tim Marchman [00:49:32] Maybe that is what he wants. If that's what he wants, it's a good way to go about it, I would think. Or maybe everything will just muddle along and there will be continued discussion of whether or not an official statement was an official statement. And, you know, nobody will talk about the substance of underlying allegations here. And, you know, I think we can put two and two together on who that benefits most

John Dehlin [00:49:54] and anything you want to add to that.

Anna Merlan [00:49:59] I'm sorry, I've actually been a bit distracted for the moment because it looks like Mr. Ballard just issued a new statement in response to our reporting. It's dated from yesterday, but I want to read it. Yeah, so. And I'm just adding it as we speak to our article about the sexual misconduct allegations because that is how I do my job. I have immediately updated our story and I'm going to send out a new tweet to clarify that he has responded to these allegations. So what? It's.

John Dehlin [00:50:27] Where's the statement? Where's the statement?

Anna Merlan [00:50:29] It's on the. So the Spear Fund, the new organization that Mr. Ballard says he is a senior advisor of. We believe this to just be his new organization. We don't know who else is involved with it. So in the SPEAR Funds press room, he's issued two statements. Now, the first was the one that we've just been discussing affirming his commitment to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and sort of indicating that he doesn't believe the statement from the church to be necessarily legitimate.

Anna Merlan [00:51:00] The second one is, yeah, Tim Ballard issued statement debunking baseless sexual allegations. And it reads, as with all of the assaults on my character and integrity over many years, the latest tabloid driven sexual allegations are false. They are baseless inventions designed to destroy me in the movement we have built to end the trafficking and exploitation of vulnerable children. During my time at our, I designed strict guidelines for myself and our operators in the field. Sexual contact was prohibited and I led by example. Given our meticulous attention to this issue, any suggestion of inappropriate sexual contact. Contact is categorically false. The SPEAR Fund strongly encourages journalists to watch this recent episode of the highly respected Marisol Nichols podcast, which offers specific context around the child rescue operations process.

Anna Merlan [00:51:48] I believe Marisol Nichols and I will correct myself if I'm wrong. I believe she went on submissions. I could be wrong. Anyway, excuse me. I'm just going to very quickly hit save on this update. Oh, wait, I already have. Sorry. I just as soon as we get something like this, it's very, very important to us to update right away. And of course, we didn't receive it. I just saw it because I've been checking the Spear Fund website because it's very important us to have responses to allegations that are this serious. So, yeah, that's, that's his response.

Details of the Sexual Misconduct Allegations

John Dehlin [00:52:22] Okay, well, I definitely wanted, I, I definitely am going to get to the sexual allegations. I wonder if we should just jump to that now since, since that statement came out. So let me just go ahead and jump to that and then we'll go back in time. You know, the article you wrote was Tim Ballard's departure from Operation Underground Railroad followed sexual misconduct investigation. I, I, the questions I was going to ask is can you describe to the audience what Tim Ballard was doing with women as an undercover agent? You know, what did the women report? Let's start there.

Anna Merlan [00:53:04] Tim, would you mind taking that?

Tim Marchman [00:53:06] No, I can take that. So what we've reported is that according to many sources who are directly, you know, familiar with the organization, that Ballard invited women to act as his wife on undercover overseas missions. He allegedly coerced these women into sharing a bed or showering together.

Tim Marchman [00:53:31] He's said to have sent at least one woman a photo of himself in his underwear and to have asked another how far she was willing to go, in the words of a source, to save children. Also, that the seven women our sources tell us were at the center of this investigation were employees. There are other women with whom he's alleged to have behaved this way. We're aware of him.

Tim Marchman [00:53:56] We're aware of a source close to? Oor with detailed knowledge of him using the same methods to make advances to one volunteer. And he's spoken to another volunteer who said that his conduct was consistent with. His conduct towards her was consistent with the alleged methods used with other women. So the reason I'm basically reading from our article there and being picky. I just want to be very careful what we're describing.

Tim Marchman [00:54:22] We're, we're not alleging, we're actually not alleging inappropriate sexual contact, which is what his statement denies. We're saying that he made, according to our sources, advances to women, saying that they, you know, women needed to, to shower or sleep in the same bed with them as part of, a, part of a way to fool traffickers

John Dehlin [00:54:49] who,

Tim Marchman [00:54:49] who would otherwise perhaps not believe that these women were his wife. So one thing that we mentioned briefly in the article, and I really want to stress right here is that we've spoken to many law enforcement officials who work in anti trafficking, federal, international, ngo, local.

Tim Marchman [00:55:08] I shouldn't say NGO because then by definition they're not, you know, attached to government. But people are doing this work under the COVID cover of law and universally to a person. And we were talking about people who, who do similar work to that Ballard says he does in a private capacity for the government going into South American countries, going undercover, meeting child sex traffickers, gathering evidence against them.

Tim Marchman [00:55:34] They insist this is simply and strictly not necessary. They, they think it's absurd really to, to claim that this sort of thing would be. So we, we first became aware of this a number of months ago. These allegations and the allegations that he had left departing an investigation and one of the key bits of evidence there was an anonymous letter written by whistleblowers that's been circulating in the Utah philanthropic community for months that says and give me one second here because I want to directly quote for it from it.

Tim Marchman [00:56:13] Several weeks ago an our employee who accompanied Tim on an undercover operation filed sexual harassment complaint against him with our's HR department. This resulted in an external extensive internal investigation into Tim and his individual operational tactics and led to more women speaking up as part of the investigation process. It was ultimately revealed this is again according to this letter through disturbingly specific and parallel accounts that Tim has been deceitfully and extensively grooming and manipulating multiple women for the past few years with the ultimate intent of coercing them to participate in sexual acts with him under the premise of going where it takes and doing whatever it takes to save a child.

Tim Marchman [00:56:53] So our reporting has been focused on independently corroborating that and we published yesterday because we were confident that we have, we have many, many, many sources with knowledge of the situation who know these women who you know are or have been at our who corroborated this but were not willing to use their name because they fear retaliation. They fear, you know, retaliation from Mr. Ballard, from members of the public, fans of his. They are concerned about their privacy is, is what we're repeatedly told. But we have many sources who you know were able to corroborate the information in that letter. And so what we did was we approached Ballard know you are and we approached our not just through their PR shop but through their lawyers.

Tim Marchman [00:57:46] We asked them, you know, very strongly to tell us if we were wrong here. And we did not get anything to that effect. I think it's, I think it's fair to say in some cases we, we didn't hear back.

Tim Marchman [00:58:01] In other cases we, you know, we're putting a little bit of an awkward reporting position. As we mentioned in the story, when we initially shared that whistleblower letter with our in July, we got a non substantive response to it, including the questions about whether it was true. So we just, you know, said we're kind of confused here. We can only take a non response here. No kind of substantive engagement with even the question of whether this is accurate as a confirmation of it. How, how can, how can we read that?

Tim Marchman [00:58:35] And we got no response to that even though we provided secure means of contact. So that if the person we were speaking to, an official ou representative, felt that they couldn't discuss it because of a non disclosure agreement or other agreement, that they could communicate through a back channel to us without worrying that they'd get in trouble for even discussing the matter, that it wasn't true. So we've reported on this very carefully, very diligently, very thoroughly and we're confident or we're confident in the accuracy of our reporting. Oh, you are provided the statement that we reproduce in the story which among other things says to preserve the integrity of its investigation and to protect the privacy of all persons involved, our will not make further public comment at this time.

Tim Marchman [00:59:20] So that's, that's as you have it, they, they say that there was an investigation and that they can't get get into it to protect the privacy of the people involved. And that's a completely fair thing to say. But if there was not an investigation, the thing they would have said is there is not an investigation. You have this wrong and you know, let's talk about this because we don't want you to publish inaccurate information about us. They didn't do that. It's, you know, we understand and respect, you know, Mr. Ballard has now issued a statement and has appended it to our story. If he has more comment, our line is open. We want to discuss this. But there's a lot of evidence here, a lot of evidence.

Anna Merlan [01:00:01] We also, just to be super clear, we've worked really hard to reach out directly to Mr. Ballard. I mean for years at this point, first through our, but now through a person who's been identified to us as his sort of personal spokesman through his personal website, through the Spear Funds website. We have made pretty strenuous efforts to reach out to him and we'll continue to do that, as Tim has said, for every story. Like he obviously knows that we are seeking his comment. So I'm really glad that he put out a statement of some kind. But you know, I think maybe there's sort of an implication here that we didn't, that we didn't seek his comment or try to run these allegations I by him. And that couldn't be further from the truth.

John Dehlin [01:00:49] Yeah, like, you know, and I know you're going to anticipate this but, but really quickly I'll just play kind of the, the instinctive believer, Mormon believer response. William Stout writes, there's no doubt this is an effort to smear a good man. Super easy to throw him under the bus. I, you know, on the one hand I know that fake accusations are rare, generally speaking, but, but fake allegations do exist. So what, you know, what can you guys say about that? Knowing that it's sensitive to not believe victims or people who claim to be victims.

Anna Merlan [01:01:27] I'm sort of confused by the implication that we don't have enough to do and would need to spend our time baselessly smearing an innocent man for no reason. Like again, I think sometimes when you're within this community it can be maybe difficult to remember that this is not a huge, huge story or a huge personality or a huge group for other people outside the community. The fact is that we didn't know a lot about OU ARE before we started reporting on them three years ago. And you know, if we had wanted to baselessly say smear someone and accuse them falsely of sexual misconduct, you know, why would we take three years to do it?

Anna Merlan [01:02:10] I mean, the fact is, and again, I realize this doesn't, this doesn't appeal to the part of folks who want to believe in conspiracy theories or collusion or something. But the fact is that we have reported on the facts when we get them as carefully and responsibly as we can.

Anna Merlan [01:02:31] And as Tim said, we did not initially report on the sexual misconduct allegations in this anonymous letter until we were comfortable corroborating them. So the idea that we have just baselessly jumped to smear someone is untrue. And the reason why we have devoted so much reporting to our and to Mr. Ballard is they are a cornerstone of the faith based anti trafficking world. This is an organization that brings in an enormous amount of money that has links not just to the sort of LDS power structure, but to the political power structure. In Utah, Mr. Ballard served on a task force under President Trump. You know, he has gone to the White House to introduce a trafficking survivor to Ivanka Trump.

Anna Merlan [01:03:18] This is somebody who has had a large and measurable impact on the anti Trafficking world. So if there are allegations of misconduct or impropriety, if there are allegations of, you know, other kinds that we will report on in the future, that is a matter of public interest and public concern. Also, it is not just us reporting on these allegations. It is, you know, many news outlets throughout Utah, the Tribune Desert News, which is, I understand it is owned by the Truth Church.

Anna Merlan [01:03:51] There is simply no doubt that this, that this is news. But I have reported on sexual misconduct for a very long time. And pretty much every time you report on accusations against a powerful person, immediately the idea or the accusation comes out that you are only trying to smear them because the work that they are doing, it is the. One of the most predictable responses as there could possibly be. I understand why that's why people think, but it's simply not always true.

John Dehlin [01:04:25] Yeah, Paul's giving another comment that's relevant. I'm not a fan of using minutes to respond to someone who's clearly trolling or not actually looking at evidence critically. But, Tim, I do want to give you a chance to respond as well.

Tim Marchman [01:04:40] I don't have any, any, anything more to add there than what Anna said, but I, you know, we're happy to respond to even points that we think might be made in bad faith here. I hope no one's too put off on that because we know that there are lots of people out there making those and we want to put our responses to those on record.

John Dehlin [01:05:00] Well, then going to some other sort of apologetic responses, you know, in, in, in Tim Ballard's statement that you just read, you know, he says the SPEAR Fund strongly encourages journalists to watch this recent episode of the highly respected Marisol Nichols podcast, which offers specific context around the child rescue operation process. You guys have referred to this, but this is kind of the next defense is that they're doing hard work, they're saving children, and, and you know, Tim really needed to bring lots of hot wives along, you know, to be able to fool those bad guys. Now, there is a comment by a friend of mine, Radio Free Mormon. He made the point per Radio Free Mormon yesterday. Why on earth would some guy supposedly posing as a John, or I would add, looking to have sex with young girls or children, take a wife along his cover. That's absurd. That's a point.

Tim Marchman [01:06:05] That's a really, that's a really great question.

Anna Merlan [01:06:09] I'm sorry, I don't even want to vaguely smile or laugh because this is so serious and the allegations involved here are so, so, so serious. But at the same time, what, huh? Like this is a very. This is a very strange set of claims to make. But yes, I think. And actually listening to that podcast that you sent us earlier was very helpful because it was a very interesting look at what I expect might be the next sort of series of responses here, which is that, you know, this was necessary or some conduct along this. These lines was necessary to, to rescue children. And while folks are welcome to, you know, look at those statements and evaluate them however they see fit and, you know, use your own kind of discernment, the fact still remains that O ur and Tim Ballard, they're not acting under the color of law.

Anna Merlan [01:07:04] As Tim said, they are not police officers. They are not FBI agents. This is a private organization doing this work. And so if they are saying that they had to do something that the rest of us might consider to be immoral while undercover, like, I, I just would. I also assess that. Anyway, go ahead. Yeah, yeah.

Tim Marchman [01:07:25] I don't want to get. I don't want to get too much into opinion territory, but I will say I find it pretty insulting to the women who, who have made these allegations, according to our understanding, to say that they couldn't understand the distinction between coercion and being asked to do something that might be uncomfortable.

Tim Marchman [01:07:44] We have talked to many people who have gone on these missions with our. And men and women. I think everyone we've talked to one of them understood there might. They might be. They, they. They might be put in or asked to be in situations that they might find uncomfortable. For instance, one thing that we've reported on before, and it's come up a lot, is that during some trainings for undercover, our operators, you know, people who are religious, are told and ask questions about what do I do if I'm in a bar and I'm in a situation where I have. Have to, you know, drink to. To. To play the role I'm playing.

John Dehlin [01:08:22] Right.

Tim Marchman [01:08:22] And they'll be given advice on that. Some people, you know, some people are told, hey, you know, you're. It's okay for you to take a sip of alcohol in certain circumstances. Some other people who are very uncomfortable that are told, you know, you don't have to do that. There are ways to work around that. There are, you know, there have been questions that have come up about like, what if I'm around a gay person and I'm not comfortable. Comfortable being around them as part of an operation. Right.

Tim Marchman [01:08:49] These are intelligent. They're able to, you know, they're able to understand what it, what it is to be told. You know, you might have to do something that you're not comfortable with. If we want this to be successful, that's your. That's your choice to make it. This is what you would have to do. If you don't want to do it, it's fine. And feeling manipulated or coworks, which our understanding is the, you know, the allegations of play here, those are very different things. And I think conflating them is really unfair to anybody who would be participating, you know, in these, in these jumps,

John Dehlin [01:09:22] in addition to everything we've already said, I'm. I'm just wondering why in the world Tim Ballard would need to get in a shower with a woman? Is he thinking that, like, the bad guys have cameras in his private suite and that. That they need to really, really sell that they're married because they're being watched even in the bathroom and even in. In the bed? Why are they in bed together? They could clearly sleep in separate beds. So, I mean, that part of the story doesn't make sense to me unless I'm misunderstanding the reporting.

Anna Merlan [01:09:54] We are trying very hard to get more detail on why this would have been necessary, what the rationale would have been if these acts took place as they have been described in these allegations. These are the kinds of things that we are looking into, and these are the kinds of reasons why we put very detailed comments to Mr. Ballard and his representatives a long time ago. If there is additional context here that we need to understand, we want to understand it. We. But, you know, as Tim is pointing out, the idea that women who would be going on these missions would not understand what was going on or would misconstrue something that was done, you know, in the line of duty.

Anna Merlan [01:10:40] Not that. Not that that applies here, because these are not, again, like law enforcement agents. You know, again, sort of suggests that if there are women making accusations, that they are making accusations because they didn't understand what they were part of which is sort of a strange.

Anna Merlan [01:10:59] A strange logical line to try to draw. But, you know, we're very interested to hear any additional context that there could possibly be to explain this situation. So that's what we've been trying to do, and that's what we'll continue to do.

John Dehlin [01:11:12] And just to be clear, neither of you are. Had actually spoken with any of the alleged victims or the women, Is that correct?

Anna Merlan [01:11:20] No, we have not. And so our strong desire was to try to hold this reporting until we had talked to these women, as many of them as possible, and really, really understand what happened here. And we began to understand that might be more difficult than we imagined, and that there are significant fears of being mocked, disbelieved, blamed, explained, excoriated in public if they come forward. So it is still our hope that we will be able to talk to these women, and I believe. I believe that it will be possible. But for now, we have spoken to people close to the situation who've been able to tell us a great deal about it. And, you know, we're hoping to add as much into this as the public conversation as we can and as is appropriate as soon as we can do it.

Why Women May Fear Speaking Out

John Dehlin [01:12:10] Is there any indication that Tim Ballard has methods that would make these women feel particularly afraid to speak up? So there's the Mormon cultural tendency to not believe victims, to not believe women, to dismiss those types of things as false allegations if they love the person who's being accused. But does Tim Ballard have any tactics to keep people silent that are worth noting here that you're aware of?

Tim Marchman [01:12:40] We don't want to go past our. We don't want to go past anything we've reported, but I think it's fair to note, as someone who, like Anna, has reported a lot on sexual misconduct in various contexts and. But especially in institutional settings and is familiar with generally, you know, many of the reasons why women don't want to come forward, that he's an extremely prominent person with an extremely, you know, loyal fan base. He's someone who's close to the Utah attorney general and other power brokers in the state. He's someone who, as we've reported, has, you know, according to records from criminal investigations, very much traded on his.

Tim Marchman [01:13:22] His closeness to powerful, you know, a powerful figure in the church. And he's somebody who is associated with a movie that's made a great deal of money and really sparked a lot of conversation over this year. So you put those all. All together, and I think that that itself explains why. Why women would be hesitant to speak out. Especially when you add that, as we reported, our understanding is that there were agreements made between our and Ballard as to the discussion of the circumstances exit that may also be in play.

John Dehlin [01:14:02] Okay, well. Which would be a normal.

Tim Marchman [01:14:05] Which would be a normal thing in the exit of any prominent person from a powerful organization that they had founded, you would. You would expect that there would be agreements governing what the parties could say about each other.

John Dehlin [01:14:16] Got it. I had someone ask me whether there's going to be a criminal investigation involving these alleged victims, and I'm guessing you guys just wouldn't know the answer to that question.

Documents from the Criminal Investigation

Anna Merlan [01:14:27] I mean, what we have, the documents that we are drawing from are from the now closed criminal investigation between, you know, Davis county, the FBI, possibly other agencies. And, you know, as we said, that investigation is closed. We have no idea because it's not reflected in the documents that we got about whether or not any alleged sexual misconduct by anybody in the organization, whether Mr. Ballard or otherwise, is, you know, was part of the scope of the investigation or not. So I really don't know. And I think there are rumors flying all over Utah right now about what may or may not be taking place on the law enforcement front.

Anna Merlan [01:15:10] And I would just say, like, if anybody tells you that they know for sure what's happening, they just don't. That's just not how it works. So, you know, to our knowledge, we have no indication that there's any kind of criminal investigation going on here.

John Dehlin [01:15:24] Well, one, one, one interesting wrinkle to the story that I. I think you guys may not want to comment on, but I'll. I'll give you the shot. I'm hearing it reported through multiple sources, very close to this story that Tim Ballard invoked M. Russell Ballard's name as approving these sort of sexual techniques or justifications to Tim's alleged victims. In other words, Tim Ballard would tell these women that elder M. Russell Ballard was his homie, that they were buds, that M. Russell Ballard cares about children, too, and that in some way M. Russell Ballard has approved these methods of Tim Ballard sleeping with, fondling, groping and or showering with these women, and that they should feel like there's an apostolic approval from M.

John Dehlin [01:16:21] Russell Ballard for these activities. And so when you have this reporting that M. Russell Ballard is super upset that his name was invoked, everybody's like, what's the immoral behavior? And what pissed M. Russell Ballard off so much that he. That he did something so outrageous as to publicly condemn someone that was effectively his grandson publicly without the bishop or the stake president being involved. So reactionary the allegation is, it's because Tim Ballard is on record as saying it was M. Russell Ballard who approved these techniques. So I wanted to at least state that because I have insider sources very high up in the Utah political networks that are all reporting this to me.

John Dehlin [01:17:11] And so I think it's at least worth mentioning as a possible explanation for the church attacking Tim Ballard and M. Russell Ballard withdrawing what was a very close relationship. And Tim, do you want to not comment on that?

Anna Merlan [01:17:28] I mean, I want to be clear that this is, this is a rumor. This is not something that we have done reporting on this is not something that we can respond to either way. Tim, do you want to say anything else about that?

Tim Marchman [01:17:38] No, I just, I just want to say that our. What we've reported is what we're comfortable reporting. And so anything that goes beyond the bounds of what we have printed on vice.com when it comes to factual claims is just not something we can really say anything about either, either way. But I will say that we have repeatedly asked the church to specify what the morally unacceptable activity that was mentioned in the statement was. And one reason we've done that is specifically because I think making a statement like that is something that is likely to encourage a lot of speculation.

Tim Marchman [01:18:21] And so I, you know, we have, we have made this case and I think it would be good for them to insofar far as they can specify what the morally unacceptable activity is. But I also understand there are many, many, many reasons why they may not be able to do so or may not want to do so. And you know, they're, they're aware that we, and I'm sure many other media outlets would, would like them to do so and you know, hopefully, hopefully they, they will be a little bit more specific about what they were describing so that speculation could. Can cease and you know, discussion about agreed upon facts can, can, can go forward.

Anna Merlan [01:18:57] Okay, I also just really quickly I want to clarify something I said previously to make sure it's absolutely clear and accurate. So we're, we're working with two sets of documents here. One is the public records that we have been reporting on.

Anna Merlan [01:19:10] You know, that include for instance the, the Paul Hutchinson allegations that we reported on today. The other entirely separate document is this anonymous letter circulating that is talking about the sexual misconduct allegations against Mr. Ballard and the ways that they are alleging that the ou. Our board responded. So those things are separate. The anonymous letter is in no way, as far as we know related to the now closed Davis county investigation into our. So just to be super, super, super clear, we have no indication that the sexual misconduct allegations were contained within the Davis county investigation. The documents that we got do not indicate that. The anonymous letter we got elsewhere and has also been reproduced in full by and Packer. So folks have it.

Tim Marchman [01:19:57] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:19:59] Okay. Well that and and Tim, I promise we're going to get to the em Russell Ballard business connections with Tim Ballard. But since we're on the topic of sort of sexual impropriety and undercover work, let's go ahead and jump quickly to the article that was released today. Sound of Freedom producer felt the naked Breasts of apparently underage trafficking victim. Here's just a little summary that I have. Someone sent me what I believe is a picture of Paul Hutchinson. Does that look right to you, Anna and Tim?

Paul Hutchinson and Recorded Misconduct

Tim Marchman [01:20:32] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:20:33] Okay, so there's a picture of Paul Hutchinson with, I don't know if those are daughters or a wife and a daughter or two, I don't know, two wives.

Anna Merlan [01:20:42] I don't believe a seated woman is his wife. I don't know who the standing woman is.

John Dehlin [01:20:47] Okay. All right, so that's Paul Hutchinson from his website. This is interesting. It says Paul Hutchinson continues to build relationships with some of the greatest investors and influencers throughout the world. It goes on to say he has donated time and money to countless charity organizations with a particular focus on helping eradicate child trafficking. He counts men like Tony Robbins, Glenn Beck, the Trump family coach, Mike Tomlin, Sean Reyes, and Tim Ballard among his close network of friends. His passion for making a difference is an inspiration to all who know him. The. The main allegation I've just got, I'll read directly from your article and you, you guys can add, you know, whatever it is you want to add to it. But basically. Well, let me just start. Do you guys want to describe what Paul Hutchinson, you know, was doing according to your reporting?

Tim Marchman [01:21:46] Yeah, I'll take that one. So first off, I want to make clear that I don't even know if allegation would be the right way to describe this. Hutchinson has, you know, confirmed that it happened. And the documents we based our reporting off of are a detailed description, including lengthy verbatim transcripts of audio, as well as descriptions of what is seen on video by a Davis county investigator. So basically, a Davis county investigator obtained footage of the filming of an our mission in 2016 that according to a note in the investigative file our believed to have been destroyed and wrote descriptions of it as part of the criminal inquiry.

Tim Marchman [01:22:32] So we have those detailed descriptions. We asked about what happened in them. Hutchinson confirmed they happened. The point of contention is that throughout the documents it's made clear that the girl in question appeared to be 16 and was believed by Hutchinson and others around him to be 16 and was described by an alleged trafficker to be 16.

Tim Marchman [01:23:00] He says that she was in fact 18 and that he had which he discovered after the incident I'm about to describe, and that he has an affidavit from the Mexican federal police backing this. We've asked him several times over the last few weeks to provide us with a copy of that affidavit, and he hasn't Done. So if he, if he does, just as we attached Ballard's statement to our, to a report on the investigation, if he does, we will reflect that in our reporting. But for now, we don't have any, any evidence backing that claim of his.

Tim Marchman [01:23:39] So basically what's, what happened was he was, while undercover filming documentary the Abolitionists, a girl was coming down a staircase in a sex club in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and he felt her naked breasts and then she pushed his hands away and pulled her shirt down.

Tim Marchman [01:24:03] He subsequently had conversations with his associates who had also been there. They all agreed that she looked 16. He talked about how her breasts felt like that of a 16 year old. And he subsequently had a conversation with Matt Osborne, an OU operative who's now the president of the organization, in which he was concerned that he was potentially liable to prosecution by Mexican officials.

Tim Marchman [01:24:28] And Osborne told him that he shouldn't be concerned about that, but that they wouldn't want to provide the video to HSI or the US Embassy and Mexico, apparently out of concern about what the US Government would think of that.

Tim Marchman [01:24:42] So while we have a lot of detail and we also have further detail, as part of the same operation, Hutchinson asking traffickers to bring him younger girls. Like he was being shown pictures of, of women and he was asking for younger ones to the point where a trafficker, an alleged trafficker was, was telling women to bring girls as young as 14. To Hutchinson, I believe the term was

John Dehlin [01:25:11] mas fresca, which means more fresh in Spanish. Right.

Tim Marchman [01:25:14] Yeah, we. So there's, there's that, which there's also no dispute on. And Hutchinson has told us we have his full statement in the story, but that he has no regrets about his undercover work, that the operatives who, you know, were with him support his work, and that this is part of doing dangerous undercover work.

John Dehlin [01:25:35] The quote is zero reservations. He has zero reservations about his undercover work.

Tim Marchman [01:25:40] Yeah, with a zero.

John Dehlin [01:25:41] Not, not, not a single reservation.

Tim Marchman [01:25:44] Yeah, with the, with the caveat that he, he says he has a document from the Mexican police showing she was 18. What, what happened here isn't in dispute. And one thing I find interesting here is just that in the, in the statement Ballard just put out, he talked

John Dehlin [01:26:00] about

Tim Marchman [01:26:03] policies on sexual contact and so on. The incident we're describing happened in 2016, and Hutchinson remained a key associate of Ballard's operative fundraiser with. Oh, you are through about 2019. That's when his break with, with Ballard happened, which he has told us was due to the same issues we've highlighted in our work. So there you have it, it's a long story, but it's a pretty straightforward story and there's not substantive dispute about what happened.

John Dehlin [01:26:36] Yeah, I have some text from the article here. It's graphic. I want to kind of give everyone a warning. This is sickening in graphic language. Do you think it'd be unproductive for me just to read a little bit from the article? Or would you rather just leave it as what we've discussed?

Anna Merlan [01:26:57] It's up to you. Whatever you think is helpful. I mean it's the, the allegation is that he, that he touched someone's breasts. Someone's. Yeah, that's the, that's the, you know, shortest way to put it. There's not really a nicer way to say it.

John Dehlin [01:27:14] Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay, so the, the two parts that I, I thought I'd read just to give people the clear sense of the reporting you did, you know, the. A female, you know, which like the others in the story, gets to the bottom of the stairs and there's an adult male standing to her left side. The male is wearing a light colored shirt with long sleeves and a necktie. The male uses both of his hands to lift the female shirt up to her shoulders, exposing her naked breasts. While he continues to hold the female shirt up with both hands, another adult male approaches from directly in front of the female.

John Dehlin [01:27:53] This male, identified as Paul Hutchinson, is wearing a light colored shirt and short sleeves. Paul approaches the female and lifts both of his hands and places them on each of the female's naked breasts. The female uses her hand to push down Paul's hands and pull pulls her shirt up. There's another female standing above them, higher on the stairway.

John Dehlin [01:28:14] Paul leans in and kisses the first female on the side of the cheek. Read the investigator's notes. So that is super disturbing and it's just kind of more giving more explicit sense. And of course everyone's. I'm, I'm thinking how in the world is this important undercover work? How in the world is this essential to whatever goals that they have? Especially when we understand the context that they're generating demand that in many of these jumps they're going to find people that they think will bring them women or children, that it's not like they're doing stings on existing pedophile rings. They're, they're at, they're paying people to go bring women and children to them.

John Dehlin [01:28:59] So in that case, why would he, why would Paul Hutchinson need to grope this 16 year old, likely 16 year old. I don't understand that.

Tim Marchman [01:29:09] Yeah, let me, let me just add a little, let me just add a little detail here. This is based on a great deal of previous reporting we've done. And anyone who's, who's interested in this kind of detail can go and read our previous stories because we've, we've talked in a lot of detail to people who have gone on these operations. The, the most basic modus operandi for an, our mission is to go to a tourist locale usually, usually in Mexico, Dominican Republic or Haiti, I think occasionally Thailand.

Anna Merlan [01:29:36] Yeah.

Tim Marchman [01:29:37] But to go to basically the red light districts of, of towns that, and, you know, very, very nice places that incur a lot of American tourism. And to go to bars or just down the street and kind of ask for, you know, ask for young girls, ask for kids. Cabo San Lucas is, you know, it's a very well known resort town. I've never been there, but it, you know, you can find photos of it online. Very beautiful.

Tim Marchman [01:30:04] Attracts a lot of American tourists. So it's kind of the equivalent of going to, I want to say what it's equivalent to. It's going to, it's going to the red light district and, and just asking for young girls. So I think that's one bit of context here is that this isn't a, this isn't something like depicted in the movie Sound of Freedom where a lone heroic figure is penetrating into the jungle and going to a camp held by a drug cartel to free children with its bare hands. It's more like going to, it's a little bit more like going to a strip club on the Jersey Shore and asking if anyone knows where reading you can get some underage girls.

Tim Marchman [01:30:51] I do think that is important context for, for what is going on here since Mr. Hutchinson in a statement talked about the necessity of going to the most dangerous places in the world to, to do this work. I don't think from my understanding that's necessarily an accurate description because, because they're

John Dehlin [01:31:08] not dangerous, they're just where tourists go to get young women. Right.

Tim Marchman [01:31:12] Yeah, I'll say that. You know, the other day we talked to a very experienced anti trafficking investigator who's done undercover work overseas and he, he said he wished one thing more people understood was that it's actually not particularly dangerous work as undercover work goes, because you're, you're, you're someone, you're representing yourself as someone who wants to buy a product that people are selling. You're a rich American tourist, you have money and you want children for sex or minors for sex. And if you've done your job right, you've convincingly represented yourself as someone who just wants to give them money in exchange for something they're selling. And he said it's something he, he wishes more people understood is that it's, you know, fairly routine actually, as these sort of things go. So I do think that's necessary just to understand the behavior described in the investigators accounts of what is on the videos.

John Dehlin [01:32:12] Well, it's been reported to me that, that I'll just show, I'll just show the reporting. Michael Jolly noted that Paul Hutchinson was the finance chair of the Sean Reyes campaign. Now, I don't know if that's true, but that's been reported to me. And so it's particularly interesting and disturbing when you, when I, if I could just read just a tiny bit more that you wrote in your story. You wrote one of our, one of the, our operators is heard saying, let's get the hell out of here. Hutchinson is heard saying, yeah, let's get out of here. I'm down a grand for a thousand bucks. You got your hands on some breasts as a male voice to laughter.

John Dehlin [01:32:55] Then next, what was I going to do? Asks a second male voice. Those words are described as being interrupted repeatedly by laughter. Okay, she's 16. Here, feel them. They're nice. I'm like, those are 16. Then someone else says, you think they're underage, huh? Asks the first male voice. And then, oh yeah, says the third male voice. I would put money on that. The men continue their discussion for a bit before the first male voice says, yeah, those girls were young, man.

John Dehlin [01:33:25] Then, quote, I don't know how wise it was to grab that girl's boobs, though. Close quote, says the second male voice. And then finally you have, quote, you didn't get that on video or anything, did you? Asks the first male voice. And so again, when you combine that with, with your reporting on Hutchinson, where Hutchinson says, there's a lot to the story, a very dangerous situation, and I'm happy to let the world know the details when the time is right. Hutchinson wrote in an email. Device News. Every operator who is present stands behind me in how I reacted to this situation. I have zero reservations as to how I handled myself undercover.

John Dehlin [01:34:07] And I just have to say it didn't sound like they had zero reservations when they were doing it. Why would, why would he say, did you get that on camera? As if he was afraid? Like, that doesn't make sense. Any thoughts on that?

Anna Merlan [01:34:21] I mean, I think, I think that exchange kind of speaks for itself. But Obviously, you know, Mr. Hutchinson is indicating that there's more to the story and that he's going to talk about at some point, which, you know, great. And we appreciate him sort of substantively engaging with us on this.

Anna Merlan [01:34:38] A couple things I will point out. Again, I'm seeing several sort of comments in the chat about how when you do undercover cover work, you have to get dirty. Just again, I know that I'm stressing this point a lot. These folks do not work for a law enforcement agency. They are not employed doing this work. This is a nonprofit. This is volunteer work. The idea that it was necessary to do, I think is hooked into a sort of larger philosophy that O ur and other sort of anti trafficking groups have promulgated, which is this idea that governments don't care about trafficking and that nobody is working on this issue and so that they are forced to go and do this work.

Anna Merlan [01:35:19] Again, this is not true. We have done so much reporting and we have talked to so many people throughout different levels of government, both in the United States, in other countries, who will talk about the work that they are doing to fight trafficking. You know, this is not like an under addressed problem that no one is aware of. And so thus people have to go to sex clubs in Cabo San Lucas and carry out these acts themselves. Right. And one of the things that you would do if you have hopefully law enforcement training and you're acting under the color of law, is figure out ways to not portray on a underage person if you are trying to rescue them.

Anna Merlan [01:36:05] Right. And so I think that there is a little bit of a sort of central issue here, which is that if folks were getting into situations that they found difficult to handle ethically, perhaps should not have been there. So that's, you know. Yeah, just the broader takeaway. Go ahead, Tim.

Status of the Federal Investigation

Tim Marchman [01:36:25] Just to get a little bit into the weeds here, Just to give you a sense of the kind of disputes that go on. People maybe at the tip of the spear doing this undercover work. One of the big disputes they have, you know, according to the reporting we've done with say, people at NGOs who work with trafficking survivors, is the people. Everyone pretty much agrees on what the problems are, which is more education, looser immigration policies, things that sound like very leftist kind of kind of hippie dippy ideas, in a lot of ways, more job training. One of the real disputes you get is the people on the law enforcement side will tend to be a little more in favor of the legalization of sex work, whereas people on the NGO side will be more in favor of its decriminalization because legalization will put it under a sort of regulatory regiment that would decrease the autonomy of sex workers.

Tim Marchman [01:37:22] And I'm oversimplifying that slightly, but I just want to say that, to make that clear that the debate about whether it would be necessary to feel the breasts of 16 year old, or for that matter 18 year old or 48 year old trafficking victim as part of an operation are just really far afield from the kind of, you know, good faith discussions and disagreements that are going on among people who do this work professionally.

John Dehlin [01:37:54] Thank you for that. Additional reporting mentioned Hutchinson as the first investor in Sound of Freedom, which I think is interesting. And then it goes on to say that Hutchinson is currently affiliated with the Child Liberation foundation, was a key fundraiser and I would say donor and operative for our. Before splitting with Ballard several years ago, as he put in an email to Vice News, similar reasons as those you are bringing to light in your stories. In other words, Hutchinson split from Ballard at some point for a lot of the same reasons y' all are covering. What, what can we make of Hutchinson splitting from Ballard?

John Dehlin [01:38:38] Why is Ballard's name still on Hutchinson's website, if I remember that correctly? And do you think we'll, we'll learn more about why Hutchinson bailed on Ballard? It sounds like Ballard should have bailed on Hutchinson. So it's hard to know what, what's really going on there. Anything you guys can say about that?

Tim Marchman [01:38:55] We didn't, we didn't put it in this, we didn't put it in the story because it felt redundant. He gave us a few statements and just for kind of clarity we wanted to focus on the important parts. But one thing he did tell us was that he was in the room for the meeting where Ballard drew the whiteboard diagram we've referred to where he described this convoluted scheme to have a for profit organization control various non profits and then ultimately use that to build Ballard's personal brand so that he could monetize his own notoriety.

Tim Marchman [01:39:27] And Hutchinson, you know, Hutchinson said that he broke with him over, over that, like after that, like subsequent to that meeting, that, that this plan was a little bit too much for him to stomach. And you know, we've heard that from other sources as well.

Tim Marchman [01:39:44] Why he would still have on his, Ballard's name on his website, given that, I couldn't really speculate on it. You know, maybe, maybe it's an old website and he hasn't updated it. I, I don't always update my bios on YouTube, various social media platforms. So who knows?

John Dehlin [01:39:59] Okay. All right, I, I want to talk quickly just about the investigation and then, and then end by talking about the M. Russell Ballard and Tim Ballard business connections. So I think I remember reading somewhere or hearing somewhere yesterday that possibly there's a grand jury that's, that has been convened or will be convened or that it's not a foregone conclusion that there is no investigation still ongoing. So do you know anything about that and do you know anything about why? Anything at all about possibly why the federal investigation was shut down and is a multi part question, do we have any reason to believe that the LDS Church or Sean Reyes may have played a role in its secession? Anything y' all have to say about any of that?

Anna Merlan [01:40:50] So we have every indication to believe that the investigation that was started by Davis County Attorney General and eventually involved the FBI is closed. I can tell you that there have been rumors about grand juries being paneled and indictments coming down for a very long time, probably years at this point. I just do not think that there is any truth to them. You know, I have people telling me weekly that they believe that this is something that's going to happen. So you know, you can, you can put as much stock in that as you want to, but I just, I just don't see any evidence that that's true. What do you have anything to add to that, Tim?

Tim Marchman [01:41:29] Just that criminal investigations are rightly so, extremely secretive, grand jury investigations. There's not a lot to know about them. Until prosecutors release something, usually FBI investigations, it's very difficult to get information about whether they're ongoing, whether they've been opened, whether they've been closed. That's part of what's extraordinary about the documents we do have that we've been reporting on is that it's a rare peek into what those, what those kind of criminal investigative records look like.

Tim Marchman [01:42:02] I personally don't find it useful to speculate too much on stuff like that at all. Like what role this person or that played in this or that proceeding getting shut down or possibly there being this or that sort of secret proceeding possibly going on. Ultimately, if there's anything of substance or significance to a criminal investigation, it'll come out in public record.

Tim Marchman [01:42:21] If it, you know, if it doesn't leave any trace, anything that we can obtain through an actual prosecution, through statements from prosecutors, through statements from defense, through public records that we can obtain, I ultimately don't really care about it because without that kind of hard evidence and hard proof it doesn't matter to me whether or not it was going on. If it matters, it will eventually produce a paper trail. If it doesn't produce a paper trail of some sort, it probably, you know, either didn't exist or didn't matter.

John Dehlin [01:42:51] Okay, that's great. I love that focus on evidence. All right, let's, let's definitely now hit hard the business connections possibly between Tim Ballard and Mormon apostle. I'm Russell Ballard. I think Tim, I remember you saying that maybe that's a part of the story that hasn't been discussed sufficiently or noticed. Let me just play a couple clips from Tim Ballard to then give you guys a chance to respond to it. So here's the first clip.

Business and Church Connections

▶ Video Clip 4

Video Clip 4 [01:43:22] Thank you for coming.

Video Clip 4 [01:43:23] Things.

Video Clip 4 [01:43:27] President Ballard is like a grandfather to me. He came to me, I don't know, 20, 2012, 2011. And he told me that he appreciates

Video Clip 4 [01:43:43] all the things I'm doing.

Video Clip 4 [01:43:44] He wants to help me do it.

Video Clip 4 [01:43:47] Never in my life, never. But used his name

Video Clip 4 [01:43:55] to raise money to make some business deal. What business deal?

Video Clip 4 [01:44:02] I don't have business.

John Dehlin [01:44:06] Never happened. Okay, so that was just. I covered this yesterday, but never has he used Emerald Solutions, Ballard's name to, to promote any business. And then he says, what business? Now, yesterday I showed the whiteboard in, in my coverage. I'm going to show it again just because it's just so blatantly ridiculous. Here is the whiteboard, Tim Ballard's whiteboard that, that you and others have reported on. You know.

Tim Marchman [01:44:40] Oh, you have the unredacted one here. Good for you. We, we have published a version with a variety of details. Redacted. Yeah, but I know this one has also been circulating as well, but for

John Dehlin [01:44:50] those who are just listening only, it's got TimBallard.com at the top and Slave Stealers LLC at the top. It's got M. Russell Ballard's name with the, with the word silent in parentheses there. And then at the bottom it's got TimBallard.com with $2.5 million with you know, fifty to eighty thousand dollar speech speaker fees, three to five new books coming out. So basically Tim Ballard, private entities on the top and bottom and then in the middle a bunch of non profits that are funneling money that are receiving money from LLCs and then funneling money back to, sorry, receiving, receiving money from LLCs potentially and then funneling money between them and then into Tim's private workings. And if I show kind of a, a more legible representation, it just gives you a sense that, that, that there's a lot of businesses. So.

Tim Marchman [01:45:52] Sorry to laugh.

John Dehlin [01:45:53] Yeah. Yeah. Like.

Anna Merlan [01:45:55] Yeah, I've never seen a. Yeah, it's a.

Tim Marchman [01:45:57] It's a.

Anna Merlan [01:45:58] It's a good idea. We should.

Tim Marchman [01:45:59] Yeah, it's a. It's a great diagram. It makes it much more lovable.

John Dehlin [01:46:03] So to get. To give the credit where credit is due, this is. This comes directly from the website American Crime Journal and they're the ones that both published the unredacted white board. And then I think they're the ones or maybe it was Lynn Packer. I don't know.

Anna Merlan [01:46:22] Rights for American Crime Journal, as does

Tim Marchman [01:46:24] Damien Moore is another Turkish really respectable their work.

John Dehlin [01:46:27] Okay, so like. So Tim Ballard just says what business? What business? You know, so.

Tim Marchman [01:46:34] So I. It's an answerable question. Two of the businesses we're interested in are slave stealers, which. In which according to the whiteboard diagram drawn by Tim Ballard and Russell Ballard is a silent partner. And we know that according to the investigative records we've been talking about, there were text messages from an associate of Ballard's who we're not naming because we haven't been able to reach him for comment. But he. He was trying to get Dave Lopez, a former Navy SEAL who ran O your's overseas operations in Haiti for a while to, along with a business partner of his, invest in slave stealers through a really complicated means.

Tim Marchman [01:47:16] But he said that he was willing to get Lopez's business partner to meet if necessary with them, Russell Ballard, to talk about the project. We also know from our files that Liberty89, a business registered in Utah with Tim Ballard as the principal agent that Tim Ballard represented, that Elder Ballard was involved in that business to people at a secret meeting where he talked about spiritual revelations and being called by.

Tim Marchman [01:47:49] Called by God to lead people to the covenant. That's according to witness testimony to an FBI investigator and a Davis county investigator to add a.

John Dehlin [01:47:57] Just a.

Tim Marchman [01:47:58] A bizarre little wrinkle. Some of the people listening or watching maybe may be familiar with a painting that was put out several years ago by John McNaughton. It was funded by Liberty89. I guess it paid for, commissioned. It would be a good way to put it, that shows Harriet Tubman and other black abolitionists kneeling before Ballard and his wife as they carry liberated children down. Down a railroad. And it's. It's a really strange painting. It has a bunch of celebrities, including Glenn Beck and Montel Williams and Mike Tomlin, former coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. It's got Abraham Lincoln. It's got a lot of people in it, Liberty89 Commission, that this is a mysterious business we'd like to know more about, but we do know that Tim Ballard represented, that Elder Ballard was involved with it. So those are the specific businesses we're talking about.

John Dehlin [01:48:54] Can I just ask really quickly if this is the. Just because I want to show it. Is this the painting you're talking about?

Tim Marchman [01:49:06] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:49:07] Okay, so it's got some guy carrying a kid, several. Oh, Tim Ballard is there behind in the background. Is that right? Kind of the blonde guy. It almost. Who's the guy in the front? Do we know who that is? That's.

Tim Marchman [01:49:18] That's a really good question. I wish I knew. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:49:21] I will also say Abraham Lincoln over there on the left, and I think that's Harriet Tubman.

Tim Marchman [01:49:25] So I also, I also just want to say, I know we've been talking about the most serious possible matters for, for the last couple of hours, but I really do want to put this out there. I've been trying to get a print of that for quite a while and I haven't been able to get one. So if anybody in the audience happens to know how I, how I could get one, please email me at tim.marchman advice.com I'll take it off your hands is Tim's passion.

John Dehlin [01:49:48] Okay. All right. Okay. Well, I'm sorry I interrupted you, but I thought it'd be fun to actually show it, so.

Tim Marchman [01:49:54] No, it's good. So those are the specific businesses we're talking about. And more specifically. Right. Talking about the, the convoluted scheme to have a for profit business establish control over these various nonprofits and use this ultimately to make a lot of money off Tim Ballard's notoriety. The plan didn't amount to much. To our, to our understanding, our never came under the control of slave stealers. Liberty89 is not much of a going concern to our awareness. And there's no. When we talk about conspiracies, we want to be very not conspiratorial about this.

John Dehlin [01:50:31] There's.

Tim Marchman [01:50:31] There's no real evidence that this scheme altogether came to fruition. And there is reason from the documents, we have to think that this was more a matter of Tim Ballard name dropping than of Elder Ballard being silent partner in these ventures in a substantive way. Even one of the witnesses who talked about this to investigators said that Tim Ballard would talk a lot about it, but that she didn't really know if. If she believed him. And that to circle us all the way around to the beginning of this conversation is why we put a detailed Comment to request to Elder Ballard through the church is because it's not our interest to say hey we got some investigative documents and so now we know everything.

Tim Marchman [01:51:15] That's the start of the process. The way you go further into the process to ask the affected and relevant parties for more information for context. If they deny claims, we now know what Elder Ballard has to say about it, which is that their friendship ended,

John Dehlin [01:51:32] you know, months ago.

Tim Marchman [01:51:33] Months ago. Months ago that he was not involved in these businesses, that he's very angry with Tim Ballard for misusing his name as part of part of his business ventures. He's angry at him about using his name for unspecified morally unacceptable activities. We know Elder Ballard side We know Tim Ballard side now is that he's, you know, there's never been a business venture. He doesn't know what anybody is talking about which contradicts the evidence in these criminal investigative files and also contradicts what M. Russell Ballard has to say on the record.

Tim Marchman [01:52:09] So we understand respect Ballard, Tim Ballard's side of things. We're glad he's he's spoken in any way. We're glad he's asked offering his comment. But there are a lot more questions to ask here and the weight of the evidence suggests that either there was a business relationship or the Tim Ballard was strongly representing a business relationship and that at least one person was doing so on his behalf path. And those are matters we want to know more about and that criminal investigators were clearly very interested in.

John Dehlin [01:52:40] One of the. One of the photos we shared yesterday was one with M. Russell Ballard. Tim Ballard and Glenn Beck and obviously Tim and Glenn were business partners in very explicit ways. The whiteboard shows that. So I guess you could assume that Ballard's meeting with them in some ecclesiastical capacity. But the evidence just seems to point to. To something more that's going on and in that sense seems like Tim Ballard is hurt partly be because M. Russell Ballard is distancing himself. Let me play this one clip and then Tim and, and I want to Anna and Tim, I want to hear if you have more to say but I have one more clip on this matter.

▶ Video Clip 5

Video Clip 5 [01:53:21] Never used elder brother's name ever. I've never trained on his name asked for anything. I've never had any business dealings with him. He's like, he's like a grandfather to

Video Clip 5 [01:53:36] me and Leo can to testify.

Video Clip 5 [01:53:38] He's a grandfather.

Video Clip 5 [01:53:40] He asked me to take him on this tour. President M. Russell Ballard asked me to take him on this tour.

Video Clip 5 [01:53:47] I didn't.

Video Clip 5 [01:53:48] It wasn't land here.

Video Clip 5 [01:53:50] You were Here, Coop, tell me what you experienced.

Video Clip 5 [01:53:56] By the way, if anybody wants to share this with any news outlet, do it. Share it.

Video Clip 5 [01:54:04] Something evil is going on. I don't know who's behind it yet.

John Dehlin [01:54:11] So I mean, something evil's going on. And then again, he's never traded on his name. This whiteboard is Tim Ballard's handwriting, right? And it's got Ballard's name right there. Right. Ballard's name is there. So it's so bizarre to have him be so adamant and then just to have the evidence be so obvious. What do you guys say to ballot to Tim Ballard's claim that he's never used M. Russell Ballard's name ever, once, ever to, to do anything business related?

Anna Merlan [01:54:45] Tim, do you want to respond to that?

Tim Marchman [01:54:47] Yeah, I honestly don't know what to say about it. I mean the evidence is the evidence and it speaks for itself. And it's one of the things that's a little frustrating about some of what we've been talking about, like the deep discussions of, you know, whether a statement from the church is a statement from the church or semantic discussions over this and that. The evidence is plain and straightforward and it says what it says and we always, always, always want more information about that. If the whiteboard was drawn up because Tim Ballard wanted to represent what would be happening in a Star Trek style mirror universe where he was trading on M.

Tim Marchman [01:55:26] Russell Ballard's name and that is the context for why it was drawn. I'd love to know that if the reason associate of his was trying to strong arm a third party into investing in a for profit business called Slave Stealers and, and representing M. Russell Ballard as a person who could be brought into contact with a fourth party to make that happen is that the associate wasn't speaking on Tim Ballard's behalf. I would love to know that there are all sorts of reasonable explanations there could be for this evidence that would be consistent with nothing really inappropriate, appropriate on Tim Ballard's part. But we just haven't heard any of those.

Tim Marchman [01:56:04] We've just heard flat denials. And while I certainly never categorically reject those, and I don't think any reasonable people do, at some point you look at the evidence and just try to think about what the most reasonable explanation is for it. And I invite everyone who's reviewing this material do so for themselves,

Anna Merlan [01:56:21] I do think we should clarify one thing, which is that it is very obvious that President Ballard and Tim Ballard did have a friendship. You know, know one of the things that's been going around is a Talk that M. Russell Ballard gave and I believe 2019 where he talks about going on the tour that Mr. Ballard references in that video, which is like a American history tour of some kind in Boston or like a self styled American history tour that Mr. Ballard took Elder Ballard on. Like there is no question that there was some level of friendship or relationship between the two men, obviously with the church statement that we could God is alleging is that they believe that Elder Ballard's name was misused.

Anna Merlan [01:56:59] Right. And again, without more detail from the church, we are all only speculating about what that means. Right. I saw one other question about why Glenn Beck is in here. So just this hasn't really come up in this conversation, but as we've reported many times, Glenn Beck founded his own organization called the Nazarene Fund which claims to rescue persecuted religious minorities in the Middle east, meaning largely Christians. The Nazarene Fund became a sister organization to oor. They were kind of under the same umbrella and Tim Ballard at one point was running both. So he was out as CEO of the Nazarene Fund at the same time virtually that he left OOR and the Nazarene Fund then confirmed this in a statement to us.

Glenn Beck, the LDS Church, and the Broader Network

Anna Merlan [01:57:50] Right. So again Glenn Beck is there because Glenn Beck, you know, clearly also has a, you know, a friendship of some kind with, you know, a business partnership of some kind with Tim Ballard. But yeah, the Nazarene Fund has confirmed that he's not there anymore either. So that's what's going on with Glenn Beck.

John Dehlin [01:58:11] I, I mentioned in the podcast yesterday the claim that the LDS Church made that quote, the LDS Church has never endorsed or supported Tim Ballard or Operation Underground Railroad or any projects associated with them. And then I went on to show all the books the Deseret Book sells of Tim Ballard's. I think in Tim's rant he even mentions how much money he had made for the LDS Church, which I thought was rich. And then I went on to show I just put under Deseret News, Tim Ballard in quotes. I found 364 articles in the Deseret News that mentioned Tim Ballard selling his books, talking about Operation Underground Railroad, talking about ventures with ESPN and book deals, talking about his relationship with Glenn Beck.

John Dehlin [01:59:02] You know, so many articles, it just was unbelievable. Even you know, Sound of freedom. Of course, it was just completely outrageous for, for the church to make the Mormon Church to make that claim that it had never ever, ever supported Tim Bowder to our in any way. And by the way, even if it's just non profit stuff, the church is promoting non profits are still businesses. Tim Ballard was making at least one year over $600,000 a year.

John Dehlin [01:59:35] So I guess one person asked me to ask you, do you feel like the Mormon Church in its statement represented accurately both M. Russell Ballard's relationship with Tim Ballard and the Mormon Church's relationship with Tim Ballard and our.

Tim Marchman [01:59:51] Do you have on that as you've heard and I. And I hope it hasn't bored anyone to death in the last two hours. We like to be very precise with our language. And I was as an undergrad, I was really interested in poetry and modernist readings of poetry. You know, T.S. eliot's criticism, William Empson, the various types of ambiguity, all that sort of thing. I work with lawyers very closely. I really appreciate the close readings they give texts. All of that's to say is that the way my mind works. I can conceive of a way in which the statement you just put a slide up of is literally true. That the LDS Church specifically has never endorsed or supported our. In any plain language reading of what that is.

John Dehlin [02:00:38] Are you saying because Deseret. Deseret News isn't technically the LDS Church, it's just owned by the LDS Church? Is that what you mean?

Tim Marchman [02:00:46] Right. Or the claim that could be, you know, say, you know, an apostle of the church endorsing and supporting this and that wasn't the church itself doing it like there, there are semantic games I could play with that statement to prove that it was true, I'm sure. And I don't think it was an intentional. I don't even want to get into what I think the intentions of it were. I'm kind of beating around the bush here. I don't think that accurately represents reality.

Tim Marchman [02:01:08] I think that Tim Ballard and our have clearly enjoyed, at minimum strong support from very senior members of the church and from institutions that are affiliated with the church that has done so for a number of years. So I think you could get into a, you know, very close reading of the text in terms of what an endorsement or support of it is. I think in any plain language straightforward way that that statement doesn't accord with reality. But maybe Anna would disagree. I don't know.

John Dehlin [02:01:50] Anna, go ahead and unmute yourself really quick. Anna.

Anna Merlan [02:01:53] Sorry. That was the most marshman possible answer. No, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't disagree with that. I mean, I think. I think what we're pointing to with a lot of this is still sort of a fundamental lack of clarity in exactly what the church was trying to say or denounce. And we're all just kind of sitting here, you know, reading tea leaves. Whether that is us or whether that is, you know, the, the energetic podcasters of the right wing Mormon world. You know, like everybody is just engaged in the same project here, which is trying to figure out what this means. And so for us, you know, we can only report what we know when we know it.

Anna Merlan [02:02:32] Right. So, yeah, I don't know. I wish, I wish I could offer more insight into what that statement means and how it comes comports with reality. But yeah, as you point out and as Tim just said, there, there was clearly a relationship between our and, you know, some elements within the church connected to the church. There was clearly at some point an excitement about what our was doing. You know, there have been articles about our, on sort of LDS publications. Like, you know, there's, there's, there's clearly a lot going on here. And as we've learned this week, you know, this is a very small world ultimately and small community, and a lot of the players are aware of and connected to each other in some way.

Tim Marchman [02:03:16] Yeah,

John Dehlin [02:03:18] Tim, I promise you, two hours. I, I have one more major question. Do you need to roll or can you stay for at least one more question?

Tim Marchman [02:03:26] I think we can do one more question, but then I really do have to do one more to get to. I'm sorry, I can, I can talk about this stuff for hours. In the absence of other stuff that do, you could keep me droning on about all sorts of very specific questions here and I keep going, but.

Use of Psychics in Anti-Trafficking Operations

John Dehlin [02:03:38] All right, well, my, my viewers and listeners would be furious if I didn't ask you about Nephi and the psychic. So basically, you know, tell us all you can tell us about Tim Ballard's use of a psychic, the channeling of ancient Mormon prophets like Nephi, and in all seriousness, why that can in some ways speak to the credibility and the concerns about Tim Ballard, Operation Underground Railroad and his jumps.

Anna Merlan [02:04:07] So the first time we wrote about Janet Russin the psychic was I believe, two years ago. I think the first time we talked about her was in 2021 in an article about this mission somewhere on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, looking for a missing boy named Garthy Marty. And so, so somebody familiar with that investigation told us at the time, or that mission told us at the time, that they realized, you know, that the source of intelligence for that mission had been Janet the psychic. Right.

Anna Merlan [02:04:40] And so we are preparing some more journalism for you about what was going on with the use of, of Ms. Russin and her Psychic visions. And we've also called her and asked if there's anything that she wants to say about this. And she's indicated that there isn't. You know, so she's, she's well aware of this and could respond to it if she was able to or if she chose so.

Anna Merlan [02:05:09] And I believe the first time we called her, she told us that she had signed an NDA with oh, you are, and that was why she wasn't free to speak. So, yeah, the, the psychic thing is one of those things where for us, it was really important to understand the lds, Mormon, like, cultural and religious context that was going on here and to have an idea about whether or not the use of psychics is, you know, sanctioned or is okay. And our understanding from our reporting is that, is that it's not really.

Anna Merlan [02:05:42] But again, you guys would know that better than we would. So all of which is to say we've reported a little bit on Ms. Russin and her relationship with Ou are. And we're going to have more on that to the best of our abilities to understand sort of what roles she played in the organization and sort of why she was there.

Tim Marchman [02:06:00] Yeah, a couple of things I can add to that. So, as we reported on Friday, a grave topic of concern, apparently to Troy Rawlings, the Davis county attorney who was spearheading this investigation in collaboration with the FBI, was whether donors were aware that a principal source of operational intelligence for our jump missions was Janet's communications, her psychic readings generally, and more specifically her communications with Nephi. He wrote in an email to Sean Reyes that we acquired through a public records request, and he had something like 10,000 pages of, of her readings.

Tim Marchman [02:06:39] So, yeah, we'll, we'll have more on this, but our, our understandings generally that she was a. And perhaps the key source of operational intelligence for these jumps in terms of, you know, in terms of whether Tim Ballard wants to talk to Nephi through, through a psychic medium, I have literally no opinion on that. There are many things in my own faith tradition that are strange and irrational and that people might find curious. And so I legitimately have no opinion on it whatsoever. I don't, I don't even feel qualified to, to talk about, you know, communications with Nephi through a psychic medium for the, for the purposes of spiritual development, say, for the purposes of obtaining specific intelligence about where missing children are, who, you know, actual people are being sent to find in paramilitary missions.

Tim Marchman [02:07:42] I would need substantial evidence that it was working to think anything good was coming from that. And there's substantial Evidence that Janet Russin's communications with Nephi did not yield actionable intelligence or lead to the discovery of missing children.

Tim Marchman [02:08:02] So I understand why Rawlings would be interested in that and interested in, you know, whether donors were aware and whether use of money for these readings, you know, was. Was a good idea and whether, you know, it seems there was interest in. In looking into whether it violated any laws. Obviously, no charges were brought. The investigation was closed. So that is a closed book. But I don't think the questioning was inappropriate or crazy. And a significant thing we have to add here is that Russin's role within our has not just been that of a psychic medium who's communicating with dead Mormon leaders. It is also that of, I believe, and Anna will correct me if I'm wrong.

Tim Marchman [02:08:50] Director of Children Need Families, a for profit adoption charity in which Catherine Ballard, Tim Ballard's wife, has been heavily involved. It's one of the. It's one of the organizations that's on the whiteboard we've been talking about. And she is also in the context of a role with another group called Rod's Heroes, which hasn't talked to us.

Tim Marchman [02:09:13] And, you know, I feel free to mention this just because if anybody goes and Googles her, they'll find this. She has been described as a director of strategic. I think offhand it's alliances. Is that right?

Anna Merlan [02:09:24] Alliances. Yeah, this is.

Tim Marchman [02:09:27] Yeah, she has. She has had a. A seemingly central role at our in various capacities that we find a little bit opaque, but that go well, well beyond her role speaking to the dead.

Anna Merlan [02:09:45] This is upcoming reporting. Yeah, yeah, this is upcoming reporting. This is not stuff that we have published yet, but as Tim is saying, it is extremely findable. I think we had the title slightly wrong. So when she was with Children Need Families, the adoption situation started by Mr. Ballard's wife, Catherine. She was the executive director. And just to be clear, Children Need Families was not an adoption agency. It said it provided grants to families seeking to adopt children. So they said that they were providing financial assistance.

Tim Marchman [02:10:20] Thanks for correcting.

Anna Merlan [02:10:22] Yeah. And then at another point she was. She identified herself in her bio for this Rod's Heroes organization as OUR's director of strategic Alliances. So one of the questions that we've put to our and to Ms. Russin is, is she still with our Children Need Families even still in existence? Because obviously it was Katherine Ballard's concern and Catherine Ballard presumably is no longer affiliated with our if her husband also is not. I do not know. We would love to get answers on that. And then of Course, you know what the last position she held with the organization organization was what her job duties were. You know, these are very, these are very basic questions that we would love to get answers to.

John Dehlin [02:11:05] Is there any indication that Emerson Ballard knew that Tim Ballard was using psychics speaking with Nephi to help them find kidnapped children?

Tim Marchman [02:11:16] A witness told investigators that he intimated that but that she wasn't sure if she believed it. But it's a, it's a little ambiguous. It's, it's quoted Nursor and false people can make of it what it is. So it's, it's not hard evidence, but it is a question that we brought up, I think it's fair to say in our initial request for comment to the church that was responded in the way that sparked so much controversy. It's something, you know, we'd like to know. We'd like to get the clearest possible answer on. I think everybody would like to know that if, if Elder Ballard was a woman aware that this was the, or a primary source of operational intelligence for, for our search for missing children, that would, that would raise questions to me.

John Dehlin [02:12:04] Is there any indication of how much Janet Russin, the psychic was making? Do we have any knowledge?

Tim Marchman [02:12:13] We're not able to report that. Just a second. But we are preparing, we are preparing a story that I think we'll, we'll delve into. We'll delve into that issue.

John Dehlin [02:12:22] Well, for our never Mormon listeners and even for our Mormon listeners, if you guys don't mind if I just express my concern really briefly. It's. First of all, I can say that I've spoken to several people who spent years going on jumps with Tim Ballard and they literally described to me sitting in a room with Tim Ballard and Janet was there and she would kind of put her head back and her eyes would roll back into the top of her head and she would say I, I, you know, I think the kidnapped child is at a fork in the river where there's a tree that looks like a sea.

John Dehlin [02:12:54] And that's what they, Tim Ballard would claim as, as intelligence to then launch an entire multi million dollar jump or search. And there's a set of document mini documentaries that I think were sold at one point to Netflix of a series called the Abolitionists that I don't believe ever reached the public, but I have copies of all of them and there's one called Searching for Gardy. And if you watch that documentary, that, that mini, it's about 45 minutes long, they're going to Haiti to find this kid that four or four or five years previously named Garthy had been kidnapped. And you know, they're literally flying in helicopters with like four former Navy seals going to this, searching for a river with a fork in it that has a tree that looks like a sea.

John Dehlin [02:13:47] Like spending millions of dollars to get everyone there to do this crazy search and to find a forked, you know, river with a tree that looks like a sea. And all of that is not based on intelligence from, you know, the Haitian authorities. It's not based on intelligence from the CIA. It's literally based on Janet Russin having her eyes roll back in her head and tell Tim where to start looking. And not only is that a huge waste of money and incredibly inefficient, but, but that whole jump ends up being super dangerous to the point where they flee the village with escorts on mopeds, fearing for their lives.

John Dehlin [02:14:29] One of the former military people that was kind of leading that endeavor quit Operation Underground Railroad by reports saying that it was more dangerous than any of his, any event that he experienced in his overseas tours. As someone who I think was a veteran in like Afghanistan or Iraq. And so like, it was totally unsafe, totally inefficient and totally weird and creepy. And if that's how Tim Ballard was sort of starting in terms of gathering intelligence for these million dollar jumps that very wealthy people were spending money towards, it's inefficient and worthless and really dangerous. And that's, that's my concern with it. And then only as a slight other thing I'll add is that when you hear about Chad Dabel and Lori Valo and Julie Rowe and the prepper movement and these kids dying and, and people killing their spouses, all of this sort of channeling Nephi, channeling Moroni, channeling past Mormon prophets, speaking with the dead, multiple probations and reincarnation, all, you know, it starts to put Tim Ballard in the same soup as Chad Dabel and Lori Valo and Julie Rowe and all of these sort of really dangerous, sort of neo fundamentalist Mormon orthodoxies that have had very deadly results, you know, and even Jody Hildebrandt and this whole eight passengers thing, it kind of brings it all together for me.

Tim Marchman [02:16:04] So, yeah, we, we really do have to go. But let me just add one thing. And, and you know, if, if even maybe later. No, no, no, no, no. One thing I want to add is that I think all that's really important, important, and that is the sort of thing that's very useful context for us that we may not have all of and so I hope, you know, if you have a slide prepared with our contact info which is in all our articles, I'd appreciate it put it up

John Dehlin [02:16:30] a little later, read it and then I'll show it.

Tim Marchman [02:16:32] Yeah, it's Tim Marchman gmail and or sorry vice.com and anna merlince.com you can find those in any of our stories. And one thing we'd love to hear from listeners, you know, if anything comes to mind, if there are, you know, books we should read, stories we should read, it may turn out we've read them, it may turn out we're not just so that we can get aware of for instance anything we should know about channeling traditions and how those have been used as means of harm or anything like that. That's exactly the sort of information I'd love to hear from people about just so we can contextualize things as fully and accurately as possible and just learn more.

Tim Marchman [02:17:19] One of the great things about journalism is it's constant process of, of learning, of understanding. You know, there's, there's, there's never any absence of things to know more about and to be fascinated by and you know, would just love to hear more about that.

John Dehlin [02:17:35] Are those emails right as I've got them posted there.

Anna Merlan [02:17:37] Anna, did yours have Anna Merlin

John Dehlin [02:17:42] I'll, I'll fix that and then post it and I'll just as I'm doing it, please email tim.marchman advice.com and anna.merlin advice.com and let me just on behalf of my viewers and listeners and frankly on behalf of the Mormon people, all Mormons, we just really appreciate the integritous, in depth, responsible, comprehensive, ethical and fascinating reporting Anna and Tim that you are doing. We're sorry for the slings and, and arrows that are being launched at you by the, the people that don't want to hear evidence and facts. But we know you're thick skinned, we know your professionals, we know you expect that. And I just want to say from the bottom of the, of my heart and all my viewers and listeners, you're doing an enormous service not just to the Mormon people but also to I think humanity.

John Dehlin [02:18:40] And I don't mean to be too flowery in my praise but we're in a time where evidence really matters and truth really matters and facts really matter and harmful conspiratorial ideologies are really harming our, our society and our culture and our institutions. You both are playing a essential role in that as far as I'm concerned. And I can't thank you enough for both coming on Mormon Stories podcast and also just doing the reporting that you're doing.

Anna Merlan [02:19:10] Yeah, I don't know if I would. I would give us that much credit, but we're. We're continuing this reporting. We're trying to get it right. As Tim said, please get in touch with us about anything at all that you think we should know. And, you know, we just really appreciate it. And the reason why we come on here is because. Because we know that you have a number of viewers who are both, you know, critical of the institution and protective of the institutions of the church. And, you know, we just. We think this is a good way to. To reach folks and to kind of make ourselves available and understood to this community. So we really got to get back to work, but thank you so much for having us. We really appreciate it.

John Dehlin [02:19:47] All right.

Tim Marchman [02:19:47] Yeah, just.

John Dehlin [02:19:48] I'll.

Tim Marchman [02:19:49] I'll just echo all. All Anna said and just point out that for any irritability or crankiness I may have expressed over, you know, any. Any kind of disingenuous pushback, I really want to emphasize if people do have questions about our reporting process or about, you know, how we get information or things like this that are. That are real questions, that are not kind of, you know, disingenuous attempts to derail things by talking about semantics or, or irrelevant matters, we welcome those. And we don't think it's. It's stupid or anything at all to have those questions. We realize not everyone's a professional investigative reporter. And if you just want to know how we know what we know and why we're making the assertions we are, email us.

Tim Marchman [02:20:32] We'll, you know, we'll try to make some time to get back to you and keep the conversation going. You know, I really, really value skeptical, critical readers. I think they're the best kind of.

John Dehlin [02:20:45] All right, thanks so much. Keep up the great work, and please come back to Mormon Stories Podcast anytime. You guys take care. All right. Thanks so much to everyone for joining us today on Mormon Stories Podcast. I will share a quick comment. Douglas Griffin writes Mormon Stories Podcast. We are no longer known as Mormon people. We are Latter Day Saints. Perpetuating the outdated name is not helpful. Helpful. Well, Douglas Griffin, I'll just say that the, the. The term Mormon I use as a cultural umbrella term to represent conservative, believing, orthodox, faithful members of the LDS Church, all other members of the LDS Church, but there's also other people that I'm speaking about.

Audience Questions and Closing Reflections

John Dehlin [02:21:31] Douglas Griffin. I'm talking about inactive members of the church who still identify as Mormons, Mormon and ex Mormons and post Mormons and fundamentalist Mormons and, and you know, and just people who live in Utah but really care about this stuff. Okay, maybe not them. But the point is, is I, I know that Russell M. Nelson currently has discouraged the use of the term Mormon and wants us to say Latter Day Saint, but that's, there's a lot of other people out there, Douglas Griffin, who listen to this podcast and who are important.

John Dehlin [02:22:07] And so I don't think there's anything wrong with using Mormon as an umbrella term. But I, but I get your point and I appreciate the feedback that, that you are offering and I'm grateful the faithful Latter Day Saints are listening.

John Dehlin [02:22:21] Really quickly. I just want to end by thanking everyone who have joined us today. Please, right now, if you can do a couple things. We need your financial support to keep this going. You know, today's production involved Maven moderating the comments, Julia doing the time codes and show notes. She'll do the short video shorts later. Gerardo helping out with thumbnails with time with the video shorts, with, with cinematography, with post production and co production. We have Brooklyn that does our editing. We need your financial support to keep the lights on and to keep this going. So please go to MormonStories.org, become a monthly donor and you know, we lose 10 to 20 recurring donors every month for a variety of reasons and we need your support.

John Dehlin [02:23:11] So if you value this content, please become a supporter. We are transparent in our finances. We feel like we're running the Open Storage foundation ethically and we, we just really need your support. There are other ways you can support us as well that are very easy. You can like this episode right now. That will send, that will send into the algorithm reinforcement that YouTube needs to share this broadly. Please subscribe to the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel and to our Facebook channel. Those super chats that people are giving are really useful.

John Dehlin [02:23:49] Difficult researcher just sent a super chat that's very, very useful. I'll share a couple other super chats. I don't know her. Wrote Nevermo ex Jehovah's Witness. Wow. Just wow. All high demand religions see scandal like this as persecution and double down on their views. Right? Tim did too. Thank you. I don't know her. For the super chat donation, Amy Le Coke wrote on a Valor related podcast. John D. Said the church prosecutes progressive members but leaves right wing groups alone. Are they changing now? I think that's the great. One of the great questions. Amy is, is the Mormon church going to start cracking down on its right wing fundamentalist believers.

John Dehlin [02:24:37] I think it if it fails to do that at its own peril. And so that's a great question. JC writes a For profit controlling nonprofits and funneling tax funneling up tax exempt money is illegal. Is there an IRS investigation? If not, someone please file a complaint. I don't know if there's a current IRS investigation. I agree that there should be one and I hope someone will file a complaint. Thank you JC for that.

John Dehlin [02:25:06] Brian Palo Verde wrote writes all of this stinks to high heaven. Wouldn't that be the highest heavens since there are three levels in the celestial kingdom? Touche. Brian Palo Verde, thank you for the donation. Gail Dedrick writes a very important story. I want the truth not only on Tim Ballard, but on MRB M. Russell Ballard all of this stinks to high heaven. Thank you Gail for that super chat. Your super chats make all this possible.

John Dehlin [02:25:40] So I just want to thank you all for that. Thank you for everything you all do to make this possible. And you know, things have been really overwhelming and intense the past few weeks. I I've been trying to slow down and do less, but the eight passenger stuff, you know, David Archuleta's mom coming on and then this Tim Ballard stuff has just been overwhelming. I will remind you that Vice News has many more active stories that are to come. I will also just tell you for those who are curious and I'm happy to do a brief Q A with anyone who wants to just ask and if they've got any dying questions they want to know.

John Dehlin [02:26:19] I'll just briefly say that as far as the passenger story goes and many, many of you will know that I interviewed the niece of Jody Hildebrandt, Jesse Hildebrandt, and I also interviewed in Adam Paul Steed. Those stories have been two of the top 10 most viewed and most listened to stories in the history of Mormon stories.

John Dehlin [02:26:43] And and what I'll say is that there are major news outlets right now that are producing multiple and in some cases very significant length pieces on Lori Valo. Sorry on on eight Passengers, on Jody Hildebrandt and on the Frankie family and Ruby Frankie. So in the next few weeks look for major news outlets to do substantive pieces on that story.

John Dehlin [02:27:18] That's important. Calm Tie Dye says let's not forget to show Margi some love. Margi does appear on Mormon Stories podcast regularly. She's an amazing co host. Thank you for speaking out. Calm Tie Dyes I also say John Larsen does great work for us. When he comes on as well. And LDS discussions and Nemo have done incredible work.

John Dehlin [02:27:41] We're, we're super grateful for that. Sarah writes, Much love to Margi. Let's see if there are any other questions or comments that we want to include really, really quickly. Desert Desert Eden Blooms writes, this is just a bunch of unit party Trump haters trying to keep Ballard from holding office.

John Dehlin [02:28:09] I mean, I think that's one, one perspective. I don't think that's very valid. I'm, I, I am a registered Republican. Desert Eden Blooms I'm a registered Republican in Utah. I my, my political ideologies don't line up well with either the Democrat Party or the Republican Party. I, I find Joe Biden to be problematic in a lot of different ways than Donald Trump, but in some ways as just as problematic.

John Dehlin [02:28:45] So I'm not, I'm not either a Joe Biden lover or a Tim Ballot or a Donald Trump lover in terms of their being fit for office. I would love to see both parties come up with alternative candidates. So Desert Eden Blooms, I don't love your accusation. There was a previous commenter that asked whether it's my view that Republicans don't care about victims of child abuse. No, I never said that and I wouldn't say that. I will say that there is a culture that is prevalent in conservative, in predominantly conservative religious groups where victims tend to be shamed and or not believed or asked to hide and cover up their abuses.

John Dehlin [02:29:31] And we've covered that. And then that unfortunately is very true. In, in the Mormon Church there has been explicit, you know, attempts to make it so abuse, abuse, child abuse is covered up in the Mormon Church. That police, police are not informed about abuse. That happens. And that victims and, and family victims who want to talk about abuse are pressured not to come forward forward. And, and sometimes there's a culture within Mormonism of not believing victims. So that's what I was saying. But I definitely would never say that Republicans don't care about child abuse or rape or assault. That's just, that's just ridiculous. Another super chat that just came in.

John Dehlin [02:30:20] Isabel H. Says thank you for all your coverage. Important work. We also recommend hidden true crime YouTube channel for good info on Mormon issues. I love Dr. John and Lauren Matthias on Hidden True Crime. So absolutely shout out to them. I'll also shout out to Radio Free Mormon to Mormonism Live with Bill Real. I'll shout out to Nuance Ho. I'll shout out to Zeph on the Shelf. I'll shout out to Jordan McKay.

John Dehlin [02:30:49] There are so many contributors to the Mormon dialogue right now that I think are just doing important work. So, so, so we're grateful for all of them. And I know I am, I am leaving important people out. Rye Diddy writes, john is a Republican, though. I'll just say I'm not a Republican because my ideology necessarily lines up more on the Republican or Democratic side. I am bipartisan or unpartisan. But I, I will say that one main motivation for me being a registered Republican in Utah is so that I can vote in the primaries, because the only primaries that really matter in Utah are the Republican ones, because for at least federal offices, you know, Republicans always beat Democrats in Utah just because they have such an overwhelming majority here.

John Dehlin [02:31:46] So if I want to have any influence on who gets nominated in the Republican Party, the only way to do that is by registering as a Republican because the primaries, as I understand it, are closed. So. So anyway, that's why I'm a registered Republican. But I, I value things about both parties and I don't value a lot of things about both parties.

John Dehlin [02:32:12] And so I just wanted to make that really clear really quickly. I'm just, I'm just sharing. Rye Diddy writes, John Dehlin for Senate. Thank you. I've actually had someone approach me and ask me if I wanted to run for Senate.

John Dehlin [02:32:29] I would have to talk to Margi about that and my kids, honestly. But there's a scenario where I would enjoy running, running for Senate. I was a political science major and I follow politics relatively closely, and that would be really fun. Amy Cowersmith asks John, do you think that the story on Tim Ballard is being put forward by the church to cover the connection with the. Jody. With the church to Ruby and Jody. I'm curious on both stories. Let me read that again. Do you think that the story on Tim Baller is being put forward by the church to cover the connection with the church to Jody and Ruby?

John Dehlin [02:33:08] Oh, okay. So maybe the church is talking about Tim Ballard to know you are to take attention away from the eight passengers and the Jody Hildebrandt story. Maybe. But I think what's more likely of this timing is the fact that Mitt Romney announced he wasn't going to run and then word leaked that Tim Ballard was gonna run and Sean Reyes leaked that he was going to support Tim Ballard. And then I think Vice News reaching out to the Mormon Church about these pending stories with a lot of detail. I think that's a much more plausible explanation for why this is all coming out right now.

John Dehlin [02:33:51] I will, I will say you know many of you know that recently in Colorado, I'll just, I'll Google this right now. Basically in Colorado, a, a former stake president by the name of David George McConkey who is the grandson of Mormon former Mormon APostle Bruce R. McConi has been arrested for child sex crimes. He's an attorney. Again, he's the grandson of a Mormon apostle.

John Dehlin [02:34:30] And it's gotten almost no coverage on the podcasts or in the news media. I don't, I don't, I'm not aware of the Desert News or the Salt Lake Tribune covering that. It's a weird world where a grandson of one of the most prominent Mormon apostles in the history of Mormonism, who's also a former stake president, gets, gets imprisoned for alleged sexual abuse of children. And it's a, it's a minor story.

John Dehlin [02:34:59] I think that's kind of mind boggling and you know, but there you have it. I will just, I will give a call out, a shout out to the floodlit.org organization. I just shared a link to it. They have, they are making a database of all the known sexual predators within past and present within Mormonism. I just shared the floodlet.org page on David George McConkey and you can read up more information about him. I was actually friends with David George McConkey's brother Mark McConkey while I was getting my PhD at Utah State University. And I've interviewed David George McConkey's son in law, Matt Lohmeyer I believe was his name.

John Dehlin [02:35:48] He's the Denver excommunicated, Denver snuffer, follower, former Air Force officer who's married to David George McConkey's sister, I believe. Anyway, it's hard for me to always speak accurately. Off, off, off the cuff. So anyway, let's see. Kirby, Kitty Luke asks if I've ever been abused in family or in church. I've never been sexually abused by a family member.

John Dehlin [02:36:28] I, I, I will tell later maybe a story of being sexually groomed as a BYU student by a Mormon man. It's kind of a disturbing story. I've never shared it. I have, I'm not gonna, I have experienced maybe verbal and psychological abuse in my life. I'm not going to say by who, but the only thing that really comes close to sexual abuse is something I experienced as a BYU student.

John Dehlin [02:37:02] So yeah. So let's see any other quick questions that people have. I don't want this to go on too long. Oh, Mormonish podcast. Yeah, there's somebody who's saying, don't forget Mormonish podcast. I love Mormonist podcast. I just saw Rebecca and her co host just at a party recently. Also another podcast to shout out is Kyle Ashworth from Latter Gay Stories, an amazing podcast that's doing incredible work and I am really grateful for it. Queer XMO is, is calling a shout out to Cults to Consciousness. Love colts to consciousness YouTube channel.

John Dehlin [02:37:50] That is fantastic. Ry Diddy says I'm too honest for politics. I think that's a sad statement. Colby Reddish. Hey, Colby. Colby says he wants to be my legal advisor. I'm sure I would need it. So thanks, Colby and Colby Reddish. You do great work. I'm really grateful for that.

John Dehlin [02:38:13] All right, so I don't know if there's any other comments. Yeah, I'll just say calm tie dyes writes John. It's a news version of Whack a Mole. The church keeps us busy chasing these stories, hoping we don't have time or energy to keep up. It is crazy how many of these stories are popping up. And I really do think to a large extent it's due to the Mormon Church's refusal to, to address its, its radical right, its fringe right. And if it doesn't get a handle on it, we're just going to see more and more of that.

John Dehlin [02:38:53] All right, let's see. I think that's. I think that's. Oh, oh, we have Lauren in the, in the comments. Lauren from Hidden True Crime. Lauren, I assume it's not Dr. John. Lauren, we love you. Check out Hidden True Crime. We love them. We love collabs with them. Let's do a collab soon. Okay, Well, I gotta run.

John Dehlin [02:39:20] It's been fun. We, you know, I guess the last thing I'll say is we want to do programs and episodes that mean a lot to you that, that attract our viewers and listeners. I should add that we've had. This month has been a phenomenal growth month. We were starting to kind of taper off, frankly, because I was doing less episodes, trying to save my energy, trying to save my sanity and, and just to try to have a better work. Life balance and the past few weeks have just destroyed my work. Life balance and stats were starting to dip. We had had a phenomenal year starting from last fall, largely due, frankly, to the shorts that, that Julia and Gerardo were creating and that we were publishing.

John Dehlin [02:40:05] That was driving a lot of views and attention both through Tik Tok and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. But recently they've been tapering off. But this, this year, this past month has just been mind blowing. We're about to reach. You know, we're probably a month or two away from reaching 200, 000 YouTube subscribers, which for us is just phenomenal and we're really grateful for that. We do welcome all our never Mormons who are viewers and listeners. They reach out to me regularly and I really, really appreciate, appreciate that they do.

John Dehlin [02:40:42] And so I'll just add by saying we love if you have ideas on shows that we can release and produce that would be useful to you,

Tim Marchman [02:40:52] please,

John Dehlin [02:40:53] you know, please email us@mormonstoriesgmail.com because we want to do mind blowing stories that really make a difference. And the, the Jesse Hildebrandt one and the Adam Paul Steedman one, the eight Passenger stuff, the David Archetta stuff, this Tim Baller stuff are examples of shows that just do really well.

John Dehlin [02:41:13] So you know, anytime a whistleblower is willing to speak up about a topic that a lot of people care about, that's amazing. So, you know, difficult research rights I've been trying to catch your attention for three years now. I difficult research.

John Dehlin [02:41:32] All I can say is, is I get hundreds of inquiries a day and so I have to find a way to discriminate. So just keep be persistent but also present your story in a way to where it's going to really catch my eye because sometimes I don't do stories just because I lose track of them. It's not because I don't care or I don't think they're compelling. It's just because I your your story was one of a hundred that I got that day and then I just never remembered to get back to it. So if you want, if, if you want to be on Mormon Stories podcast or know someone who does make it compelling and, and be persistent.

John Dehlin [02:42:16] Cody Littlefield says John for Senate I love it. I do want to give a shout out to Nemo the Mormon as well because he's doing amazing work on his channel. And yeah, that's it for today. Thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories.

John Dehlin [02:42:30] We hope to cover more good stuff in the weeks and months ahead. But I really love you guys. I love the work. I do. Grateful for Maven and Julia and Gerardo and Margi and, and Brooklyn and my board, Clint and Carrie and John Larsen and, and everyone in the broader community as well that have been so supportive. I love the teams. I love the way we collaborate. I love the vibe in this space and it's an honor to be working with you and it's an honor. I just love my audience and I love you listeners and viewers and the community of contributors. So be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.