Welcome to the Mormon News Podcast

John Dehlin [00:00:24] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast and Mormon News Podcast. This is a new podcast that we're offering, a new service through the Open Stories foundation of Mormon Stories. Our goal is to bring you the latest news as it happens. And it's May 31, 2018. It's my brother Joel's birthday. Shout out to my brother Joel. We're broadcasting to you live from Salt Lake City, Utah.

John Dehlin [00:00:54] And we have with us Ryan McKnight from Las Vegas, John Hamer from Toronto, Shawn Carter from Arizona, and Tim's joining us here in the studio. We are really excited for today's episode. The main topic of today's episode is the recent leak on Mormon leaks where Ryan McKnight was able to obtain information regarding the LDS Church's investment portfolios and was able to find something like $32 billion in financial investments. And we're going to be talking about that.

John Dehlin [00:01:30] We are also going to talk about the latest with the Utah Marijuana bill and the LDS Church's involvement. We're going to be talking about the release of John Holt, a Mormon from, I think, Venezuela maybe. We'll talk a tiny bit about

Ryan McKnight [00:01:50] the

John Dehlin [00:01:51] B1 celebration today or tomorrow where the church is celebrating the 40th anniversary of lifting the priesthood ban on blacks in the church and their family, you know, black men and their families, etc. So we'll be talking about all that and we'll be taking your comments and questions. So please share this interview right now on your walls and let people know that we're doing it because the more people we have, the more, the more fun we have. Before we actually dive into the episode. We just have a few quick announcements.

John Dehlin [00:02:29] Again, we're trying this new thing called Mormon News Podcast will be every Thursday trying to do a one hour summary of the week's news. Please tell us if you like this or not, if this is a valued ad to the Mormon Stories podcast news feed or if you think it's a waste of time, we want your feedback.

John Dehlin [00:02:54] We do have several events. Oh, super important news. We have several new Mormon Stories workshops that we've added or at least two that we've added to our list. So for those of you who are struggling in a Mormon faith crisis, for those of you who are struggling in a mixed faith marriage or in your marriage after a faith crisis, if you're worried about being able to raise kids after being an orthodox Mormon, if you're trying to enhance your spirituality after leaving Mormon orthodoxy, if you are trying to find community during and after a faith crisis. And if you need support, mostly communicating with believing family and friends.

John Dehlin [00:03:37] We hold these workshops and retreats once a month all throughout the country. And the purpose of these events is to provide support and community for those who are struggling. They're super highly rated, 4.9 out of 5. Most events people say they saved their marriage, they've alleviated depression anxiety, helped them find lifelong friends, help them heal damaged relationships. We try and make them safe. For non believers and believers, we've got the Park City retreat June 8th through 10th. So you have a little more than a week to register for Park City. Natasha Alpha Parker will be there. Margi will be there. My wife Janice Bengler is going to be there.

John Dehlin [00:04:18] It's going to be a great event. All of this you can find on MormonStories.org events. So we also have the Houston Retreat, July 13th through 15th. Sam Young is going to be there along with Natasha and others. We have Idaho Falls, August 10th, 11th. Register soon on those so that we can make sure we have enough people to cover it. But we're also excited to announce that we're adding two workshops. Portland, Oregon has asked us to hold a workshop August 17th through 18th in Portland.

John Dehlin [00:04:50] And we're really excited to go to Portland. Please register there if you want to in Portland. And then we're adding Sacramento November 2nd through 3rd. Sacramento again asked that we do this. We've also had a lot of interest in Colorado and the Midwest, so we'll be looking to add those soon. And of course we've got the Bahamas cruise October 24th through 28th. That's more fun than anything. But those are the events that we are hosting.

John Dehlin [00:05:18] We do have about six people who are struggling. Most of them are in mixed faith marriages or young marriages where they can't quite afford the fees. Even though we've discounted the registration fees, there are still people who aren't in a position to pay. And so we're asking if anybody is able. We've created a scholarship fund where you can personally sponsor someone to attend. So if you want to save a marriage, if you want to alleviate someone's depression or anxiety, build bridges within families. If you just want to kind of do your good turn, if you stop paying some or all of your tithing to the LDS Church, but you want a really good charitable cause to support, you can go to the link that we just shared on the newsfeed and then also Tim is going to share this in the show notes and you can just donate a couple hundred bucks or whatever you can afford to this scholarship fund, and we can let these remaining six people, there's at least two couples.

John Dehlin [00:06:20] We can let them attend this event and really help people in need, because when people are struggling in a faith crisis, it can be very, very serious and people can make a big difference. For those of you near Salt Lake City, we have Salt Lake City Pride this weekend, so please check it out. And of course, I'm super excited to announce that HBO has finally released the date for the Believer movie.

John Dehlin [00:06:45] This is a movie starring Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons and his family. Also, Tyler Glenn from Neon Trees is in the movie. Several celebrity, kind of Mormon celebrities that you know and love, like Savannah, are in this movie. Tom Kristofferson makes a brief appearance and yours truly, John Dehlin.

John Dehlin [00:07:10] I'm featured in the movie as well. It's going to be released on HBO June 25, and we want all of you to see it, so please check it out. And we'll also share a link to that in the show notes and also on the feed right now on Facebook, because we want everyone to check that out and support it. It's a really important movie about how Dan Reynolds came to become an LGBT ally. And John Hamer, I believe you saw that movie recently, Is that right?

John Hamer [00:07:41] Yeah, yeah. It was here at the Toronto Documentary Film Festival and was very well received. So, yeah, it was really fun to be able to be there and, you know, such movies, talking about such an important cause, and it was fun to be able to see you on the screen.

John Dehlin [00:07:58] How did I do? John, be honest. Don't pull any punches.

John Hamer [00:08:02] You did a very great job.

John Dehlin [00:08:04] All right.

John Hamer [00:08:04] You're a star.

John Dehlin [00:08:06] Well, that's a great endorsement. So June 25th, believer, we just shared the link, but you can also check out the trailer. And then Love Loud, the Love Loud Festival is at the end of July as well. So I think that's enough news. That's enough news introductions for our news episode. Now we need to introduce our panel once again. So everyone here is not a stranger to those of you who follow Mormon Stories podcast. And so we're going to have each introduce themselves. And since, Ryan, you're kind of the star of today's party, why don't you reintroduce yourself to those of our audience who don't know who you are?

Introducing the MormonLeaks Panel

Ryan McKnight [00:08:47] Well, my name is Ryan McKnight. I'm the founder of MormonLeaks. I'm also the co founder of the Truth and Transparency foundation, which is the organization that Ethan Dodge and I formed to operate both Mormon Leaks and Faith Leaks. Which is a sister site to MormonLeaks. And, I mean, that's essentially why I'm here, is because of my involvement in that website.

John Dehlin [00:09:12] Excellent. Well, we're really glad you're here, and we're really excited to talk about this latest. This latest leak. All right, John Hamer, you're no stranger. You're a regular panelist on Mormon News Podcast. Can you give us just a brief introduction and let our listeners know who you are and plug whatever you want to plug?

John Hamer [00:09:33] Okay. Well, I'm John Hamer. I'm coming to you from Toronto, Canada, where I serve as pastor of the Community of Christ Downtown Toronto congregation. I also serve in the office of 70 in the church. My connection in the Mormon borderlands is that I tend to be. I'm part of the Mormon history community, and I've served as the president of the John Whitmer Historical association and also as restoration Studies coordinator for Sunstone. So I do a lot of different work in the field promoting, doing research in Mormon studies and then also blogging and podcasting like this.

John Dehlin [00:10:12] All right, well, we always love having you on, Jonathan, so thanks for making the time. Shawn Carter, we love you, brother. Please give us an intro. Tell us who you are, and we're so glad to have you back.

Guest [00:10:26] Happy to be back. I think I'm most famous for having my own Mormon story. I came in under five hours, so I think that's a record. Let's see. I am a recovering Mormon. I think a lot of us are taking it one day at a time. I think I'm going to make it out. But I make a living telling jokes to lawyers. I am the world's foremost and actually only legal humorist. And so, you know, that's sort of my claim to fame, is to listen to everything you say and have some smart remark after.

John Dehlin [00:11:03] I love it. Well, we're so glad you're here, Sean. Before we dive in, before we dive into the main subject, Sean, tomorrow, we did a panel last week that you weren't able to join us, talking about the fake. The Jonathan Streeter fake apology. And then tomorrow, the church is celebrating its 40th anniversary of lifting the priesthood ban and the temple attending ban for black people. Do you want to just give us a quick, you know, couple minutes on anything you want to say about that whole thing? What was your take on the fake apology? And also, how do you. Are you excited about the celebration tomorrow or not?

The 1978 Priesthood Ban and Unresolved Apologies

Guest [00:11:48] All right, so as far as the fake apology, I don't think I have anything new to say. I Can tell you that personally, I was not as hurt and offended as some of my more believing brothers and sisters, but because it wasn't that big of a deal. But I have to tell you, my wife, who is the least orthodox non believer ever, sent me a text early that morning saying, oh my God, the apology came out. And then she sent me a text even before I got that one saying, oops, never mind. And so I think for a lot of people it was disappointing, right?

Guest [00:12:18] It just, you know, it raised fears and I hope someone touched on this. But as an African American, one of the things that's unique, I think, from being in a white member of the church is that when people meet a black member, the first question they ask is, how do you belong to that racist church? And the Mormons history with blacks in the priesthood is the only thing that a lot of people know about the church. My aunt called me, had no idea about Joseph Smith, the plates or anything. The only question she had was, are they letting in black people yet?

Guest [00:12:53] It's always a question you're always trying to answer and justify and say, well, this church is only 13 years behind the Southern Baptist and that type of thing. Now coming up to Saturdays or I guess, what is it, today's or tomorrow's, I guess, big celebration, I want to ask you guys a question. You're older in the church. None of you probably remember 78, but

John Dehlin [00:13:12] I do, I do.

Guest [00:13:14] Do you? Oh, yeah, that every Mormon heard it on the radio, pulled over the side of the road, weeped tears of joy. There were traffic jams, no one could drive because Mormons everywhere. I've never believed that. Give me your memories as when this happened. How many traffic accidents did you see?

John Dehlin [00:13:38] I was 9 years old and my home teacher, Lawrence Layton came over and told me the news. And I was in my house and I just remember feeling really happy. That's all I remember. John Hamer, do you Remember?

John Hamer [00:13:52] I was 8 years old and I have. I mean, I lived in New Jersey, so I'm not, I'm not. I was always a mission field Mormon. I don't have any recollection of it being so like, you know, this thing where everybody was weeping or anything like that. But, you know, I was a kid, I don't know. And it wasn't directly. There was no direct effect for where I was and, you know, suburban New Jersey. So anyway, so I don't remember it as being huge anyway. Huge news even. But I was just a kid, so awesome.

John Dehlin [00:14:20] Ryan and Tim, I'm assuming you guys Weren't born yet. Is that true?

Ryan McKnight [00:14:24] I'm only 22 years old. I was born in 1981.

John Dehlin [00:14:29] So you missed it.

Ryan McKnight [00:14:31] Yeah, I mean, my only connection as far as thoughts and feelings about the priesthood band when I was a Mormon is that, you know, I always knew there was a ban that got lifted, but when I left the church, I was genuinely surprised to find out how institutionalized the racism was. I was unaware of. I mean, I knew there were racists in the church, but I didn't realize how institutionalized it was. But I mean, that's obviously, you know, feelings and thoughts that came to me in, you know, 2013.

John Hamer [00:15:01] So, yeah, I mean, I can say that definitely. Whatever it is, nine years after we're still. When I was in early morning seminary, my seminary teachers still taught, you know, as doctrine, the pre word, pre existence, the curse of pain and all this kind of thing is completely as if there had been. Nobody got any kind of memo that you weren't supposed to be doing that. And so that was taught as absolute doctrine still way long after I was

Ryan McKnight [00:15:30] taught that as a teenager in the 90s.

John Dehlin [00:15:34] Tim, I'm going to ask you to read a few of the comments, but before I do, Sean, about this topic. Sean, Darren Smith came on Mormon Stories last week and the comment he made was there's no celebration until there's an apology. Do you share that view that the church has no business celebrating the priesthood ban until it makes a full reconciliation, or do you see it differently?

Guest [00:15:59] No, I have always found it strange that the idea was that the church came out in 1978 and said, as the Book of Mormon musical would say, God changed his mind about you, hated you last week, told us that you were less valiant in the pre existence, you were cursed. But God said, you know, we're gonna give up the curse now, and we're good now. Right? And I've always been amazed how black members have even accepted that. It would be like, for instance, if I had been on the street with you, told every one of the neighbors, don't go to that Carter house, they eat babies.

Guest [00:16:32] They're horrible people. And then in 78, I came to my neighbors and said, okay, I'm not telling you that they don't eat babies anymore. I'm simply telling you that you can now go over there, you know, make sure you baby proof the baby, you know, put your baby in a suit of iron. But for the most part, you know, we're not gonna say that we were wrong before. We're not gonna apologize for all the things we said bad about you in the past, we're good. You know, just let's move on from here. And I've always been surprised that African Americans were like, okay, sounds good for me because I've always had, you know, a little bit of a problem with that.

Guest [00:17:07] I think we remember we did our Mormon Stories pod, you know, episode. It was mostly on how race, you know, this issue and other issues of race drove me out of the church. There is this idea that says, if we're not saying bad things about you now, we're good. We're good. You know, we don't ask for apologies. We don't give apologies. You kind of have to ask for apologies if you fear the Lord's church.

John Dehlin [00:17:31] Right. All right, Tim, anything you want to read from the listeners?

Guest [00:17:36] Yeah. Julie Cunningham says that the lifting of the ban was a big deal in the UK between members, so it had international impact. Christy Johnson. Hi, Christy, glad you're joining us for the first time. She says, we were taught that this revelation of 1978 was a sign of the soon to be coming second excuse me, of the soon to be second coming of Christ. So that's kind of interesting to see how it fits in as a sign of the times to some and then others.

Guest [00:18:09] Bibbiana makes reference to something that I recently saw in an article. She says, my husband remembers being at a state conference in California and seeing people actually get mad and leaving the conference in reference to the lifting of the ban. And what I recently read suggested that some members were driven into more fundamental sects of Mormonism when the ban was lifted, so that there might have been some self segregation in that process as well.

John Dehlin [00:18:41] Awesome. Also, shout out to Mark Crego, our own Mark, who's a moderator at a Thoughtful Faith. He says he was 22, working in the church office building the day it was announced, and the air was electric with joy. So for him it was significant and welcome. So thanks for joining us, Mark. All right, well, Sean, thanks for giving us your perspective on that. Let's dive into the main topic for today. Ryan McKnight, you released a bombshell yesterday, and I thought of that as probably one of the biggest and most significant things. So why don't you just give us the background, talk us through it and then talk to us about what you released and what the reaction's been, and John and Sean and I and Tim and our listeners can give comments as you go.

LDS Church's $32 Billion in Secret Stock Investments

Ryan McKnight [00:19:30] Yeah. So I mean, I agree with you that this is likely one of the biggest things that we've released in terms of our mission at Mormon Leagues is to promote transparency. And the number one area where we want to promote transparency is in the realm of finances. So now the release, if people have visited or if they haven't, they can do it after this or whatever. But the sort of heading that we used on the main wiki page of this article is Investment Portfolios connected to the Mormon Church. And we use that language, that specific language that we're using when we say connected as opposed to owned. Although I do believe that they are owned by the Church. And I think that before this chapter is finished being written, that will be established.

John Dehlin [00:20:24] Before you go into it, just tell like for the listeners who haven't read anything, give us a summary of what you've released.

Ryan McKnight [00:20:30] So we have 13 LLCs that are uncovered to be connected to the LDS Church. There's no question of their connection. And these 13 LLCs have a significant amount of holdings in the United States stock market. Enough to trigger a requirement for them to file what's called a Form 13F with the securities and Exchange Commission. Now that is required any company based on what? You know, I'm not an expert in securities and Exchange Commission rules, okay? But based on my research, once a company has over $100 billion in holdings in the stock market, they are required to file this form 13F every single quarter.

John Hamer [00:21:14] 100 billion you're saying, or 100 million?

Ryan McKnight [00:21:18] Yeah, 100 million. And this 13F which is made available publicly on the SEC's website out all kinds of different, all kinds of information, including every single stock and the value at the end of that period, whether it be a quarter or the end of the year, what the value of that stock is.

Ryan McKnight [00:21:40] They also list who is listed as what they refer to as a business manager, which is one of the key components that connects this whole thing to the church. And each of the 13 LLC have a different person listed as the business manager. There is a church employee based, According to the 2015 employee directory, which I have in my possession, there is a church employee with the name of each of these people.

Ryan McKnight [00:22:12] In all, except for one case, there's only one person bearing that name. For one of the names, I believe there were like four people that it was like a real generic name. I think it's like the one that last name, Johnson I think was like David Johnson or something like that. There's like four David Johnson's that work at the church in the 2015 employee hand employee directory. And but the reality is, is that just on that information Alone, this is basically like the largest or the smallest needle in the largest haystack. Because there's no way for somebody to just type in a random name of some employee and then stumble across these things.

Ryan McKnight [00:22:51] Because there's thousands and thousands of employees at the church. The linchpin that, you know, triggered information coming to light is the fact that the, that intellectual reserve, which is the arm of the church that controls all the intellectual property, including the ownership of domain names, owns domain names for each, that match perfectly to each one of these LLCs and then various variations of those domain names to protect it widely. So they'll have, if it's something that says something like Cortland Wealth Management, I don't know if that's the specific name of one of these, but they'll have courtlandwealth.com, cortlandwealthmanagement.com they get all the variations. They were all purchased on the exact Same Day in 2016 and are still currently owned, at least as of the time of our release.

Ryan McKnight [00:23:53] Still currently owned. We published direct links to the WHOIS directory for those along with screenshots of those directories in the event that that information gets changed going forward. We also were able to find, before we attempt, before I attempted to call these people, we found, you know, we have LinkedIn accounts that match church employees and their name for I believe like 7 of the 13. I want to say we also in the release provide links to those LinkedIn accounts.

John Dehlin [00:24:32] Yeah. Just to give some examples. So we have Ashmore Wealth Management and then it's listing Nathan Brown as the head of it and he is employed by the Mormon Church.

Guest [00:24:44] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:24:44] And then we have our Gill research with Brian Davis listed. And you're saying Brian Davis is employed by the LDS Church. Clifton Park Capital Management with Don Klaus employed by the Mormon Church. So basically the church is setting up all these LLCs and they're investing a crap ton of money in each LLC and then they're picking employees to run them, assuming that they, through this employment arrangement, have a way to manage and control, you know, what happens with these assets?

Ryan McKnight [00:25:20] Well, I don't know. Well, look, yes and no. I mean, one thing that I haven't been able to figure out is what does it mean to be listed as a business manager on this filing? Like what responsibilities does that imply that person has with this llc? I don't know. But what I can tell you is that some of these, according to some of their Linkedins, some of them seem to be very low level employees with the church. And one of them, I think, has listed on their LinkedIn internal auditor as their position. And anybody that knows about the world of auditing knows that somebody who is an internal auditor would not be involved in managing a fund like this.

John Dehlin [00:26:01] So I'm going to read the names and if any of our listeners know any of these people. Cole Lundqvist, Michael Christensen, Aaron Davis, Troy Nielsen, Brad Barlow. Some of them don't have names. Alan Wilson.

Ryan McKnight [00:26:17] No, they should all have a name.

John Dehlin [00:26:18] They all have a David Johnson, Roger Evans, Christy Woodward. Okay, we have a female and she's

Ryan McKnight [00:26:27] the one that confirmed, by the way, David.

John Dehlin [00:26:29] She confirmed. So you did reach out to try and confirm these people. So what I. Matthew Lawrence. Okay, go ahead.

Ryan McKnight [00:26:36] Well, so, because we knew this was going to be a very significant leak, and so we wanted to do, you know, as much due diligence as we possibly could. Now you say, okay, the church owns these LLCs. There is an employee in the employee directory that matches the name of each one of these. It's almost impossible for that to be a coincidence.

Guest [00:26:57] Right.

Ryan McKnight [00:26:58] But I still based, you know, I took the phone numbers that were in the Employee Directory 2015 that I had and I called all of the numbers. Three of them answered. The first two that answered was Aaron Davis, I believe was the first person that answered, and Troy Nielsen was the second one. And basically my conversation with them went something like this.

Ryan McKnight [00:27:26] Aaron answers the phone. He says, this is Aaron. I said, oh, Aaron Davis, yes. You're the business manager for Riverhead Capital Management. No, I am not. And then I said, okay, My name's Ryan McKnight with the Truth and Transparency Foundation. I'm trying to follow up on some SEC filings. And I was just trying to get a hold of the. This businessman or Eric Davis, I guess that's not you. And he says, nope, you've got the wrong number. Something along those lines. And the conversation with Troy Nelson went exactly the same way.

Ryan McKnight [00:27:57] The third person who answered was Christy. And I said, you know, this is Christy. And I said, Christy Woodward? She said, yes. Are you the manager of Glen Harbor Capital Management?

Guest [00:28:07] Yes.

Ryan McKnight [00:28:08] And I said, okay, great. I said, I'm Brian McKnight with Truth and Transparency foundation following up on some SEC filings. And I'm trying to figure out if these LLCs are owned by the LDS Church. And she said, I cannot answer that. And then something that we didn't include in our write up, but I followed that up with. So just to clarify, it's not that you don't know, but you're not able to answer one way or the other. And she said, correct. And then I said, fair enough. Thank you for your time. Have a good day.

John Dehlin [00:28:38] For the dudes that said no, do you think you had the wrong guys or do you think they were lying?

Ryan McKnight [00:28:42] I think they were lying. And in fact, before Christy answered the phone. So I'm still thinking that I'm not gonna get anybody to say yes. I came away from those conversations thinking that they were lying. The tone and the shortness in their voices, this is just my own. Obviously, I can't call for the operation of their minds, but I came away from those conversations that they were being evasive, they were lying, and they were trying to get me off the phone as soon as possible.

John Dehlin [00:29:13] Okay, now real quick, let's back up just a tiny bit like Michael Quinn did. I don't know, two decades of research for his book and he didn't find any of this. Are these LLCs that have just been created recently, or are these LLCs that have been around a long time and we just didn't know about them?

Ryan McKnight [00:29:32] If you click on each one, we do provide the date and a link to the Delaware Secretary of State website for when they were formed. I believe the earliest one is in 2011, but the majority of them, if I recall correctly, were formed in 2016, incorporated in Delaware at that time. But here's the thing. Without knowing about the domain ownership by the intellectual reserve there, really, I don't think there would be any way to find these LLCs and connect them to the church, because the only other thing that connects them to the church are these business managers that are listed. But how would you even know to search for that?

John Dehlin [00:30:14] Okay, so it's a really simple process when you purchase a domain to make it private, who owns the domain? Are you telling me the Church just forgot to push the make the secret button on the domain purchase?

Ryan McKnight [00:30:30] Here's my working theory on this. You know, I can't prove it one way or the other, but as I'm. I'm wondering the same thing that you're saying. This is a huge mistake that they made because they took other measures to hide who owns these domains or these LLCs. I'm guessing because we all know that the church is this huge red tape bureaucracy, much like a government agency. Okay? And I'm guessing at some point over in Ensign Peak, they're in a meeting. Somebody says, hey, you know, we probably should get these domains because you just never know what could happen down the road. Somebody says, yeah, that's A good idea.

Ryan McKnight [00:31:05] And then the next step would be for them to fill out some sort of a purchase order that gets sent over to Intellectual Reserve for processing. Intellectual Reserve receives a purchase order. They don't know what this is all about. They're probably not involved in Enzyme Peak at all. They just, they probably get these purchase orders all the time. Time for domains, they process it the way they processed every other one. You know, we have a list of I think somewhere around 2000 domains the church owns. So this is just another handful of domains. They process it by it the way they buy every other domain.

Ryan McKnight [00:31:34] And neither party thought about the importance of, you know, hiding who owns it. And I think it was just sort of an oversight because of, you know, the left hand really not understanding what the right hand is doing. You know, know, maybe the investment people never really considered who is information and the people in Intellectual Reserve never understood the importance of maybe what the who is information would be.

John Dehlin [00:31:59] I guess, I guess there's also a possibility that the Church is saying let's be transparent. But you're saying you've, you've detected.

Ryan McKnight [00:32:07] I mean, you know, sure.

Guest [00:32:09] Why are you laughing?

John Dehlin [00:32:10] John Hamer and Sean, why are you guys laughing?

Guest [00:32:14] My job to tell the jokes, not your.

Ryan McKnight [00:32:19] Yeah, I didn't realize I was coming on here for Comedy Hour. I mean, sure. Look, I'm. In all seriousness, if they believe in Mormon, which I think would be the only person to make a statement like that, seriously, if a believing Mormon wants to take that position, they're free to do so. This is a free country.

Guest [00:32:38] I'm looking through these four forms and by the way, you know, before I was a professional clown, I actually was a corporate securities lawyer. And so I'm looking through these forms here and I'm noticing something strange. And you look more into this. So you talk so and so is, you know, the manager listed on the 13F, the 13F has a place to list tons of managers. And it lists, it says, you know, list all your managers who have discretion or you know, over the account, it lists just one person. And in the actual holdings file, so I'm looking at was Ashmore now and it shows all the companies they hold or at least originally Apple, Applied Materials, et cetera.

Guest [00:33:14] And for column six, it says investment discretion. Sold. Sold. Sold. I'm finding it hard to believe like you are, that lower level employee has sole discretion over, oh, I don't know, in this case I'm looking at 520 million or $520,000 or actually maybe million of Apple stock.

Guest [00:33:37] You know, that seems to me, you know, the. We talk about $32 billion of assets here, but the Church would not put that in the hands of.

Ryan McKnight [00:33:47] I have another working theory on that point. My theory on that is, and keep in mind, I'm no expert in the filing compliance with these forms, but my guess is that they chose the lowest level employee that they could legally put these forms. And the reason why they would do that. Listen, it's based on sources that I have inside the church, both in finance areas and outside. I can say confidently that one of the secrets that the Church wants to guard with all of their might and strength is the names of the people that actually control the money. And so I believe that that is what motivates them to use the most random name they can legally get away with using.

Guest [00:34:40] And I'm sure that's probably not, you know, the only people to do that. I'm also curious. As you know, the church is notoriously cheap with paying employees. You don't get people who can hold, who can buy 520 million Apple stock for you and pay them, you know, 42 grand a year.

Ryan McKnight [00:35:00] Yeah, yeah. I've spoken to a couple of people who are very versed in this world of high money investments. I've spoken to somebody who actually owns an investment firm that manages, I believe, over a billion dollars. I've also spoken to some other people that are very close to Ensign Peak Advisors. And what I can tell you is I'm being told by all of these people that the Church is very sophisticated and savvy in the way they manage their investments. They are not anywhere close to being amateurs. So yes, I think it's accurate to say that the guy that is listed on his LinkedIn as internal auditor for the LDS Church has probably zero decision making powers when it comes to these funds.

John Dehlin [00:35:50] Yeah. Ken, our listener writes, I think these business managers are only a point of contact. And I think that's.

Ryan McKnight [00:35:55] Yeah, that might be the case as well.

John Dehlin [00:35:56] That's pretty reasonable. Oh, go ahead. I was gonna ask your question.

Ryan McKnight [00:36:02] I was also speaking to the same person who owns an investment firm, a very large investment firm. And I said, hey, you know what, I expect the salary of somebody who is managing funds of these sizes to be the highest level person, organization of people that are managing these funds. But it can vary widely based on what exactly their fiduciary responsibilities are, how the ownership is particularly structured. But he would say a minimum would be in the $500,000 range, up to as much as $20 million a year. So whoever is involved in managing these funds are, because the church would have to pay them competitive salaries to keep them. And I'm sure, I have no doubt that they're worth every penny. These are people who are making an extreme.

John Dehlin [00:36:54] Ryan, your audio. Ryan, your audio broke up for a second on us.

Ryan McKnight [00:37:00] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:37:01] I don't know how again.

Ryan McKnight [00:37:03] So what was the last thing that you heard there?

John Dehlin [00:37:07] You're. You're basically just saying that they would have to pay someone a lot of money.

Ryan McKnight [00:37:10] Yeah, I mean, he told me that it would. It would. It's a wide range of what a person like that could make based on this structure of the organization. He said at a. The low end would be in the $500,000 a year range up to possibly $20 million a year to manage a fund like these.

John Dehlin [00:37:29] Right, right. Okay, Couple quick things. I saw on Reddit that the church. Someone estimated that the church actually owns more Apple stock than Tim Cook, who's the CEO of Apple. I don't know if that's true, but that's something that I read. I also read over a billion dollars of holdings in big Pharmaceuticals, which raised questions about the church's involvement in the medical marijuana initiative in Utah. But Ryan, so what's the total amount you were able to estimate all the different holdings managing?

Ryan McKnight [00:38:06] It's around $32 billion at the year end, 2017.

John Dehlin [00:38:10] At the year in 2016 or 2017.

Ryan McKnight [00:38:12] 2017. And you can actually go on the website that we link to in the wiki, and there's actually more recent data from first quarter. So if somebody wanted to take the time to actually pull the most recent data, I only looked at the totals and it's still around the same amount. There is some change.

John Dehlin [00:38:32] Okay, really quick. Oh, was someone going to say something?

John Hamer [00:38:35] I was going to ask also. This is John Hamer. I was going to ask, you know, this is. Since these are pretty much all new, all of these LLCs that you've uncovered and everything. So is this amount, when we're talking about that total, is that different from what people are already aware of, for example, in like these property companies that are more directly, directly owned? So that's like a whole nother property. Right.

Ryan McKnight [00:38:58] This doesn't include any real estate holdings. It doesn't include any potential international holdings. It doesn't include any of like the Bonneville Communications assets or, you know, 80 radio stations. You know, KSL does all that kind of stuff, like those premium office buildings that they own downtown Salt Lake City, you know, that are probably worth millions and millions and millions of dollars. It doesn't include any of that. And I would also say that I'm pretty confident in saying, based on my sources, and I do think this will come out in some serious reporting here in the next week or two, that their actual stock portfolio is probably four to five times this number. Their actual. We probably are missing other. In fact, I know we are.

John Dehlin [00:39:48] We're talking hundreds of the church being worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Ryan McKnight [00:39:52] I have what I would consider to be a very reliable source. And like I said, I'm in the process of working on getting them to be able to talk to some large national media on the record in an anonymous condition. And I think it could be as much as 400 or $500 billion total asset. Not in the stock market, but when you total assets together, four or five hundred billion dollars.

John Dehlin [00:40:22] Go ahead.

Guest [00:40:23] All in agreement that the church is never going to come clean about this. But, but my question is, why like this, like something to be bragging about to say the members, hey, when you give us your money, we don't just go out there and waste it on, you know, suits and Bentleys and cars. Look at, look at the fruit we bear. You know, it almost the kind of church likes to brag about his members. You know, I can imagine them being like McDonald's, but we've got $500 billion of assets now. You know, we are a trillion dollar organization. Why isn't the church, you know, I'm bragging about this stuff.

Ryan McKnight [00:40:54] Well, one of my sources who is very closely tied to Ensign Peak Advisors actually addressed this with me and he specifically said that it's a conscious effort to hide these things because they are worried about the public perception. They're not necessarily ashamed of it, but they are worried that, you know, obviously there's always going to be some people that will pay their tithing no matter what. But they are worried that this could influence some maybe people on the fringes to sort of maybe not pay their tithing. And I think people who are looking for help too from the church might approach it differently.

Ryan McKnight [00:41:34] Maybe the community of Christ would have negotiated the sell of their printing press or whatever it was they sold a couple months ago, differently, that kind of thing. So all of those things, I think are motivation behind wanting to hide these things. And I do want to emphasize that hiding these things, from what I can tell, is not illegal in the way that they're hiding them. But I definitely think there's a debate and there may be some illegalities, but I've just never Seen. I haven't seen anything to suggest that yet, but there's definitely a debate on the ethics of it, I think.

Guest [00:42:06] Well, here's my concern. The purpose of the 13F, interesting enough, isn't to tell who the actual owners of this stock is, but it is to tell us who is in control of this, because manager that in different organizations holds 80% of the stock of a company we're concerned about to know, really, you know, in control of this company. And the fact that if you don't show the actual person who has the authority here, then I could see the SEC having a little problem with it. Not a big problem.

Ryan McKnight [00:42:34] Sure.

Guest [00:42:35] You know, you got a guy who's controlling $32 billion of assets and they're all, you know, in 20 companies. That's an important thing for us to know.

Ryan McKnight [00:42:44] Yeah, I agree. And look, it is within the realm of possibilities. I won't discount this possibility that the church is managing other people's money. And in fact, many active Mormons on social media threads are saying that that's the most likely scenario. I don't think that's the most likely scenario because, I mean, whatever. But even if it was, even if that was the case, let's say that was the church's money or half of it was the Church's money and the other half was like them managing other people's money. I'm not sure how that make changes the scenario because since when is, you know, the LDS Church in the business of being money manager?

John Dehlin [00:43:20] Well, we.

Ryan McKnight [00:43:21] I don't know that it changes.

Church Tipped Off and Reactions to the Leak

Guest [00:43:23] So.

John Dehlin [00:43:23] Ryan, I don't know if you. You heard our interview with Roger Hendricks the past couple of weeks, but we released a 10, 10 and a half hour interview with a man who was on the board of directors of the Deseret Trust Company, called to that position by Gordon B. Hinckley himself, served 18 years on the board. And the very purpose of the Deseret Trust Company is to, through LDS philanthropies, to convince rich Mormons to not give their money to their children or to minimize the amount of money that they give to their children and instead give that money to the church. The church invests that for them

Guest [00:44:01] in

John Dehlin [00:44:01] trust, you know, as a trust, and then, you know, disperses it as the trust directs, but also keeps a big cut. So, yeah, we know that the church is. We know that the church is in the business of investing people's money.

Ryan McKnight [00:44:15] No, and I am aware of that and I agree. And that's one of the reasons why I suppose that this particular $32 billion. It's within the realm of possibilities that it falls into that category. But just the way are structured, I find it hard to believe that these particular LLCs fall into that category. I would be happy to be proven wrong. We would update our wiki if that would be proven to be the case. But also, at the end of the day, I don't think it changes the leak because whether or not it's their money or it's other people's money that they're managing, I think it's significant and important information to know that the church is in control of these assets.

Ryan McKnight [00:44:57] Now, the other theory that I saw put out there by believing members is these were existing investment firms with existing clients the church acquired. Now, a couple things I would say to that I find that to be almost an impossibility for because these LLCs, most of them are fairly new and none of them have any footprint in real life. There's no indication that they're real companies, right. That they have like, locations or websites or marketing. And the idea that these companies amassed billions of dollars in investments without any kind of like, footprint in the world is highly unpleasant. But even if that was the case, the church still would have had to purchase it with something.

Ryan McKnight [00:45:46] They would have been given $32 billion for free to, you know, from these companies. So all those things, they might be within the realm of possibilities. Want to answer these questions? I don't know that it really changes the overall message and importance of this leak. And I also would point to the fact that the church. The only response from the church so far, which was to KUTV and I think also maybe Fox 13 was to direct them to their press Release from the 22nd, which simply says the church owns stocks. So to me, and yeah, we own stocks. So I don't know what else to say on that.

John Dehlin [00:46:25] So a couple listeners have reminded us, Alma reminds us that the church owns 2% of the land in Florida. And then also Julie Cunningham reminds us that the church is one of the biggest landowners in the uk. Prime land. Real quick, Ryan, what can you tell us? Is this something where you, Ryan McKnight, is just like, hey, I'm scrolling through domain names and you stumble on this stuff? Or did somebody reach out to you and do this footwork for you and then let you know about it? How did this. Without revealing anything that would compromise anyone's confidentiality, what can you tell us about how this story came to light?

Ryan McKnight [00:47:10] Yeah, I mean, I wish I could take 100% credit on this, but the reality is, is yes, we were tipped off about this.

John Dehlin [00:47:17] What was the tip?

Ryan McKnight [00:47:18] So we did receive. And I'm going to be a little

John Dehlin [00:47:21] bit vague here, but what can you tell us about the tip?

Ryan McKnight [00:47:25] There is somebody who made the connection and did a lot of the. I don't know how many hours it took them to do it, but they, they basically compiled some of the, basically the raw data and gave us the raw data. Then we took it and we verified each one. We put it into a format that was presentable, we gathered screenshots, we gathered all the evidence to support it, the raw data that we could and all that kind of legwork. But yes, there is a source. And by the way, I just want to say I told this person, I said, you should come forward and take credit for this. And as of right now, I'm not even sure why, but they don't want to be involved at all. But I've told them that as soon as that changes, I will plaster their name all over this and give them the credit that they are due.

John Dehlin [00:48:19] Got it. Shawn Hamer, you haven't spoken much yet in this. Tell us if you have any reactions or thoughts to this story. What does it mean to you? Is it significant? Is it just sort of. Yeah, we know the church is rich. How do you take this story?

John Hamer [00:48:34] Well, I was amazed by this, the way it's come out because the church has one. The oldest church has wanted to be keep. It's well known that it's rich, but it doesn't want to advertise that or to get anybody, let anybody know the details of it. And so this idea that the bureaucracy over at Intellectual Reserve or whatever just took all these secret LLCs, has registered the domain names without hiding the who is information is pretty remarkable oversight on that.

John Hamer [00:49:06] Anyway, so kudos to the researcher that found that out because I know lots and lots of historians and journalists always would like to know this number. And there's been all kinds of different ways that people pursue trying to track down, you know, what the holdings might be, one of the ways that they've done, people have tried to do that in the past is because, for example, here in Canada, the law is that if you are a charity or including a religious charity, a religion not for profit, you have to file all of your taxes and holdings and everything like that. So there's total transparency. And you can go to Revenue Canada and just look at, for example, I'm, you know, the pastor of a congregation here.

John Hamer [00:49:50] You can see exactly what our budget is, exactly what of all of our expenses and costs and every other kind of thing, because we file that every year. And everybody can observe that as a religious charity in Canada. It's not the case in the US where you don't have that. And it's probably a law that would be nice if the US Were to revise, if it was possible to ever make any good new laws in the United States. But in the meantime, getting access to some of this information, I mean, like you say, it's not a surprise. We assume that the amount is actually much larger.

John Hamer [00:50:20] But it's amazing to maybe get access through this particular portal into this facet of what the LDS Church has got in terms of its assets.

John Dehlin [00:50:31] A couple comments from Reddit that are really interesting. Somebody wrote that they estimate that if the Church just had an 8% return on that 32 billion, that they would bring in about 2.5 billion a year just in their investments. So that's a pretty big chunk of change, 2.5 billion just from an 8% return on that. So, I mean, the operating budget could be massive, I guess, for the church. And that's an interesting point. Somebody else shares a quote from Joseph F. Smith on Ex Mormon Reddit, April 1907, where Joseph F. Smith says, we, we expect to see the day when we will not have to ask you for $1 of donation for any purpose, because we will have tithes sufficient in the storehouse of the Lord to pay everything that is needful for the advancement of the kingdom of God.

John Dehlin [00:51:22] So Joseph F. Smith was hoping that we'd be so rich that the members wouldn't need to pay tithing anymore. It seems like we've come a long way since then.

Guest [00:51:32] But that's like everyone that is like when you get a new highway done and there's supposed to be a toll road for the next 30 years, and then after that road, we pay for it, but then we sort of never get rid of the toll booths. They're too expensive to remove. And so with that, I imagine that was literally someone's intention at one point. And they're like, you know what? We could keep same thing. Every university does that Harvard has an endowment in hundreds of billions of dollars. And, you know, they could actually not charge tuition anymore. But why would you do that? And so I imagine at one point that was a legitimate goal.

Guest [00:52:06] But, you know, you got to get to The Catholics have like five times that amount. You got it. You got to 100. You gotta, you know, you can't be a real player if you don't have a trillion dollars. Really.

Ryan McKnight [00:52:18] Well, additionally, even if the church doesn't need the money, and I'm gonna say something somewhat tongue in cheek, but I think a lot of Mormons will would take this seriously. Even though the church might not need the money, the members need the blessings still, you know, and I've actually seen comments to that effect like this has no bearing on whether or not I pay my tithing because I receive blessings from paying my tithing.

John Hamer [00:52:42] Yeah. And also, by the way, in terms of commitment level to the institution. And so even if the church doesn't actually need the members to give the money, by giving the money, the members are committed to the church and they need that commitment. So, I mean, we had here. So like I mentioned, our finances are completely transparent. When we built our last church, the previous one, the one we're in now, for a whole long time, for 30, 40 years, we had a mortgage on the church. And so at some point or other, I'm reading in the past pastor's notes or logs or reports from the end of the year, the business meeting, they paid down the mortgage and they had completely retired the mortgage as of 1973.

John Hamer [00:53:21] And he says that he thinks that it's probably even as much as it's a cause for celebration, it may mean that we won't have anything we're working towards anymore. So he anticipated that it meant that there would be less that would unify the congregation. So we had this thing, we were building a building, then we had the building. We didn't have to pay for it anymore, and so there was less to do.

John Dehlin [00:53:47] There's another comment on ex Mormon Reddit where it says that Bill Gates alone has donated over $50 billion to charity. Just 4 billion in the last year alone. Do any of you remember how much. Wasn't there a recent number of how much the church has donated in charity, like, over the past 20 years?

Ryan McKnight [00:54:04] I think it was like an average of $40 million a year for 20 years, something like that.

John Dehlin [00:54:08] 40 million.

Ryan McKnight [00:54:09] 40 million a year on average. And I think that was a quote from Oakes, if I remember correctly. People can correct me if I'm wrong on that, but I think it was either a part of an interview with him or maybe he was just quoted as something else in the article. But yeah, there was an official statement from somebody from the church within the last two years saying that on average, over the last 20 years, it's 40 million a year. Or they might have, like, in a total dollar, maybe they said in the last years, we've donated 120 billion or 1.2 billion in the last 20 years, something like that.

John Hamer [00:54:42] Yeah, but I mean to that dollar amount for all the portions of this that is for profit, you know, so these holdings are, you know, the church in its pre press releases more or less saying that, you know, obviously portions of what it is, is a charity where they don't have to pay as a religious institution, they don't have to pay taxes, but some of these holding companies and things like that are for profit. And so then they, you know, wouldn't be obliged to pay taxes on those. As a for profit American tax dodge thing, you'd have to at least give 40 million to charity just to avoid paying your taxes, you know, so anyway, so.

Ryan McKnight [00:55:15] Well, there's like, there are some, I saw some theories floating out there, I have no idea how legitimate they are, but there's some people on like Reddit and whatnot suggesting that these LLCs, while they might be for profit entities, have the ability to make tax deductible donations to the Church of profits. I don't know if that's exactly what you're talking about, John, but yeah, and one thing I'd like to point out, and I'm speaking just for myself here, you know, and I'm serious when I say this, this does not have to be a point of criticism for the church. I think there is legitimate criticism.

Ryan McKnight [00:55:53] I empathize with the criticism, but I don't want people to think that this, you know, this is not about saying for us from Mormon leaks, this is not about saying, oh, the church should not have this money. Personally, I could care less how much the church has and I don't want to stop them from having any of this money.

Ryan McKnight [00:56:10] And I mean, for me, if I were going to criticize the church based on the information that has come forward here, the biggest criticism for me right now, and maybe that'll change tomorrow, I don't know. For me, this is the first thing that came to my mind when I found this. The church has $32 billion minimum that we can prove.

Ryan McKnight [00:56:30] And if somebody doesn't pay tithing for one reason or another, they're not allowed to attend their child's wedding. And that when I juxtapose those two thoughts in my mind, that bothered me a lot. And I know that might not be the most significant criticism to come out of this, but that was my very first thought when I saw this was the idea that you could be punished in such a way, you know, when

John Dehlin [00:56:56] anyway you also have this thought of the church in Africa and Latin America, Philippines, where. Where basically the church is saying, pay your tithing, you know, before you pay your debts or buy food, you know, or pay your tithing first. Right.

Ryan McKnight [00:57:13] Or what Nelson said recently in Africa where he told the people that pain tithing would be their path out of poverty. You know, I don't know where that logical leap makes a connection. I mean, when you juxtapose that with this, that also kind of there's a sour taste in your mouth. But as far as like, you know, whether or not the church should have this money, I mean, I'm all for the, you know, I'm in.

John Dehlin [00:57:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ryan McKnight [00:57:36] I empathize with the criticism. I think it's a legitimate criticism. It's just not a criticism I'm particular, I particularly care about. I'm just glad that we're able to put a dollar amount instead of guessing. You know, I think John Hamer alluded to this earlier about one of the significance of this leak is that it takes some of the guessing out. I mean, before, yes, we knew the church was wealthy, we knew they had private investments, but any kind of number that was thrown out was simply a guess or an estimate. And even if somebody would have said $32 billion, it would have just been in a guess or an estimate.

General Authority Pay and Church Financial Transparency

Ryan McKnight [00:58:07] And you know, it's like with the pay of the general authorities, it used to be that they received a modest stipend. Well, then everybody has their own interpretation of what modest stipend means until we release pay stubs. Well, every. Everybody had their own interpretation of what investments in the stock market meant until now. We can actually put a dollar sign to it and actually something substantive.

Guest [00:58:30] Let me just say this in defense of the church. This is coming from a different background. I come from a Baptist background, a background where it's amazing to me that the head of this church with we know, hundreds of billions of dollars gets a modest stipend of what, $120,000 a year. I'm almost disappointed in them that they're not stealing more. That's really sad. They need to go to a Baptist conference.

Ryan McKnight [00:59:00] Oh, but they are. They are.

Guest [00:59:03] But how much? I mean, I mean. Cause I gotta tell you, first of all, there was a big preacher recently who made a lot of news because he asked for $54 million for a private jet. Find himself around, and it just seems to me that Nelson really, really could step up his game, you know, get a jet.

Ryan McKnight [00:59:21] Well, I would just say a couple things to that. First of all, the stipend that you're referring to specifically in the memo that we released refers to it as a base stipend. And, and, and we know through sources that there are additional monies that they receive. We haven't been necessarily able to prove that. We've proved some of it, but not really anything significant, but I would, I would, you know, so they're probably bringing at a minimum, a couple hundred thousand dollars each a year. At a minimum. But also on top of that, a huge chunk of their lives are paid for by the church. So when they receive.

Ryan McKnight [00:59:53] Let's say they receive. Let's just say they only received the 120,000. That's basically all discretionary income. Okay. Because, for example, the church has. And, you know, this is stuff that I know through multiple independent sources. The church has a fund for each one of the apostles that is that each apostle. And it's a fund that gets replenished every year.

Ryan McKnight [01:00:20] And it's a large amount of money, probably in the 50 to $100,000 range each year that they can. That literally gets used for any improvements or fixing of their residence. So, you know, they want to remodel their kitchen. It comes out of that fund. They want to put in a new, you know, we have a guy that worked and installed a new.

Ryan McKnight [01:00:44] What do you call it, entertainment system in one of the apostles homes. And that all gets coordinated through one of the facility departments at the church office building. And it all gets paid for by church funds because they live in parishes. Right. Their residences are considered parishes or legal term that they use. And so, you know, when they travel, you know, and they have Costco cards that. Credit cards that are paid for by the church. So, you know. Yeah, on the surface you say, oh, 120,000 is not a lot of money for what they do. But what we don't know and what we haven't been able to fully establish is what's the plus? Plus.

John Dehlin [01:01:20] Plus.

Ryan McKnight [01:01:20] That comes after that 120.

Guest [01:01:22] But let's put this in perspective. I was just looking here on the website. The BYU football coach gets a half a year.

John Dehlin [01:01:29] How much? You broke up.

Guest [01:01:31] I'm sorry. The BYU football coach gets a million and a half a year.

Ryan McKnight [01:01:34] Yeah.

Guest [01:01:35] Okay. And he's lowly paid as a football coach. A million and a half to run the football. If you run hundred billion dollar organization. Yeah, I expect that you, you get, you get your. And I'm sure I'd be a little concerned with anybody who would do it for.

Ryan McKnight [01:01:50] Well, I, Yeah, I'm Sure. That the people that are actually running these funds, like, are making that kind of money. And the apostles are largely figureheads when it comes to the business. I know that they do have some executive powers and things like that that they can employ, but they are not involved very much in the financial matters of the church. And so I would say that there's probably a number of employees that make a lot more money than them. And as any of us who've ever worked out in real world, we know that the most powerful person in an organization is not always the person whose name is on the letterhead. It's usually the person who makes the most money. And we probably have no idea the name or names of the people that make the most money at the church, and they're the ones that are actually pulling the strings.

John Dehlin [01:02:40] All right. Well, Ryan, is there anything else that aside from kind of things we're theorizing about or speculating about, is there anything else about the facts of this story that you want to make sure our listeners know?

Ryan McKnight [01:02:53] I know a big question that people have directed at me in various platforms, and I've been ignoring the question. And the question is, is there any. What is the connection, if any, to the May 22nd release of that statement on finances? Because it was kind of a random statement that they released. And then a couple days later we released this. And I would say to that question, I hope to be able to share more about that at some point. But I will just say right now that we have a strong reason to believe that the release of that was either in part or completely inspired or motivated by the impending release of this information.

John Dehlin [01:03:35] So the church caught wind that you were going to do this, and they got ahead of it by releasing a press release.

Ryan McKnight [01:03:41] I think if the day comes where we disclose the entire timeline, I think 100% of the people that hear it will come to the conclusion of what I just said. I'll say it.

John Dehlin [01:03:50] Yeah. All right, Ryan. Well, this is awesome. We've got a couple other stories to cover, and so let's just go ahead and try and jump to a few, and then we'll call it a day. I think it's interesting what we found out this week is that the Utah Medical Cannabis act was officially certified, I guess, by Spencer J. Cox, Lieutenant Governor.

Utah Medical Cannabis Initiative and Church Opposition

John Dehlin [01:04:19] So in spite of the LDS Church's efforts, along with the Utah Medical association and the Eagle Forum, in spite of their attempts to subvert this petition that went around to get medical cannabis legalized in Utah, all of that money and effort failed all of that good money that the church spent to try and defeat this even being on the ballot, appears to have failed. Unless I guess, a judge overturns this decision this fall, Utahns will have a chance to go to the polls and vote for the legalization of cannabis. Interestingly, I was sent a poll that's recently been shared which shows that.

John Dehlin [01:05:09] That there's a lot of support in Utah for medical cannabis. And interestingly, the church's attempt at sort of intervening right now, it says that 72% of Utahns support the initiative, which is a big number. So the church has a lot of work to do to try and keep the initiative from being legalized.

John Dehlin [01:05:33] But what these recent polls, if you go to utahpolicy.com under features, there's a poll that shows that Utahns are divided by the church's opposition to the medical marijuana ballot initiative. I think what's kind of interesting about this from my perspective, is that 40% of Utahns are more likely to support the initiative now that the church has opposed it, and then there's 40% who are less likely to support it now that the church has weighed in. So any of you, John Hamer, why don't we let you start. Any thoughts on the legalization of marijuana and the church's involvement and the fact that this will go to ballot. Do you even have a prediction?

John Hamer [01:06:26] No, I don't have a prediction. I'm not good at these political predictions, as we've kind of known from the last. What I guess would say is that the past performance on these things is that when there's a medical marijuana referendum on the ballot, then that's more likely to get younger voters out, voters who otherwise might not vote in a midterm election. And so that could just be one of the. The multiple strands that are making 2018 potentially like 2010 or something in terms of when there's a midterm election that people actually go to vote and they could potentially cause big changes in Congress or who knows? I don't know. Utah's a tough nut because of the. It's got a Republican lockup, right. Lockout or whatever on the state generally.

John Dehlin [01:07:16] So, yeah. But it is interesting to me. This poll says that 60% of Catholics, after reading the church's analysis, are more likely to support the initiative. 60% of Protestants are more likely to support the initiative. And those who don't like, those who belong to some other religion don't like the church's analysis at a 66 to 22% ratio. So as Utah becomes increasingly secular. And my understanding is Salt Lake county is as non Mormon as it is Mormon at this point. As a lesbian mayor, we know the Park City is overwhelmingly non lds. As Utah's non LDS population grows, I think what this poll is suggesting is that the church may be in the position of the more it opposes things in the legislative process, the more it actually increases the opposition to whatever stance it's taking. So it may backfire

John Hamer [01:08:23] whenever you have a situation where even a minority, which is to say, what has been in the past for the last century or so, all of the non Mormons in Utah have been in the political minority because the state has been able to be kind of controlled by Mormon loyalists in terms of all the government. At a certain point, you have, like, a lot of political resentment that builds up. And so it's not a big surprise that all the even Catholics and Protestants who maybe might not have been in favor of medical marijuana. If the Mormon churches takes the opposing perspective and weighs the thumb on the scale, they automatically are going to want to have an opposing force.

Guest [01:09:05] Agree, John. And also I think it hurts or helps when you have no good reason. I'm still trying to figure out, maybe someone can help me out here. What is the church's reasoning? They think that medical marijuana is going to lead to what, dancing and maybe black people. Explain to me what the thought process is about a plant. I mean, it's not like Mormons don't like their medication, their pharmaceuticals. Right. And their plastic surgery. So what exactly is the church's opposition to using this plant for medical purposes?

Ryan McKnight [01:09:38] It's control.

Guest [01:09:39] I'll jump in for just a quick second because that leads us to a couple of the reader questions that we have on Facebook. People are interested to see how the leak that Ryan and his organization has come out with recently will shed light on any potential holdings that the church has with pharmaceutical companies and how this might be connected, which you also alluded to earlier, John. So what is the issue people are asking with medical marijuana? And we might find out more in the future with that.

Ryan McKnight [01:10:12] I'll chime in a little bit on that and see what you guys think of this. First of all, to what, Sean? To his specific question. I'm convinced that it really just comes down to America, matter of control. You know, the church for, you know, however many decades has either implicitly or explicitly included marijuana in the list of things that are against the word of wisdom. And like I said, that that can have been done implicitly by saying, you know, illegal substances and, you know, if they, if they're only if their main justification for it being against the word of wisdom previously was the fact that it was illegal, it puts them in somewhat of a conundrum to have to address the issue once legal.

Ryan McKnight [01:10:55] And to the people, to the speculation on Reddit and elsewhere on Facebook, that somehow this is motivated by their holdings in pharmaceutical companies, I find that very unconvincing for a couple of reasons. And I think that their motivation is purely religious on the religious side. And the reason why I say that is because for a couple of reasons. First of all, all pharmaceutical companies will likely take some sort of a hit as marijuana proliferates through the country. Just like any good business, they will find ways to adjust and adapt and be successful in the long term. Number two, when during the height of the growing popularity of medical and recreational marijuana that started, you know, several years ago, the church was, as far as I know, very silent on the matter.

Ryan McKnight [01:11:52] And so they weren't worried about their investments then. The other thing I would say that is sort of tied to that point is the fact that if they were pushing so hard against it in Utah because of their holdings in pharmaceuticals, I mean, what kind of a dent in their pharmaceutical holdings is medical marijuana in the state of Utah going to do to their portfolio? I mean, if that's their concern, they're holding the medical marijuana in the 20 plus other states is going to have a way larger effect on their portfolio than the state of Utah. So the idea that all of a sudden medical marijuana comes rolling into town in Salt Lake City and they say, oh, we're worried about our investments, I don't think they're that dumb when it comes to investing. I really seriously doubt that this has any ties to their, to being motivated to their investments in pharmaceuticals.

John Dehlin [01:12:44] Anyone else have opinions on that? No,

Ryan McKnight [01:12:55] I guess I'm right. I guess I'm right. Put it in gospel, put it in a book.

John Hamer [01:13:00] I just think it's regular cultural conservativism. So they're part of the, they're part of the regular reactionary conservative movement and they're, you know, Moral Majority or whatever, the alliance that got made back in the 70s. And so this is just on the list. And so there it is, you know.

Guest [01:13:14] Well, here's the. And I agree with both of you on that point. Here's what surprising me, though. It seems to me, if you want to be a prophetic church, that you are here, that one time you would say, hey, you know what, let's be right on the right side of history. Once, because, right, for one time to be like, you know, what we were. And you could even do it by compassionate, you know, this isn't, you know, pot smoking for recreational purposes. This is medical. We were a compassionate church. We got on the right side. You know, we beat all those other states, Kentucky and Alabama, because we figured out what God wanted first. Because you're going to get there. And so why would you want to constantly be on the wrong side of history every time? I guess they got to consistency.

John Hamer [01:13:55] Consistency.

Ryan McKnight [01:13:58] Yeah, it's true. And you know, you know something, you just triggered a thought of mine. You know, most people know I live in Las Vegas. I actually technically I live in Henderson, Nevada, which, for those that don't know, is a suburb of Las Vegas, literally divided by, you know, a street. You cross the street and you're in Las Vegas or whatever. But when, when we had recreational marijuana legalized here last year, well, it was voted a couple years ago, but it was, it went into effect last year, July 1st of 2017.

Ryan McKnight [01:14:29] And the way the law was written, each city in Nevada had some discretion over whether or not to allow recreational marijuana to be sold within their city limits. And the city of Henderson, which is for those that follow Nevada politics, is one of the last Mormon strongholds in southern Nevada, which is a place where Mormons used to hold quite a bit of political clout. But the majority of the city council people, including the one that represents where I live, are Mormon and also very long in the tooth, age wise.

Ryan McKnight [01:15:06] So mentally thinking they're a little bit old school. But the city of Henderson actually got the wheels rolling to ban the sale of recreational marijuana in the city limits of Las Vegas. And there was a very pivotal vote in, I believe it was in October. It might have been September of last year, September or October of last year, which was going to be a definitive vote as to whether or not they were going to allow recreational marijuana. And so up to that point, in Las Vegas, they were selling recreational marijuana starting July 1st. And here we are, September, October, and it was still not being allowed to be sold in city limits of Henderson, although residents of Henderson could drive across the street and get it in Las Vegas.

Ryan McKnight [01:15:50] And I, you know, at the time, you know, I mean, not even being a user of marijuana, I was a huge supporter of it. And I actually went to the city council meeting, meeting and spoke, as did many other people, in support of allowing the sale. And the things that I said was just what Sean is saying. I told the city council members, I said, instead of being behind the Times, let's make the city of Henderson a beacon to the rest of the country on how to do it right. If you guys want to put in certain regulations that you think, you know, whatever, but let's set the example as opposed to fighting against the eventuality that we know is coming down the road.

Ryan McKnight [01:16:29] And ultimately, it was a heated moment. Everybody was really unsure right up to the last moment how the vote was going to go. It did. It did pass. But, yeah, I think that is the. I think that would be the prudent approach would be to why not be a leader in this? And, you know, and also, you know, they can. They could hang their hat on.

Ryan McKnight [01:16:52] What was his name? Talmadge. I mean, Talmadge smoked pot and documented it. You know, he was an apostle and smoked pot while he was an apostle, from what I can tell. So, you know, Mormons shouldn't be afraid of this. You know, they should embrace it.

John Dehlin [01:17:05] Yeah. For me, there's just so many things I don't get. One is that medical marijuana is a plant. The doctrine and covenants, DNC89, talks about the herbs, you know, using the herbs that God has created for us. Why are we okay with these synthetic drugs that pharmaceutical companies create, but we're not okay with a plant that has natural medical benefits? Another thing I don't get is the massive opiate abuse and death epidemic in Utah. Why in the world would we not want to legalize the use of a plant that can help alleviate, as I understand it, some of these opiate addiction deaths? I don't understand that.

John Dehlin [01:17:54] I know for a fact that I've heard of no reports of anyone who uses medical marijuana or even recreational marijuana having that impact their status with the church. So we know the church isn't punishing people for doing this.

John Dehlin [01:18:11] We know that there are people employed by medical marijuana companies or even recreational marijuana companies. And so there are people using, there are people selling, there are people manufacturing, Mormons all over the place, and the church doesn't care.

John Dehlin [01:18:25] So all those things just, again, continue to baffle me, given that this is helpful with epilepsy, it's helpful with Parkinson's disease, it's helpful with. With opiate addiction, it's helpful with chronic pain, the elderly. Why in the world would the church oppose this?

Ryan McKnight [01:18:42] John, it's not that crazy when you think about, if we want to recall back to October of 2016, when I released those 15 videos, and those meetings of the 12 apostles are the exact type of meetings where decisions like this get discussed and made. And if we learned anything from those videos, that those men are completely out of touch with reality and they are surrounded by yes men and probably a few yes women. And it is.

Guest [01:19:13] They.

Ryan McKnight [01:19:15] I just think that they have almost no concept of what it is to be like a regular person because they've been in those bubbles for so long and the bubble is so thick and they're only human. And I think that they just don't. They haven't reached that capacity to shed the fear mongering that started back during the civil rights movement, which had a lot of ties to racism, as we know. And anybody who doesn't know should go and research the history of fear mongering. And what is it?

Ryan McKnight [01:19:50] All the media campaigns that were involved in telling people that, you know, marijuana will make you go crazy and want to have sex with black people and all this kind of stuff. I just don't think that they're in a position to shed that conditioning. And I will even say, like myself, like, I don't think that my opposition to marijuana was ever rooted in any kind of racial terms because I kind of grew up in a very post racial environment where I grew up. But I know that the fear mongering that I was exposed to, it had ties to that and it worked on me. I had this very irrational view of what the significance would be of legalizing something like marijuana. And it's just not based in reality. But I don't think it's that easy to get them to understand that.

John Dehlin [01:20:40] All right, Tim, do you want to add anything to the medical cannabis discussion?

Guest [01:20:45] I just posted a link to a dialogue journal article that outlines James E. Talmadge's experiences with marijuana. It's very interesting. From his journal. Let's see if I can find it again. From his journal. It appears in 1883. It says, this being Saturday was the day I selected to study practically the effects of hashish. This evening, after work was all over, I took three doses each. An hour after the proceeding, five grains of solid extract cannabis indica. At this writing midnight, five hours since the last dose, I have experienced no effect whatsoever. The effect is said to be widely different for different people. And then it looks like on Sunday he took 20 grains of cannabis

John Hamer [01:21:37] was

Guest [01:21:37] felt in a not very agreeable way. I'll include that link in the show notes, but it's also in the Facebook chat.

Ryan McKnight [01:21:47] Yeah, and just a reminder to everybody out there, just because it's legal does not mean you have to partake. Just like you don't have to go down to the corner liquor store and, you know, buy a bottle of whiskey, you know, so there's. Nobody is saying that you have to partake of marijuana.

Guest [01:22:06] No.

John Dehlin [01:22:06] Yeah, yeah. And I just want to make sure everyone gets a chance to know that. We interviewed an expert on marijuana on Mormon stories recently. His name is Andrew Jolly. He's a Mormon, post Mormon guy who started a cannabis company a few years ago in Nevada. He has one of the two, just two of the dispensary licenses for marijuana in the state. Great guy. And he talks all about the marijuana industry and the benefits of it. And I highly recommend that interview with Andrew Jolly. And I even more recommend the interview with Andrew and his wife Allison, where they talk about navigating a mixed faith marriage and their faith crisis. It's definitely one of the best interviews of the year for 2018.

Ryan McKnight [01:22:56] Andrew is one of the most knowledgeable people I know on the subject and he is somebody that is paying attention to.

John Dehlin [01:23:03] Yeah. All right, Well, I think we've, I think we've covered these topics for today. I think that's all we're gonna have time for. I do want to thank. I'm gonna ask our, our panelists to each come up with a closing thought. It can be plug for something. It can be an inspirational point. It can be a joke. Shawn Carter. It can be whatever you guys want to share.

Closing Thoughts and Panel Reflections

John Dehlin [01:23:26] So I'll give you guys a second to think about that. And as we do, we just want to thank all of our listeners for joining us today. It's been super nice to have people commenting. We had a really large group today, so thank you. Want to thank everyone who donates to Mormon Stories Podcast makes this possible. If you like this type of programming, please donate. Make a monthly donation@mormonstories.org it really goes a long way to supporting our transparent 501C3 and the staff that brings all this content and events to you. Check out our events again@mormonstories.org events and we appreciate the support. So let's go around the horn and just ask everyone to provide us with a closing thought. And John Hamer, why don't we have you go first this time?

John Hamer [01:24:16] Okay. Well, as always, thanks for having me on. I think that this is a great new service that Open Stories is providing because I do. It's nice to be able to keep in touch with all the Mormon news, which for some of us who are out of the corridor, we don't always get to stay on top of all this stuff. So it's always fun to be part of this conversation by way of plugging something. I was been asked a bunch of times by people when I'm giving a presentation at one of the different history conferences or Sunstone or anything like that, and people say, oh, is this online?

John Hamer [01:24:49] Is this online? Can you stream that? And I wanted to mention that for the last year we've started streaming all of the lectures that I give every Tuesday. And so for people who may not be aware of it, I speak on topics like things like who wrote Genesis, what do we know about the historical Jesus, Joseph Smith's redefinition of God, and coming up with Mormon theology, the history of lost Christianity, the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, any number of things like this. And so anyway, those are all available if you want to be joining those kind of discussions. We stream those every Tuesday and you could get the archive on my website, which is Centre Place, spelled the Canadian way, so centrereplace ca. So anyways, that's a plug.

John Dehlin [01:25:34] All right. We'll provide a link to it in the comments right now. Ryan McKnight, it's been so nice to have you. Keep up the great work with what you're doing with Mormon leaks. It's been so significant the past year or two. What are your closing thoughts or plugs you want to share?

Ryan McKnight [01:25:53] Well, I'll do a plug in a second. My closing thought would be this. I'm loving the analysis and the breakdown that the ex Mormon community at large is doing. I say, you know, keep with the critical thought, the breakdown, all that stuff. But I would also ask the ex Mormon community, especially on this particular leak, to provide some reasonable space for believing members to think that this is not a big deal. Because I think often as Mormons, we forget that there was a time when most of us probably would have had this be a source of pride for us that the church was so successful in the business and they aren't doing anything illegal.

Ryan McKnight [01:26:36] I'm not saying don't criticize it, but as opposed to saying like, how can people pay knowing this? Or how can they be so stupid, I really, truly believe that it's reasonable for Mormons to be proud of the fact that they have all these investments. I know I would have been in my believing days had I found out these things.

Ryan McKnight [01:26:57] So the other thing, my plug, you know, mormonleaks IO truthantransparency.org if you want to see our sort of umbrella organization, you know, we don't really, I mean, we're good as we should be as far as soliciting donations. You know, we do have the we do have a donate button. We are a 501c3. All donations to us are tax, depending on deductible.

Ryan McKnight [01:27:21] We don't take. We publish our financials and we don't make any money off of this. All funds go to the running of the website and, you know, the occasional legal fee that we incur. And if you click on our financials, you can see the kind of expenditures that we have, and if you have any questions about them, you can ask us. So, yeah, go to the website. And even more importantly than donating money to our website is share our content.

Ryan McKnight [01:27:46] That's what we would really ask of people. And our content is conversation starter. And so be a part of that conversation starter, no matter if it's critical or supportive or friendly debate, whatever part of that. So that's my plug.

John Dehlin [01:28:04] I love it. Thanks, Ryan. All right, Shawn Carter, any final thoughts?

Guest [01:28:10] No plug. But I have some practical advice. If you buy that you're going to partake in marijuana, say when you go to Las Vegas, hypothetically, all right, a weed, and then think you can smoke it in the Bellagio, you can't. So you have, hypothetically, a whole bunch of weed that you cannot smoke, that you also cannot take through tsa, back to Arizona or wherever you have to live.

Guest [01:28:35] About $100 a weed on the way to the airport, you're not going to be happy. So you need to get high like an adult. An adult buys a bottle of Merlot and maybe you get some prescription Xanax, like Lord intended, and you get high right way. Do not do whatever you do. You do not take Ambien. We've learned that this week. It makes you racist. Bad reaction.

Guest [01:28:58] Okay, so that was my practical Mormon advice. I don't have any plugs. You people don't have money. So, anyway, the point is, we're working on a plug for next week.

John Dehlin [01:29:10] Yeah, stay away from that racist ambient. I love it. Tim, do you want to. Do you have any final thoughts or do you want to share anything to close?

Guest [01:29:18] I'm excited for Pride Weekend this weekend in Salt Lake City. And I think next week we might be able to have an update on some of the various groups that we're friends of and affiliated with and what they did to celebrate Pride. And I just hope everybody has a fun, safe Pride weekend. And that's it.

John Dehlin [01:29:41] All right, everyone. Well, thanks for joining us. You've been a great panel today. Again, if you like this feature, this weekly feature, please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com and let us know if you hate it, let us know. We don't have to keep doing it, but I like to cover big news stories as they happen. A big thanks to Ryan McKnight for coming coming on TODAY along with Sean and John, and let everyone know that we're very committed to having diverse panels. There's several women we approached to be on the panel today and none of them felt comfortable talking about the finances in the church and so all of them declined.

John Dehlin [01:30:18] So if you are a bright, thoughtful, articulate woman or just period, if you think you'd be a great panelist on Mormon News Podcast, please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com and we'd love to consider you. It's not fun to scramble for panelists and we want to have a really engaging, reliable panel. So if you'd like to join us, please email us and we'd love to consider you.

John Dehlin [01:30:50] So anyway, thanks so much for joining us and we'll be tuning in again with you you soon for another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care everybody, and we'll see you all soon.

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