FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Lawyers for Josh Duggar — the former reality TV personality, anti-porn lobbyist and convicted sex offender — are attempting to overturn his conviction for downloading child sexual abuse material (CSAM), on procedural technicalities.
As XBIZ reported, Duggar, who served as executive director of Family Research Council Action, the political arm of the FRC, was found guilty of the CSAM charge by a federal jury in Arkansas in December 2021 and later sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Duggar’s attorneys claimed during his Feb. 16 appeal that the Arkansas district court applied an unconstitutional test, that expert testimony regarding metadata was misclassified as lay testimony, and that the incriminating CSAM found on the anti-porn crusader’s phone should be struck because he was “interrogated outside the presence of his attorney after law enforcement had physically taken his phone from his hand when he was attempting to contact his counsel.”
Prior to his work for the Family Research Council, Duggar was known for his role on TLC’s "19 Kids and Counting," a reality show highlighting his extended family. TLC canceled the show in 2015 after it was revealed that Duggar had molested members of his family and a babysitter.
Before the May 2022 sentencing, prosecutors asked for the maximum sentence of 20 years due to “the sadistic nature of some of the material” Duggar had downloaded.
The sentencing memo by Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Roberts described Duggar — who actively campaigned against legal, consensual, adult pornography for the well-funded FRC lobby — as having “a deep-seated, pervasive and violent sexual interest in children.”
The Arkansas trial also exposed the failure of for-profit, religiously inspired "porn filter" Covenant Eyes, a business highly ballyhooed by anti-porn crusaders trying to reroute state funds to bankroll private religious corporations to fight a supposed "public health crisis" around porn.
During a May 2021 detention hearing, an investigator reported that Covenant Eyes "was unable to detect Duggar's internet usage after a password-protected network was installed on his computer."
