Despite Faith-Based Porn Filter, Josh Duggar Had 200+ Illicit Images of Kids

Yesterday, during a bond hearing, a federal judge decided that former reality TV star and conservative activist Josh Duggar would be allowed to stay with another family — not sit in jail — while he awaits trial for the receipt and possession of child pornography. I’ll avoid further commentary on whether or not that was the right decision, but some of the facts of this case came out during that hearing and they’re appalling.

If you’re looking for details, there are some point-by-point summaries on Reddit.

Here’s what we already knew with some additional details (consider this a warning because it’s all very disturbing):

When federal agents came to Duggar’s car lot business in 2019, it’s because they had reason to believe Duggar had downloaded illicit material. (We didn’t know that in 2019.)

The feds seized his computers and phone… and Duggar blurted out something like, “What is this about? Has anyone been downloading child pornography?” He said this even though no one had brought that subject up. He just volunteered that information, whether or not he was joking.

The feds eventually found that Duggar used a browser that would allow him to download the illicit material from the dark web.

Also on his computer? Covenant Eyes, a Christian program that alerts certain people if you even look at porn in the name of accountability.

Duggar had downloaded the illegal content using a workaround that didn’t trigger that software — which tells you both how useless that Christian program is as well as how he didn’t do any of this accidentally. Eventually the feds found over 200 illicit images of children and knew that someone had both viewed them and tried to delete the files.

Again, this wasn’t a trial. This was just a bond hearing to decide where Duggar should stay until his actual hearing. After several people testified, the judge decided to allow Duggar to live in the home of a family he knows from church with a number of restrictions: GPS monitoring, no internet, no phone, no travel, no seeing his own children unless his wife is there, no contact with other children, no passport, no gun, etc.

Remember that Duggar faces up to 40 years in prison.

And that concludes this reminder of what Christian Family Values can look like in practice. It’s not just hypocritical; it’s so much worse than the things they often accuse LGBTQ and non-Christian families of doing.