CONFIRMED: Tim Ballard Excommunicated

Process and Reasons

The sordid story around Operation Underground Railroad founder and current SPEAR Fund founder Tim Ballard continues to take its turns. Dr. John Dehlin, leader of apostates and founder of the ironically named Mormon Stories-which consists almost entirely of ex-Mormons recounting their experiences-reported that sources who were in a position to know informed him of Tim Ballard’s excommunication by a High Council on Monday, and Ballard’s notification on Wednesday at 9:45 p.m. This would be unusual, because it would mean that people within Ballard’s stake would be notifying an excommunicated podcast host, John Dehlin, of the excommunication of Tim Ballard.

Dehlin was excommunicated by the North Logan Utah Stake, and Bryan King’s letter to Dehlin was distributed to the media by Dehlin:

"The council concluded," King wrote, "that you were in apostasy on the following issues — your teachings disputing the nature of our Heavenly Father and the divinity of Jesus Christ; your statements that the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham are fraudulent and works of fiction; your statements and teachings that reject The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-days Saints as being the true church with power and authority from God."

It is John Dehlin’s right to publicize his own excommunication if he so chooses, but Dehlin crossed a line with Ballard’s disciplinary proceedings.

In simple terms, John Dehlin solicited current Latter Day Saints to effectively provide him with information on Tim Ballard’s current ward and stake, in order to provide that information to the media. Dehlin originally claimed that “multiple credible sources (names most Mormons would know)” had told him of Ballard’s excommunication. Why those “multiple credible sources” would not assent to Dehlin providing their names to media outlets for confirmation remains unclear. By talking to Dehlin, those sources were talking to an excommunicated Latter Day Saint, so one might think that they’d have no problem speaking to the gentile members of the abominations. After all, the Church in Salt Lake City had no such problem when it effectively excommunicated Tim Ballard via a press release to Vice News.

What would normally be a private proceeding, conducted with the utmost discretion, was turned into a public debacle by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Six separate sources, including one close to Ballard, claimed that M. Russell Ballard was not behind the communique to Vice because he was suffering from dementia. Other sources vehemently disputed that claim.

Two sources claimed that Gordon Bowen, alleged LDS Church of Satan Punisher, had written the LDS press release that was sent to Vice News from an official church email account. Various other sources confirmed that Ballard had tried to hire a public relations firm only to be informed that the firm was conflicted out. Apparently, Senate Republican Mitch McConnell had authorized a $2.5 million outlay to finance the kneecapping and disembowelment of Tim Ballard. Outgoing Senator Mitt Romney, who decided against running for re-election even though he had won in 2018 with 71% of the vote, was avowedly against Ballard running for his old seat.

Others alleged that Senator Mike Lee had recruited Ballard to run for the seat, even physically crossing paths with Ballard in an airport to discuss the strategy. Ballard’s hopes for a U.S. Senate seat were effectively crushed on the say-so of seven-or more-women who spoke off the record, with total anonymity, and who provided no specifics about Ballard’s behavior, only speaking of spiritual abuse and grooming. In the days of sexting, dick pics, and Snapchat sex videos, the single photo that made it into the public realm was a picture of Tim Ballard in his underwear laying on a couch with tattoos that clearly were not real.

Ballard himself acknowledged the “couples ruse,” where OUR operatives had women playing their wives on operations in order to enable the male operatives to rely on their fake wives to intercede when traffickers tried to ply them with trafficked women for sex. Allegedly, those women were sometimes volunteers and contractors with marriages of their own who had come to OUR seeking to help save children. What is unclear is why an adult married woman with a family would think it wise to travel with a man other than her husband, leaving her family behind, to go play at being an undercover sex sting operative. It is also unclear why OUR thought it prudent to send such women on sting operations.

Then again, OUR’s alleged operational history is fraught with a lack of risk management and mitigation, extending to allowing wealthy untrained donors to hop along on jaunts to rescue trafficked children and women. Those donors were provided with a brief crash course in operations, and miraculously, they were not hurt and did not injure anyone else in the course of those operations, insofar as we know.

The larger issue was the revelation that Apostle M. Russell Ballard, current president of the Quorum of the Twelve and next in line to the First Presidency, had apparently functioned as as silent partner in Tim Ballard’s for-profit enterprises like Liberty 89 and Slave Stealers. LDS Apostles typically forego outside engagements as full-time employees of the Church, but Russell Ballard made multiple appearances and trips with Tim Ballard of his own volition, and his son-in-law’s address was the listed address on the corporate filings for Slave Stealers. That same son-in-law was allegedly a partner with Slave Stealers, a for profit enterprise designed to be an umbrella organization over other sex trafficking and victims assistance nonprofits, one that would funnel information and intelligence to Slave Stealers and in turn enable Slave Stealers to use “the sizzle of the operation” to lead people to the covenant, or LDS.

In other words, Slave Stealers was a proselytizing tool created by M. Russell Ballard and Tim Ballard to use a pass through corporation to get other nonprofits in line with grants funded by Ballard’s donor base, with the goal of bringing those nonprofits into the orbit of an ecclesiastical organization with a long history of covering up sexual abuse. That organization would conceivably have access to the files and information of those subordinate nonprofits through Slave Stealers, which would induce financial reliance and even dependency with Ballard’s unmatched ability to raise funds through his OUR network.

There was only one problem: OUR had apparently used the services of one Janet Russon, a psychic with a claimed line to the prophet Nephi, which was discovered when Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings uncovered a claimed 10,000 pages worth of psychic readings. Scriptural doctrines prohibit consulting with mediums, astrologers, and the like, but OUR apparently did just that and the consultations were allegedly financed with donor money. There are those who defend the use of donor money for Janet Russon’s services, arguing that she is akin to a prophet, but Russon’s so-called intelligence led to failed raids. Prophets receive their revelations from God, and they don’t miss. Psychics receive their intelligence from the Devil, which is why Scripture classifies them as false prophets and orders their execution as such in the Old Testament.

Adam Herbets of Fox 13 reported today that Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes was aware of OUR’s use of donor funds to consult with Russon, who in turn claimed to speak to dead Mormon leaders. That is exactly what the rank and file of the LDS Church of Satan and polygamist groups like James Harmston’s True and Living Church of Saints of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days purported to do: to pierce the veil with their ordinances to speak to the dead, which is necromancy prohibited explicitly in Scripture, and the CS did so through perversions of LDS ordinances like the True Order of Prayer. In simple terms, OUR was financing an effort directly analogous to the alleged activities of the LDS Church of Satan, only its purpose was to find missing and trafficked children.

A sitting state attorney general with a temple recommends apparently knew about this activity and did nothing to stop it. Sean Reyes and others went along with OUR’s consultations with Janet Russon in clear contravention of the LDS’s explicit doctrines. That alone would be enough to justify Tim Ballard’s excommunication, along with the excommunication of every single OUR employee who went along with such absurdity.

However, consulting with a psychic was apparently not a strong enough grounds for excommunication in the eyes of the LDS and its disciplinary councils. Ballard’s sins were listed in the Vice News press release as capitalizing on the name of an Apostle and Tim Ballard’s relationship with that Apostle to raise funds for OUR. That is absurd for any number of reasons, including but not limited to M. Russell Ballard’s voluntary and public involvement with OUR and Tim Ballard’s for profit entities. Tim Ballard didn’t have to use M. Russell Ballard’s name to raise money, because M. Russell Ballard was front and center in many of Tim Ballard’s endeavors. M. Russell Ballard’s son in law was also front and center in those endeavors. Donors saw this, and it is undoubtedly true that M. Russell Ballard injected himself in Tim Ballard’s efforts precisely to enable Ballard to raise vast sums of money for Slave Stealers and other entities.

In fact, Sean Reyes allegedly interceded to put a stop to a grand jury investigating OUR and its finances, specifically the use of donor funds on psychic readings for Janet Russon, who was working as Executive Director at Children Need Families, described as a “special project” to OUR. Given these facts, Tim Ballard cannot deny that he consulted with and appointed a self-professed psychic to director level position at a nonprofit affiliated with OUR. However, the LDS and its leadership were silent on this matter. Ballard’s real offense was sullying the name of M. Russell Ballard, President of the Quorum of the Twelve, and next in line to the First Presidency of the COJCLDS.

Why was the LDS suddenly so concerned with sanitizing the relationship between M. Russell Ballard and Tim Ballard? The answer may lie in the recent announcement that current President Russell M. Nelson will not be attending General Conference. The official church line is that Nelson fell and injured his lower back three weeks ago, making it impossible for him to sit in a chair for long periods of time. Nelson joins Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, who will also be absent from General Conference. Nelson is 99 years old, and clearly at the end of his life.

The Church leadership would therefore prefer to have an orderly succession, one where the news of any leadership change would not be overshadowed by a leader’s association with Tim Ballard, who has been the target of months long rumors about sexual impropriety. Those rumors are just that as of the publication of this article: rumors. No woman has put her name on the record, nor has she offered documentary proof to substantiate her claims of sexual impropriety by Tim Ballard. Not a single text message, email, video, photograph, or record of any sort beyond a picture taken of Ballard in his underwear while he apparently lay on a couch sleeping has been released to back up the claims of sexual immorality.

What is clear is that OUR and Tim Ballard engaged in risky conduct with regard to their operations, imprudent decisions in how they conducted those operations, and that they knew or should have known that it was unwise to send married women and untrained weekend warriors on missions against sex traffickers. It is a clear principle of the LDS, and basic common sense, that married women should remain with their families instead of striking out to sex trafficking operations in exotic locales while posing as the wife of a man other than their husband. Tim Ballard’s wife Katherine remained behind, which is exactly where those other women should have remained.

Given the COJCLDS’s sudden interest in whitewashing M. Russell Ballard’s relationship with Tim Ballard, and Mitt Romney’s recent decision to forego running for re-election, interests converged. Tim Ballard running for U.S. Senate while M. Russell Ballard faces the prospect of a call up to the First Presidency should Russell M. Nelson fall ill and die is bad business for the Church, given Russell Ballard’s exposure to Ballard’s business dealings, which encompass consulting with a psychic who claims to communicate with long dead LDS leaders and prophets, and also promoting that psychic to a director position within a nonprofit under OUR’s umbrella. If M. Russell Ballard authorized Tim Ballard’s consultations with Janet Russon-to be fair, there is no current evidence that he did so-the implications would be disastrous.

Tim Ballard running for U.S. Senate as a Republican would conceivably give Mike Lee a second MAGA Republican counterpart in the U.S. Senate, and Ballard’s work with sex trafficking and the media’s affinity for linking Ballard to Q-Anon would give Mitch McConnell heartburn to go with his frozen face. The interest of the COJCLDS and the Republican establishment likely converged, and Tim Ballard had to go to pave the way for an establishment Republican candidate to replace Mitt Romney while sanitizing M. Russell Ballard for a possible elevation to the First Presidency.

Enter Gordon Bowen, excommunicated in 2003, tasked by M. Russell Ballard with producing a $20 million Church film on Jesus Christ that was described as “disastrous” by those who have seen it. Bowen allegedly wrote the statement that was released to Vice News, a statement which excoriated Tim Ballard for his alleged immoral activities, penned by a man who solicited gay male escorts in cities across the country during his marriage to ex-wife Barbara Timothy while also allegedly holding membership in a saatanic cult operating with the LDS. Despite Bowen’s excommunication and exposed life as a homosexual male, he remains on good terms with at least four Apostles who visit his Salt Lake City residence regularly. He is an advertising executive with dentsumcgarrybowen, a firm he cofounded. Bowen has previously worked on campaigns with Mitt Romney and helped Romney come up with the slogan for the Salt Lake Olympics.

With converging interests at play, all things aligned for the LDS and the Republican establishment to decapitate Tim Ballard. His reputation lies in ruins, not because of his involvement with psychics or even because he allegedly committed sexual immorality, but because he was inconvenient for the Church and the Republican establishment’s interests at the moment. A high profile political campaign could have led to embarrassing implications for the COJCLDS and its leadership, as well as undesirable outcomes for the Republican Party, and so Tim Ballard was first publicly excoriated and excommunicated by press release, and then formally excommunicated by a disciplinary council.

That excommunication has been confirmed by key sources due to Tim Ballard’s own discussions with others about his excommunication. Ballard claimed that he was excommunicated for going to strip clubs as part of OUR’s operations, and he further alleged that he had cleared such visits with his bishop in advance. If that was true, Ballard could have called that bishop to his council proceeding, but that proceeding was irregular at best, just like every other event in the chronology of Tim Ballard’s fall.

The way that Tim Ballard’s orchestrated downfall was choreographed exposed clear fissures within the LDS rank and file, resulting in no less a public figure than Glenn Beck quibbling with the LDS leadership over their actions. The entire episode has been a sordid, pathetic departure from the normally discreet and professional way in which the COJCLDS normally handles disciplinary proceedings against its members. If Tim Ballard is guilty of illegality, he should have been reported to law enforcement for a criminal investigation, but as of the publication of this article, no evidence exists that the LDS has uncovered evidence of illegality or that it reported such evidence to law enforcement. In general, in matters of sexual impropriety involving the abuse of children, the historical position of the LDS is that it is not obligated to report that abuse to law enforcement or anyone else.

This means that Tim Ballard was treated worse than child rapists who have faced LDS disciplinary proceedings in the past. He was publicly pilloried for the world to see, likely because the LDS leaderships wished to discredit him where M. Russell Ballard was concerned and because Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell wanted him out of the Republican primary. The COJCLDS has succeeded in destroying Tim Ballard in the public eye, and the Republican establishment has likely succeeded in keeping Tim Ballard out of the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate. Ballard’s family has been exposed to open ridicule.

The lesson to rank and file Latter Day Saints is this: when your church’s interest require it, you can be delivered to the secular media and the public as a sacrifice, immolated for the benefit of the leadership and its favored sons like Mitt Romney. They are not obligated to follow their own normal processes, either. They can incinerate your entire reputation for whatever reason, including reasons that may be little more than rumor, even if other reasons exist which would constitute a valid grounds for church discipline. Why any Latter Day Saint would expect anything different from the corroded leadership of the current church is beyond comprehension, given the Church’s documented willingness to punish the families of sexual abuse victims and victims themselves for pushing back against the Church’s advise to forgive pedophiles and serial child rapists.

The end result may have been appropriate simply on the grounds of consulting a psychic, but the process employed to arrive that result was unscriptural, deeply unfair, and deeply wrong. There is zero evidence that the LDS is looking at M. Russell Ballard’s own actions in terms of discipline, which would be appropriate given the long standing principle that Apostles as full time employees of the Church should not hold outside business interests. The Church claims that its disciplinary processes are designed to be restorative, to lead to repentance and reunion with the Church in the form of rebaptism, but the way in which Tim Ballard’s excommunication was conducted was clearly designed for public humiliation in order to appease the likes of Vice News and others who condemn any effort against sex trafficking as conspiracy theory oriented and Q-Anon craziness.

Our concern as Christ followers is not with how the outside world looks upon our internal processes to deal with those who sin; instead, it is to provide a path back for those who can be restored regardless of what the world thinks. Those who mock the Atonement with sexual immorality have clearly decided to reject the truth of the Gospel with their actions. If that immorality is criminal, they should be excommunicated and reported to law enforcement. However, the COJCLDS has fought any requirement to report sexual abuse for decades, while deciding that reporting Tim Ballard to Vice News was the appropriate course of action. The absurdity is obvious, as is the complete lack of a moral or scriptural basis for the way in which Tim Ballard’s excommunication was handled. This was deeply and totally wrong.