Josh Duggar: I Can PROVE That the Cops Are Using Technology to Frame Me!

Part of what seems to make Josh Duggar so sure that he’ll be acquitted is his eager, active defense team.

The disgraced former reality star’s attorneys have been filing nonstop motions ahead of the trial, which begins next month.

His defense team is arguing that investigators can’t prove that Josh was sharing any illegal files.

Can Josh bog down the court with excessive technical jargon until evidence is suppressed?

Josh Duggar’s legal team appears to be hoping that the court lacks a grasp of the technology in question.

In a world where sitting senators ask if Facebook will “end finsta,” that … might not be unrealistic.

But we promise to break down exactly what Josh’s team is trying to argue and why it’s not very convincing to people who understand the software.

According to court documents, investigators used a program Torrential Downpour.

As we have explained in past coverage, this software is designed to identify photos and video of child sexual abuse distributed over peer-to-peer file-sharing.

In this case, Josh is accused of having torrented — that is, downloaded in tiny pieces, usually from multiple anonymous peers — the illegal and heinous material.

Legal documents describe lawe enforcement using “17 hours” and “attempting 169 times” to use this software to receive files from Josh.

Despite this apparent effort, they were able “to download only 13 of the 66 pieces.”

These are pieces “that comprise only a small fraction of the ‘marissa.zip’ file.”

The court documents continue to describe the file “that was allegedly stored on a shared computer located in a business.”

This was all “six months before the government applied for a search warrant.”

Duggar’s team is insisting that if Josh were really using the file-sharing software with these files, authorities would have obtained copies of the file from him “within minutes.”

Well that all certainly sounds complicated!

Even as someone familiar with how P2P (peer-to-peer) software operates, I had to give all of that a double take.

It’s a safe bet that Josh’s team is hoping that the court will be so befuddled by the involvement of technology that they’ll grant their request to suppress evidence.

But instead, let’s break it down as easily as possible.

First, we’ll start with a visual representation of what “pieces” look like on file-sharing software.

Here is a screenshot. The little blue squares at the bottom are downloaded “pieces.”

When individual “pieces” are all filled in, you get one complete file.

That file could be a photo, a video, an audio file.

The vast majority of those who use this technology are not using it to transmit heinous, illegal material like Josh is accused of doing.

To put it more simply, directly downloading a file is like going to the grocery store.

It takes time and effort for you and, frankly, for the store, and you get all of your files (food, in this analogy) at once in one shipment.

Peer-to-peer transfers are more like a neighborhood potluck. Friends bring by ingredients and meals one by one, and eventually, you have a whole feast.

The way that this software works is that anonymous peers (who don’t know you) automatically send pieces of their files to each other.

What Josh’s attorneys appear to be saying is that Josh would have been automatically sending out pieces of his files if he’d actually acquired them.

Going with our potluck analogy, surely if Josh had received all of this food, he’d then be paying it forward by passing on some of that food.

But as many tech savvy Duggar-watchers have explained before me, that’s not really how the technology works.

17 hours is not a long time to attempt to access a large file that’s probably (hopefully) not being “seeded” onto the internet by many people.

This could be explained by Josh only sporadically having the computer on, or by having a poor internet connection.

As for the “169 attempts” bit … that doesn’t sound like it would require agents repeatedly pressing a button and getting frustrated.

That likely refers to the automatic attempt by the government’s Torrential Downpour software to make contact with Josh’s software to facilitate file exchanges.

From the best of our understanding of the technology and Josh’s team’s argument, literally this could just mean that investigators turned on the machine one afternoon and off the next morning.

Josh’s team also touched on the delay between Josh’s alleged download and their obtaining of a warrant.

But Josh is accused of committing his crime digitally and in an essentially public way, and frankly of doing a terrible job of covering his tracks.

Investigators might have an explanation for why they waited, but it’s unclear how the delay could impact any actual facts of this case.

Josh Duggar: Did He Use Political Career to Hide Interest in Children?

Josh Duggar has been synonymous with sex crimes and sexual predation that it’s sometimes easy to forget that he wasn’t always.

There was a time when Josh was considered an “upstanding” member of the Duggar family with a promising political future.

At the time, his political activism on social media was loud and outspoken.

Some of those same messages have not aged well at all. Some now look hypocritical. Was it all just a smokescreen?

Earlier this year, Josh Duggar was arrested and charged with receiving and possessing some truly heinous material.

He is accused of downloading photos and video of young girls being sexually abused.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that Josh has been linked with sex crimes involving little children.

In 2015, it was revealed that Josh had molested five young girls, that we know of, when he was a teenager.

Four of the girls were his own sisters. One of the victims was as young as five.

Clearly, the Duggar family’s insistence that Josh was forgiven and hopes that his urges would magically go away did not work out for them.

This isn’t news to any of us who have been following the Duggar clan with increasing levels of horror and despair.

But it bears repeating, and it’s a good reminder when we contrast who we know Josh to be with how he portrayed himself before we knew.

Josh used to rub elbows with fellow slimeballs while oozing his way through political circles, and his social media at the time reflected that.

In May of 2015, Josh Duggar took to Twitter to endorse anti-abortion legislation.

“HR36 is about protecting tiny humans from excruciating pain, plain & simple. #theyfeelpain,” he wrote.

He was referring to the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” a Federal bill that would ban abortion 20 weeks after fertilization.

The bill, first introduced in 2013, has been pushed through the legislature a few times but never passed.

(Say what you will about the filibuster and its troubled history, but even the worst systems can sometimes be used for good)

Josh’s endorsement is not surprising. But human reproductive rights issues aside, his argument has aged like old milk.

Recently, the old tweet came to the attention of Reddit users.

The user who posted the tweet observed that is has “aged poorly on so many levels.”

After all, it seems abundantly clear that protecting tiny humans is not one of Josh’s priorities.

“Shows how easy it is to put on a fake persona. Disturbing,” one user commented.

It’s common knowledge that abortion bans are sometimes pushed by politicians who have themselves paid for (or even insisted upon) abortions, at times to hide affairs.

While that itself is not a counter-argument against bans (there are plenty of good counter-arguments, so why drag hypocrisy into the mix?), Josh’s two-faced tweet is on another level.

Little girls have names, feelings, favorite colors, hopes, fears, dreams — all things that a 20-week-old fetus does not.

Where is Josh’s alleged compassion and desire to protect these very real, living children?

Why, troubled social media commentators wonder, would be so protective over a fetus the size of a banana but gratify himself to video of girls’ lives being ruined?

It’s easy to claim that no one who opposes abortion rights actually cares, but that’s not true.

Misguided or not, there are plenty of true believers into the movement.

But … like so many others using the wedge issue to get votes and political capital, that doesn’t mean that Josh cares about real kids.

Meanwhile, Josh’s trial has been scheduled for November 30.

It is estimated that it could drag on until December 3 — longer than some trials, but much shorter than others.

Josh has had his legal team file a flurry of motions to hamper the prosecution and attempt to poke holes in their case.

One of Josh’s most recent requests was that the case be dismissed entirely.

The judge has denied the request. Josh will still go to trial as plannned.

Unfortunately, none of this seems to have had any effect upon how he is viewed by his wife.

Anna Duggar was seen smiling — or perhaps smirking — by his side recently.

All reports have been very consistent in establishing that she is firmly Team Josh.

Apparently, because lying would be considered sinful in their family’s beliefs, Anna believes that Josh is telling the truth.

It seems that she is convinced that this case is nothing — except, perhaps, for some sort of persecution or even a spiritual attack.

The world wonders how she will react if Josh is convicted and sentenced and Anna has to face that she is effectively a single mother of seven.

That is … a grim thing to consider.

Josh Duggar Flips Out: I Ain’t Going to Prison Over No Damn Photos!

When Josh Duggar’s child pornography trial begins on November 29, the whole world will be watching, waiting with bated breath to find out if the predatory monster will finally suffer some sort of consequence for his lifetime of sexual misconduct.

F…

Duggar Cousin Speaks Out: This Family Won’t Be Safe Until Josh Goes to Jail!

The list of people who believe that Josh Duggar might be innocent of the charges against him seems to get shorter by the day.

His parents are still holding out hope that he’ll go free, but deep down, they probably know that he’s guilty as hell.

C…

Josh Duggar Demands Court Suppress Evidence: You CAN’T Use Pics of My Creepy Hands!

Disgraced former reality star Josh Duggar suffered a setback in his pre-trial court strategy.

His attorneys have been filing a flurry of motions to suppress evidence that investigators gathered against him.

Undeterred by various defeats, Josh is dead-set on not going to prison, no matter how heinous

Josh is asking the court to bar the prosecution from using photographs of his hands.

As we previously reported, investigators obtained a warrant and raided Josh Duggar’s car lot in 2019.

In addition to searching multiple electronic devices found on the property, they also used other investigative tools.

They spoke to witnesses who were present at the time. They also took photos, documenting evidence and the search itself.

It was only later, after his arrest, that law enforcement took photographs of Josh’s hands and feet, requiring him to pose for them.

The purpose for the photographs was apparently to correlate photos featuring Josh’s hands and feet, found on his phone, with him.

In other words, identifying that his extremities appeared in photos helps to disprove any claims that someone else is responsible for activities on the phone.

Josh’s legal time filed a motion to suppress this evidence. 

The motion targeted “photographs law enforcement took of Duggar’s hands and feet while requiring him to pose for the photographs in custody.”

His attorneys claim that investigators “did not have a warrant which authorized the taking of the photographs” without a lawyer present.

According to Josh’s defense team, investigators should have obtained “a warrant which permits photographing a defendant’s body parts.”

Arresting him, they argue, only permitted police to take “a simple booking photograph” and not to photograph his hands or feet.

His attorneys say that this was an “intrusion on [his] personal rights.”

Prosecutors responded to this by asking the court to deny the defense’s motion to suppress.

According to them, Josh “expressly consented to having the photographs taken.”

They also clap back at the notion that these were invasive, on the grounds that they’re, well, just his hands and feet.

“The photographs document a scar on the defendant’s hand, which is plainly visible,” prosecutors argued.

“Law enforcement observed the same scar in images recovered from the defendant’s electronic devices seized pursuant to a search warrant in this case,” they added.

As such, prosecutors stated thatt his “did not constitute an unreasonable or warrantless search of the defendant.”

Josh did not have to remove any clothing for the photos, simply hold still while investigators took them.

After prosecutors issued their counterargument, Josh’s attorneys apparently asked for more time.

The Sun reports that the defense asked for a seven-day extension, saying that they need “more time.”

The tricky thing about a case like this is that motions like these can influence the verdict but ultimately have no relation to the defendant’s guilt.

So, on the one hand, the court must weigh the topics of debate purely on matters of law, precedent, and human rights.

On the other, the court has to consider how much information the jury will need at trial in order to reach an accurate verdict.

Josh Duggar Suffers Another Legal Setback: Does He Still Have a Chance In Court?

Folks, it gives us great pleasure to report this:

Josh Duggar is almost certainly going to prison for a very long time.

That might sound like an obvious statement, but as recently as last week, Josh’s fate was in question, thanks to some slippery…