Tim Ballard E2: The Origin Myth

0:00A quick warning before we get started. This episode contains discussion of sexual assault that may be disturbing. Listener discretion is advised.

0:16As a note, we reached out to Tim Ballard's attorney to request an interview. Our request went unanswered. And one last thing. After Tim Ballard left the anti-trafficking organization OUR in 2023, it was renamed OUR Rescue. Its new leaders say they do not condone Tim Ballard's alleged actions while part of the old organization.

0:56Depending on who you talk to, Tim Ballard is either a superhero Tim Ballard has one mission, to track down child traffickers Or a supervillain He was standing there completely naked. And it's almost, I remember freezing, and he pushed me against the wall and slammed me. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that Ballard tells a gripping, even exhilarating story about how he became the man the world knows today. A man who went undercover in unfamiliar territory to save children who had been subjected to unthinkable horrors. This was the first time I saw one of the kids from the video, and it like changed my life.

1:49I jumped up and I'm like, I'm in. I'm in 100%. Ballard's origin story is that of a reluctant hero. It's the story that spawned the 2016 documentary, The Abolitionists, directed by members of Ballard's Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It also inspired a film called The Sound of Freedom.

2:16I don't think I can do this job, Tim. As soon as I lay down, I'll only see those kids' faces.

2:27The movie is basically advertised as Tim Ballard's biopic. He's played by Jim Caviezel, who also played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ. Ballard was thrilled about the portrayal. Jim loves Jesus, and I love Jesus, and that's the most important thing to me, and so make sure it's him. Sound of Freedom is heavily dramatized. It was produced by Angel Studios, a Utah-based media company with a heavy focus on stories that, quote, Amplify the Light. Which is ironic, because Tim Ballard's story is actually pretty murky. It raised a lot of questions about his credibility and whether he was exaggerating his role in these child rescues.

3:12We have not been able to substantiate a single child that they claim to have rescued. I immediately saw a few red flags. spiritual manipulation, spiritual cohesion. So where did all the Tim Ballard hype begin, and how does his story play into the recent string of claims of sexual assault? Back in 2006, before Tim Ballard was the figure he is today, he was an immigration and customs enforcement agent working the U.S.-Mexico crossing in Calexico, California. He was part of a task force working to combat child trafficking. As he said in The Abolitionists, Ballard was initially reluctant to work in this dark and emotionally wrought world.

3:58I started off in the CIA and then went to the Department of Homeland Security where they asked me to start a child crimes group. Initially I said no, I can't do that. I got kids, I just can't imagine having to witness that kind I think my boss, he said, we need you to do this because this is so hard. You have a religious background that's going to give you the foundation so you can deal with this. The first case I worked was absolutely life-altering for me. Ballard often calls things life-altering. In 2022, he spoke to podcaster Lewis Howes. During this interview, he took his story a step further.

4:42When was the moment where you saw something that just said, I'm taking this on as a life mission? It was the first time I saw a child that was from the videos. Ballard described how a seemingly ordinary traffic stop at the U.S.-Mexico border spurred his new life's mission. When I was like, this is it. I had to make a decision at that point. So what had happened was we got intel, an American man was kidnapping children in Mexico, smuggling them into the United States. And in San Bernardino, you can look at this case up. His name's Earl Buchanan. You can look it up. He had a compound up in San Bernardino where he was taking the kids and he was filming his sex acts with these kids.

5:28He was having sex with them and filming. And filming it. And so this guy's coming across the border and we're on the scene. and we get the kid out, this five-year-old boy. And it was the moment that he ran. Five-year-old boy. Five-year-old boy. And I recognized him from the video. No way. And I was like, oh my gosh, I've never seen one of the kids from the video. And I had a physiological reaction. Like I didn't know if I could handle this. And then the kid kind of inherently knew we were the good guys, right? So he runs to us and jumps in my arms. And he's like holding me and he's shaking. And I'm just like, oh my gosh, does he speak English?

6:05Does he speak Spanish? Maybe both, I don't know. and he spoke perfect English which was haunting to me because the only reason he did was because he had been with this guy as it turned out since he was taken as an infant. Oh my gosh. And he said to me like no five-year-old should ever have to say to anyone, he said, I don't belong here. And the pain was so severe for me because I could immediately multiply that statement by millions of kids. And that was it. And then that led to raiding the compound and we found 11 other kids. Now, how old range? About from 6 to 12. Wow. Wow is right. Ballard paints such a powerful image of that moment.

6:53I can see it right now, the young boy clinging on to this hero, the two crying with each other. In some tellings, Ballard says the boy gave him a necklace and asked Ballard to find his sister and rescue her, which fortunately he later did. You can see why people are drawn to Tim Ballard and the mission of OUR, but Ballard's origin story isn't over. It isn't until he's home with his wife and kids that the brutality of the experience, the evil he just witnessed, truly hits him. I went home after that operation and it like changed my life but the change was either going to be I'm quitting forever or I'm all in because like there was you can't it's too much to go one or the other you can't go middle ground on this right and I went home that night after two or three days actually went home to my wife she didn't really know what was going on I walked in the house and then I see my kids right now and they're playing and having fun and this kid was literally 12 miles away.

7:52I live 12 miles from the border. This kid, this was happening to this child and the whole dichotomy of the whole how can we be in the same community and hell here and almost paradise here for these children. I lost my mind. I couldn't handle it. I saw my children being hurt. I went to a mental... I literally fell down. My knees collapsed. I fell down. My wife thought I was having a heart attack or something. She runs over to me. She's like, what's wrong? What's wrong? I'm like, I'm out. I'm out or I'm in. Like, I can't. This is so bad. And it was my wife, again, who said, you know, she got me calm.

8:28And she said, look, it's hard. I know the pain. You're clearly suffering something. But how does that compare to what that child's suffering? And I was like, no, you're right. That's it. You're not experiencing it. Yeah, I'm like, I felt guilty. Like, how stupid. I'm up on my knee. I jumped up. And I'm like, I'm in. I'm in 100%. This scene is almost...biblical. Ballard falling to his knees in despair, searching for guidance from a higher authority. And the story isn't over. Just like Jesus rose from the dead, Ballard was also born anew, when he decides right then and there to quit his government job.

9:06But in reality, this conversion took a little longer than Ballard likes to admit. Seven years after this moment of divine guidance, Ballard finally acted. The border rescue occurred in 2006, but Ballard didn't leave DHS until 2013 to focus on the search for a missing boy in Haiti named Gardie Marty. Gardie was kidnapped in 2009, and in 2010, a devastating earthquake hit Haiti. Ballard wrote on his website that he, quote, first learned about Gardie's case in the news, unquote. He saw a video of the boy's father, Gesno, searching for people in the rubble. Reporters interviewed Gesno, and he told them about his son's disappearance.

9:56Ballard says that weeks went by, and he couldn't stop picturing Gesno. He, quote, did some digging, and found that they had mutual connections. Ballard never explains who those connections were. But he says he flew Gesno out for an unofficial meeting to learn more about his story. Here's how Ballard tells it. When I first met Gesno at a restaurant, I asked him what was being done to find his son. And he answered my question with a question I wasn't expecting. He said, do you have children? And I said, yes, I do. He said, could you sleep? at night knowing that one of your children's beds was empty and you not knowing where they were.

10:39And I said, of course not. And he said, well, that's been my reality. The only thing being done is I walk the streets at night. I work all day and then I walk the streets at night arbitrarily picking some neighborhood. The more crime-ridden, the better, the darker, the better. Flashlight in hand and I pray to God that I'll hear my son cry. And that's what's being done to find him. And it was in that moment that I said, there's so much more we can do. And I promise you, I will never stop. Until I die, I will never stop looking for your son. Mallard says he tried as hard as he could for two weeks to work on this case as a federal agent.

11:21Even though Gardie was born in the U.S. and therefore was a U.S. citizen, the crime was based in Haiti and was committed by Haitians, so the investigation was under the jurisdiction of the Haitian police. He says his boss told him he had to stop working the case because it was outside the jurisdiction of the United States government. Ballard was devastated. He had to keep his promise to Gesno, so he quit his job and formed Operation Underground Railroad. This story is the foundation of who Tim Ballard is today. But it's actually pretty wild that he tells this story to this day, and that so many people believe him.

12:07Because Ballard's story isn't total bullshit, but it's close.

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13:39This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Do you ever feel like you have to put on a mask to get through interactions? We all wear masks sometimes, whether at work, with friends, or even around family. But wouldn't it feel amazing to take off that mask to accept all parts of yourself? Therapy can help you do that. It's about learning positive coping skills, setting boundaries, and becoming the best version of yourself. With BetterHelp, you can start your journey towards personal growth. BetterHelp is entirely online, designed to fit your schedule. All you need to do is fill out a short questionnaire and you'll get matched with a licensed therapist.

14:17You can switch therapists at any time with no extra cost. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash opportunist today to get 10 % off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash opportunist. Now, back to the story. Tim Ballard's origin story involves the 2006 rescue of a young boy at the U.S.-Mexico border and the search for another boy who went missing in Haiti in 2009. These events caused Ballard to dig deep within himself and sacrificed the safety and certainty he'd always known in order to answer a call from above, a call for justice. Both events culminate in Ballard leaving the federal government and forming Operation Underground Railroad in 2013.

15:11This story is character-driven, rife with conflict, and impossible to look away from. I mean, it is a good story. Almost too good. Let's start with that little boy at the border. Remember how Ballard was given intel on a human trafficker and how he saw child sex abuse material of a young boy?

15:38That's Damien Moore, an investigative journalist and founder of The American Crime Journal. Damien was one of the first journalists to take a closer look at Tim Ballard. Ballard claimed that he had saw the boy literally stopped the van and recognized the boy from an intelligence bulletin when he worked with Homeland Security Investigations. Claims that he stopped the van and rescues this boy from a human trafficker and then went on to rescue his sister. There was a real boy that was rescued, but Earl Buchanan was not a human trafficker. He was a serial pedophile, and he had known this family for many years.

16:22In fact, the grandmother had allowed him to be with the boy to go visit the boy's father or mother in Mexico at the time. So he was not kidnapped. This was a friend of the family. Very typical type of case you would see in pedophilia where the family and child has been groomed. And this child was with Earl Cannon for a couple days. And when he was on his way back over the border, they couldn't find the boy's ID. So Border Patrol went to try to ID this boy. They found a video camera, looked on the video camera, and found child pornography on it. Earl Cannon was busted by border guards. and Tim Ballard was called in to handle the video evidence.

17:06In case you didn't catch that, this means there was never any intel for Ballard to see. Authorities didn't even know who Earl Buchanan was before the day he was arrested. According to court records, the traffic stop was sheer luck. And that's not all. Here's Robert Gerke. He unraveled Tim Ballard's story in 2023 for the Salt Lake Tribune. The thing that struck me about it when I read the court documents was what a small part Tim Ballard played in the entire thing and what a central part it is to his narrative and the movie's narrative. According to Tim's story, they had intelligence that Buchanan was trafficking children and sort of did this pinpoint stop at the border and found this kid that he had seen before in videos and pulled him out and rescued his sister.

17:57And all of these other kids were rescued from Buchanan's clutches. And really, it was an accidental stop. Tim wasn't there for it. He got called in later. they didn't know that he was that earl buchanan was this monster trafficking children when they called the grandmother who was the legal guardian of these two kids the the daughter who tim says he'd later rescued was the one who answered the phone and put her grandmother on the story that he tells he told over and over in these fundraising pitches just didn't bear a lot of resemblance to to what actually was conveyed in the court documents. Now, Tim would say and has said that the court documents don't tell the whole story, that he's telling the whole story, but there are inconsistencies in it.

18:44Okay, I've seen these court documents. They're part of Earl Buchanan's criminal record. And I'll say this much. Ballard does a great job with his testimony. When he describes his involvement in Buchanan's arrest, he timestamps his actions every 15 minutes, from the time his colleagues phone him as he's sitting down to dinner with his family at 5.30 p.m., two hours after Buchanan was first stopped, to when he arrives at the port of entry at 6.15 p.m., and so on. He told the court that the only time he spoke to the young boy was to ask where he lived, and that he called Child Protective Services to transfer the boy into their care.

19:26Ballard's testimony is extremely detailed. So when he says the court documents don't tell the whole story, he's actually contradicting his own legal testimony. There are two versions of the Earl Buchanan stop story. One version is legal sworn testimony, and the other, which Ballard says is the real truth, is used during promotional events aimed at raising money for OUR. It's not hard to see which is more likely the real story.

20:01Ballard uses this story as the opening chapter of his epic tale, with him as the hero at the center. But in reality, he's a background character at best. That brings us to chapter two, when Ballard does actually lead the plot. Gardi Marty's 2009 disappearance. Remember, this is what spurred Ballard to quit DHS because, according to him, it wasn't in his jurisdiction. Here's the thing, though. The U.S. does have jurisdiction over human trafficking cases abroad. The exact laws can be complex, but it happens all the time. Ballard even said himself that the FBI was involved in the search for Gardie.

20:47The FBI never confirmed or denied this, but it's hard to ignore Ballard's contradictions. Look, we all know liars. People lie all the time, or at least exaggerate to the point it's a near total lie. At least Ballard was actually trying to save children. So what's the harm in embellishing his story and gaining some clout? As Robert Gerke briefly mentioned, Ballard's story was key to his fundraising efforts. OUR even went so far as to sell thousands of dog tags, just like the one the boy supposedly gave to Ballard. The FBI later investigated Tim Ballard and OUR for misleading donors. Money wasn't his only motive.

21:33Ballard got involved in politics, too. And 2023, he said he was considering running for Mitt Romney's Senate seat. Ballard seemed to be forming a platform as he visited the White House and even testified before Congress in support of a US-Mexico border wall. He believed a wall would help prevent trafficking. Ballard used his story about Earl Buchanan to push this argument. And he used another story as well. Here he is at the White House briefing in 2019 alongside then President Donald Trump. One little girl I can tell you about, in fact, I introduced this little girl to Ms. Trump during a private briefing.

22:15This little girl was kidnapped in Central America, 11 years old, groomed for two years, with the intent of getting her ready to come to America. Why? Because we are the highest consuming nation of child pornography. We are the clientele that's the big money. They brought this little girl through a part of the southern border where there was no wall, easily gutted to New York City, and this is hard to hear, but this is the truth, and everyone needs to hear this. This little girl, and this is a very typical, raped for money every day, 30 to 40 times a day. If that's not a crisis, if that's not an emergency, I don't know what is.

22:54About a year after that White House briefing, Vice News did an in-depth report that focused largely on this little girl that Ballard claimed his organization helped. They found a ton of inconsistencies. One of the most obvious was how a few years before his White House visit, Ballard told this story on Fox News. But in that telling, he said the girl was 13 years old, not 11. You could brush this off as simply misremembering her age, but here's the bombshell revelation. Tim Ballard in OUR didn't help this young girl escape at all. She is indeed a real person and her case went to federal court. And those court documents reveal that she escaped her traffickers on her own.

23:42So what is Tim Ballard talking about? And who did Ivanka Trump meet? Honestly, it's not even worth trying to work out all the kinks in Ballard's claims. But there is another long thread to unspool about Tim Ballard's background, One that goes back to the beginning and his alleged start at the CIA.

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25:48But there's one more tiny detail we need to revisit. I started off in the CIA and then went to the Department of Homeland Security where... Well, the lawsuit says Tim Ballard was an unpaid intern who was fired by the CIA. His LinkedIn page says he was a CIA officer. His Twitter until recently said undercover operator and the church called him a former CIA operative. I almost felt bad for the guy. That's Lindsay Moran, a former CIA officer and author of the best-selling memoir, Blowing My Cover. She was in the CIA's clandestine service from 1998 to 2003. I spoke with her for this episode about being undercover for the CIA.

26:40I wanted her input on Tim's story because as I started digging into his career claims, I noticed that things weren't really adding up. Specifically, his claim that he worked for the CIA. There's been a lot of speculation on whether this is true. If you search for Ballard on the DHS investigation site, the only hits you get for Tem are two freedom of information or FOIA requests from when suspicion about him started to generate. Here's Lindsay. He seemed to be caught like a deer in the headlights. He's presented himself as a Jason Bourne type character. Lindsay first noticed something was off about Tim's story when her 17-year-old son convinced her to watch the 2023 film Sound of Freedom.