Supreme Court rejects disgraced reality star Josh Duggar’s bid to toss his child porn conviction

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected former reality TV personality Josh Duggar’s bid to overturn his child pornography conviction.

Duggar, 36, rose to fame when he appeared on the TLC show “19 Kids and Counting,” with his parents, Michelle and Bob Duggar, and 18 siblings, which ran from 2008-2015, long before his 2021 conviction.

The married father of six and the Duggars’ eldest child was accused of one count of receiving and one count of possessing child pornography, and sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison.

The Supreme Court did not elaborate on the denial of his request for a hearing.

FCI Seagoville, the prison where Josh Duggar was sent to serve his 12.5 year sentence

Duggar had pleaded not guilty, but a jury found him guilty at trial in December 2021.

Federal investigators launched an investigation into Duggar, who owned a car dealership at the time, after police in Little Rock, Arkansas found child sexual abuse material shared from a computer linked to him.

Investigators testified that there were images of sexual abuse of children, including toddlers, downloaded onto his work computer in 2019.

Duggar’s attorneys argued that statements he made to investigators during the search of the dealership should not have been admitted at trial since his attorney was not present.

Prosecutors said Duggar asked the officers, “What is this all about?” Has anyone downloaded child pornography?’ and that he declined to say whether he had viewed such material online, comments that were later entered into evidence at trial.

The appeals panel said that although Duggar was read his rights, the officers who questioned him made it clear that he was not in custody and was free to leave.

By August 2023, lower courts had upheld his conviction, rejecting Duggar’s arguments that a judge should have suppressed statements he made to investigators during the footage search.

A three-judge panel of the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal and he was ordered to remain in jail.

Duggar held hands with wife Anna as he left the courthouse in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 2021

Duggar with his wife and children. He was sentenced to 151 months in prison for possession of child pornography

Duggar’s attorneys did not ask the former employee to testify after the judge ruled they could not mention the prior conviction.

In 2015, TLC canceled ’19 Kids and Counting’ after allegations surfaced that Duggar had abused four of his sisters and a babysitter years earlier.

The tip was reported to authorities by a family friend, but the statute of limitations for any charges had expired.

Duggar’s parents said after the allegations resurfaced in 2015 that he confessed to the fondling and apologized privately.

Duggar subsequently publicly apologized for unspecified behavior and resigned as a lobbyist for the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group.

Months later, he also publicly apologized for cheating on his wife and admitted he had a porn addiction, for which he sought treatment.

The family has been criticized for their views on modesty and purity amid the scandals, including their opposition to the use of contraception.

Duggar’s wife and family visit him regularly while he serves his sentence, sources say.

During his child pornography trial, it was revealed that Duggar scoured the dark web for morbid videos of little girls being tortured, humiliated and abused.

Graphic titles such as ‘pedo mom’, ‘play to sweetie’, ‘Daisy’s destroy’ and ‘ultra hard pedo pedofilia’ left little to the imagination.

The twisted cache was so disturbing that one veteran FBI child exploitation investigator said it was “in the top five of the worst of the worst I’ve ever had to investigate.”

At the time of the trial, lawyers argued that a former employee or hacker could have exploited Duggar’s lax internet security to hijack his computer and download the material remotely without anyone’s knowledge.