Con Ink. (Part Four)

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I always had big dreams. She was brought into the dark world of sex trafficking. I was sold for $500. My first advocate came and got my stuff, moved me out of this dangerous part of the west side of Chicago. And once I started tweeting about human trafficking, folks were really receptive.

Within a matter of months, she was all over right-leaning podcasts. Surely she'd been vetted by these people, we thought.

I'm Patrick Kuralche and I'm Adriana Cortez, and this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.

The truth?

Welcome to red pilled America.

We're at part four of our series of episodes entitled Con, Inc. If you haven't heard parts one through three, stop and go back and listen. From the beginning, we're looking for the answer to the question, What's the purpose of conservative media by chronicling our long search for a story about human sex trafficking?

So to pick up where we left off, we've been researching a story about Eliza Blue, an alleged sex trafficking survivor. It was our third approach at the hot topic. But by early 2022, we'd come to the conclusion that she was likely a former sex worker that had repackaged her behavior to fit the new popular media narrative. So we decided to abandon another serious attempt at publishing an episode on the topic of sex trafficking, and that proved to be a smart move. A year later, her survivor status came under scrutiny.

A lesion of internet sleuths combed through her past, and what they found was a litany of discrepancies in her story. It left her credibility in shambles.

In the end, the massive internet vetting of Eliza Blue proved to be too much for her to handle. She announced that she was officially stepping out of the public Survivor advocacy arena. The rise of Eliza Blue was a test for right-wing media, and it failed. With almost no vetting of her story, Ms. Blue quickly rose to a place of prominence within conservative-friendly media.

An even cursory search into her past would have shown major warning signs. She'd been on a quest to become famous for over two decades and only found that fame as an alleged survivor. But because her story helped feed a popular narrative in right-wing circles, it was just too good to check. Adriana and I were seeing a major problem with conservative media. It was starting to become the exact thing that it had been fighting against.

It appeared to be morphing into an activism machine.

We'd, of course, sensed this transition for some time, but the Eliza Blue story made this phenomenon unmistakable. However, nothing would reveal this developing problem more than a surprise box-office smash.

It almost felt like paid advertising, people were arguing that it was the movie Disney didn't want you to see. Apparently, 21st Century Fox had owned the distribution rights to the movie, but then Disney purchased 21st Century Fox and would eventually shelve Sound of Freedom. Supporters of the film claimed Disney was trying to protect Hollywood pedophiles by not releasing the movie. But it was a strange take, because if Disney really wanted to keep Sound of Freedom from the public, wouldn't they have just kept the movie on the shelf?

Well, anyways. Many conservatives bought that pitch and began to saturate social media feeds, with the film determined to undermine Disney's so-called dirty trick. Then the hoopla got ticked up a notch. One of the most disturbing problems in our world today is human trafficking, and particularly the trafficking of children. Actor Mel Gibson created a video promoting the movie, and it went ultra-viral.

For over two decades, we've understood storytelling defined American culture. We came out as conservatives in 2009 and began pushing that scientific fact. We were so public about it. That famed publisher Andrew Breitbart immortalized our belief with the thank you to Patrick in his 2011 book, Righteous Indignation. It read in part, Thanks for understanding that art and culture are more influential than politics. In November 2018, we launched Red Pilled America to constantly push the mantra he made famous, that politics is downstream of culture.

And we did it at a time when conservatives had largely abandoned the storytelling industry, convincing conservatives to get into the storytelling game. Has been our life's work. So to see so much energy behind Sound of Freedom made us feel like we were witnessing a cultural shift that we'd played a part in developing. It was a great feeling.

When news broke that Sound of Freedom had beaten Indiana Jones on its 4th of July opening. We decided we needed to shift our focus away from producing a series on the birth of democracy and towards doing our part to promote the movie. And as an ancillary benefit, we'd finally get to do a story on human sex trafficking, an episode we'd been trying unsuccessfully to produce for roughly four years. In the past, we've promoted all kinds of storytelling projects, including the movie Unplanned, Mel Gibson's flick Fatman, Nick Searcy's documentary Capital Punishment, Mike Cernovich's film Hoaxed, and so many more. So we thought we could either produce a making-of-the-movie episode on Sound of Freedom or at the very least review the movie as part of our Culture Club podcast.

We sent an interview request to the producer of the film, Eduardo Verastecchi, then headed off to see the movie. For those of you unfamiliar with the plot of Sound of Freedom, think Liam Neeson's taken, but with children. The film is marketed as the true story of Tim Ballard, the former ICE agent. That would go on to launch Operation Underground Railroad. A child sex slave rescue organization, Ballard claims to have saved 7,000 women and children from sex slavery. Many Christians viewed him as practically a messiah.

So perhaps the only fitting person to play him in the movie was Jim Caviezel, famous for his role as Jesus in Passion of the Christ. The central premise of the film develops like this. A Honduran father is approached by a former beauty queen who offers to help his young children become child models. The father foolishly leaves his roughly 5-year-old son Miguel and 12-year-old daughter Rocio with the former beauty queen for a photo shoot. But when he returns to pick them up, they are nowhere to be found.

Unbeknownst to the father, his children have been sold into sex slavery. The brother and sister, along with a group of other children, are shoved into a shipping container to be sold in another South American country. When they resurface, the boy, Miguel, is the first to be sold into slavery to a heavy, middle-aged white pedophile named Earl Backman. But before Miguel is sold, his sister Rocio gives him a necklace to remember her by the young boy, puts the necklace on and is taken away by Earl Backman.

Meanwhile, Tim Ballard is an ICE agent that works with child pornography cases. After years of arresting pedophiles, he concludes that he wants to do more, he wants to rescue children as well. So he goes undercover as a pedophile and sets up a confrontation with Earl Backman and his child. Sex slave. As a result, Ballard is able to arrest the pedophile and liberate Miguel from sex slavery.

In a tender moment, Miguel hugs Ballard and gives Ballard the necklace his sister had given him. Miguel asks the agent to save his sister, Ballard, then goes on a quest to try and do just that. Now, when watching the film, I thought it was well shot, there were some decent acting moments, but frankly, it was a tad over the top for me.

Liam Neeson. We weren't buying it, but we might have looked past that and happily promoted the movie if it weren't for what happened during the end credits.

If you're able, we invite you to pay it forward by buying a ticket for someone else.

It seemed too big of a promise. Now. Listen, people make big promises all the time. Make America Great again sounds like a big promise, but everyone knows it's not fully attainable. The phrase is more aspirational. It's a call to bring the country back to traditional values.

Our show tagline, Help Us Save America One Story at a time is a big vision like MAGA, but it's more a pathway than a promise. It's a clarion call to the anti-woke crowd Get involved in storytelling because it defines American culture.

We aren't telling you that by buying a subscription to RedPilledAmerica.

Com You will save a child from being slave-raped. That is a big promise that you better deliver on. Jim Caviezel's message seemed like a bit of a grifter pitch for the entire car ride home. We were analyzing the movie, but we kept coming back to the end credits pitch. And we thought it was weird that they didn't encourage people to donate to Operation Underground Railroad. So when we got home, we started to do some research.

Sound of Freedom claimed to be based on a true story. Our spidey senses were telling us otherwise, so we wanted to look into that claim. We wanted to know the true story behind the brother and sister that Jim Caviezel called the heroes of the film. And what we found began a long journey down a very dark rabbit hole.

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Welcome back to Red Pilled America.

So Adriana and I took off to the movie theater to see the film. Everyone was talking about Sound of Freedom. We were excited about the potential of finally producing an episode on the topic of sex trafficking and promoting a conservative film. But after leaving the theater, we became fixated on the end credits pitch that buying movie tickets could save children from becoming sex slaves. Something felt off about that pitch.

So when we got home, we immediately started to do some research. Sound of Freedom claimed to be based on a true story. We wanted to know the true story behind the brother and sister that Jim Caviezel called the heroes of the film. I started by combing through the Sound of Freedom's Wikipedia page. We ultimately wanted to find out about the arrest of the real-life Earl Bachman, the middle-aged pedo that bought the little boy in the movie.

I scrolled down the Wikipedia page a bit and found a link to an article on a website called The American Crime Journal. The piece was titled The arrest of Earl Venton Buchanan. I clicked on the link and skimmed through the article and quickly got the feeling that it was written with a bit more emotion than I like when searching for facts. So I was a bit hesitant to take any of it at face value. But I did now have the full name of the real man that purchased the boy in the movie.

His name was Earl Venton Buchanan. I started a web search on him and up popped a bunch of articles from 2006 on his arrest. The L.A. Times, the San Diego Union Tribune and even NBC News and Fox News carried the story. After reading them, though, I was a bit confused.

The story I read in the articles sounded nothing like the based on a true story film sound of freedom. In fact, the brother and sister in real life were not sold into sex slavery. I thought that was odd. Shouldn't a based on a true story movie about child sex slavery include a story about a real-life child sex slave? It'd be like watching the brutal beating of the African slave Kunta Kinte in the TV series Roots.

That was based on a true story. Only to find out later Kunta Kinte wasn't ever a slave. I mean, Tim Ballard claims to have saved 7,000 women and children from sex slavery. Why wouldn't his movie include a real child sex slave victim? For the main premise of the film? It was a red flag.

A familiar feeling swept over me.

I'd become accustomed to seeing red flags in the sex trafficking arena, but this one took me by surprise. This story had been propelled by right-wing influencers to the top of the U.S box office, had conservative media missed it again. I shared everything I'd found with Adriana and she saw the same thing I was seeing. So we decided to dedicate a large portion of one of our Culture Club episodes to the movie. Now I gotta admit that we were a bit hesitant to share what we'd found.

I mean, the conservative fervor for this film was like nothing we'd seen since, probably American sniper. Many on the right believed this was a film by conservatives, for conservatives, and it was killing it at the box office. It no doubt felt like a cultural win for many right-wingers. Nevertheless, from day one, we've promised only one thing the truth. So we felt an obligation to discuss what we'd found. On July 8th, 2023, just a few days after the launch of the film, we published our Culture Club podcast on the movie.

I have to say this right off the bat, there's something off to me about this movie and it's something that I really wanted to. Immediately back up, almost blindly, just back it up. Because, you know, it's just kind of being pushed as this conservative movement movie. And you know, it's a big deal. But there's something off about this movie and I want to get into that. We went on to talk about what set off our spidey senses. And then, at the very end of the movie, there's this special message by Jim Caviezel. We believe this movie has the power to be a huge step forward toward ending child trafficking, but it will only have that effect if millions of people see it.

You're paraphrasing there, but yes, I am paraphrasing.

This kid was a victim of molestation, but not sex trafficking. In the way they presented it in the movie, we went on to make the analogy that the filmmakers were doing. What the Black Lives Matter movement did with Hands Up, Don't Shoot, for those that have heard our Hands Up series on the origin of Black Lives Matter. You may recall that witnesses of the 2014 Michael Brown shooting claimed that Brown said, Hands up, don't shoot to a white. Ferguson, Missouri, police officer right before the officer shot and killed Brown. BLM activists claim it was just another case of a racist cop wrongfully killing a Black man.

The city of Ferguson practically burned to the ground, based on BLM's version of the story. But when it came out that Michael Brown actually never said, hands up, don't shoot, BLM. Activists effectively argued that even if it wasn't actually true, it was directionally true.

Police brutality existed in their eyes, so they were fine with using the lie to further their cause. But many asked a logical question if police wrongfully killed Black men so often, why is it that every time we look into these cases, the premise of the story ends up being fake? The sound of Freedom? Filmmakers appeared to be using a similar technique as BLM They were using a fake premise to rile up the public into buying tickets.

We brought up that point on our podcast. Why not tell an actual true story? Why fabricate this Frankenstein monster of a story in a way that kind of resembles the hands up don't shoot theme?

Right-wing Twitter immediately went on the attack. Responses ranged from Based on a true story doesn't mean everything is real to going as far as calling us pedophiles.

In fact, the commotion steeled our resolve, so we began a deep dive look into the story. And for the first time in our show's history, we took you along our research journey. We began producing a different kind of episode, not our typical audio documentary style like this, but instead an unscripted, investigated version where we shared what we were finding real time. And the first shocking thing that we uncovered was the difference between Tim Ballard's version of his real-life origin story and what actually happened.

And what we ultimately uncovered was that Tim Ballard was pitching a fabrication.

The horrible attacks on October 7th left not only the people in Israel horrified, but also those of us here in the United States and all around the world. At RPA, we care deeply about the innocent lives being put in jeopardy over the horrors of October 7th. We have partnered with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews to help address the urgent needs of Israeli people on the ground who are living with the harsh reality of terror. Every single day, our thoughts and prayers are with the families being impacted by this tragedy. For the month of June, we are asking our audience to help by signing a pledge, which will be delivered to the President of Israel. To show that Christians in America are not only standing in solidarity with the innocent lives impacted by the events of October 7th, but that they are speaking up, too.

Let's take a stand today with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews to let the Jewish people know that they are not alone. To sign the pledge, go to supportifcj..org, supportifcj..org to take a stand today.

Welcome back to red Pilled America. So we began taking a deep dive into the true story behind Sound of Freedom. And the first shocking thing that we uncovered was the difference between Tim Ballard's version of his real-life origin story and what actually happened. Ballard's story all hinges on the 2006 arrest of Earl Benton Buchanan. It's the real-life event that he claims inspired him to launch Operation Underground Railroad.

Ballard has told this story many times. Well, I want to take you back to July 3rd, July 3rd, July 3rd, 2006. In Tim Ballard's telling of this case. Earl Buchanan was kidnapping kids from Mexico and bringing them into the United States to film his molestation of them.

At his San Bernardino compound, Tim Ballard eventually saves a sex-trafficked five-year-old Mexican boy from the clutches of Buchanan. At some point, the boy rushes into Ballard's arms, and while both Ballard and the boy are crying, the young boy says, I don't belong here. At which point, the boy gives Ballard the dog tag necklace that his sister gave him when the monster separated the boy from his sister. The boy asks Ballard to save his sister and other children, and Ballard then goes on to rescue the boy's sister and 10 other kids.

Ballard has repeated this story countless times and used it to generate hundreds of millions of dollars, and it was used as the premise of sound of freedom. After looking at everything on this case, we thought the best way to discuss our findings was for you to first hear Tim Ballard's version of the story. Through his own words, we've tried to piece together his different descriptions into one coherent narrative. But I have to tell you, it was not easy. The man has changed the details of the story an alarming number of times.

Please keep in mind, we've left out part of the names of some people to protect the privacy of the victims. That said, here we go.

What had happened was we got intel. An American man had kidnapping children in Mexico, smuggling them into the United States. And in San Bernardino, you can look this case up. His name's Earl Buchanan. He had a compound up in San Bernardino where he was taking the kids and he was filming his sex acts with these kids. Now, as we mentioned, there is one pivotal moment in this story. It's the moment the boy victim, whose real name is Jose, realizes he's been rescued from Earl Buchanan. According to Ballard, Jose suddenly runs into Ballard's arms, cries and gives Ballard the necklace that his sister gave him when Buchanan separated them from each other. Ballard has suggested in several versions of the story that he'd seen Jose being sexually abused in a video before the border confrontation with Earl Buchanan.

In his telling, ICE agents then received intel that Buchanan was coming across the border with the kidnapped child. And then, once Ballard saw the boy, Jose with Buchanan, he recognized Jose as the same boy he'd seen earlier. In a child pornography video, ICE agents arrest Buchanan. And then, when the kid sees Ballard with the other agents, he intuitively knew that they were the good guys and runs from his abuser into Ballard's arms. And on July 3rd, I got this call because we had intelligence that he was coming across the border with a five-year-old boy who he had been abusing since he was a baby. And this was a little boy that I knew from the images, from videos I'd seen, and when I saw this little boy, it broke my heart. We got intel. An American man had Kid was kidnapping children in Mexico, smuggling them into the United States.

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 I recognize 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'm like, I didn't know. 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 our in my arms.

No way. And he's like, holding, he's holding me and he's shaking and I'm just like, 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 then that led to raiding the compound and we found 11 other kids, No.

Yeah, in a different version, Ballard claims that this I-don't-belong-here moment happened not at the time of the arrest, but instead shortly after. ICE agents executed a search warrant of Buchanan's compound on the 4th of July in this version, after executing the search warrant, Ballard goes to the aftercare facility where the boy is being held, and he meets with the boy in some unspecified room. I went to that little boy and I sat in a room with him with some toys and I was just talking to him. He seemed happy.

He knew that we were the good guys. But in yet another telling, it wasn't. In some unspecified room with toys, Ballard says he took the boy alone to a burger joint for lunch. At this one point, I was alone with this child, I was interviewing him.

I took him out to lunch, but still in a different version. He wasn't alone with the child at the burger joint, he was with aftercare workers. He runs to me, he's crying.

We're both sobbing in each other's arms. The aftercare workers are crying, like, what's going on? And he says, I don't belong here, and I'm sobbing, and then he gives me this necklace. Maybe now you're beginning to see the difficulty in analyzing Ballard's side of this pivotal I don't Belong here moment in his origin story.

Critical timing details change. So, to further evaluate his side of the story, we focused on the version where it happened. Shortly after, ICE agents executed a search warrant at Buchanan's house. Because that's Ballard's most recent version of the story. In that version, Ballard goes back to the boy and interviews him. At this one point, I was alone with this child, I was interviewing him.

I took him out to lunch, he was mostly smiley and happy, he knew he was safe. Just trying to slowly learn what in the world had happened, how he was kidnapped, where his family is now, where his sister is.

And at one point, at kind of a random moment, he broke.

And he just ran to me, jumps into my arms, and he's shaking, and I'm shaking.

And he said, I don't belong here. And it's in this moment that Jose gives Ballard the dog tag necklace. He said, I don't belong here. Then he gives me this dog tag that his sister had given him. His sister had given him the necklace when they were separated by Buchanan.

Then five-year-old Jose presumably tells Ballard that Buchanan is raping his sister as well, and the boy desperately asked Ballard for help. And then he gives me this necklace, this is my sister gave this to me. Will you help me?

We got to get her and others out of this guy. Like way. Ballard then takes the dog tag and eventually goes and saves the boy's sister. You know, he knew I had to go find his sister now. Oh, no.

Yeah, and we did, we got her, we got her out. At some point. Ballard brings the dog tag home, and his son eventually finds it, and points out that the dog tag necklace has Ballard's name on it. It was scripture from the Book of 1.

Timothy Ballard took it as a message from God to devote his life to saving children from sex slavery. I actually told the writers of Sound of Freedom I wouldn't include this scene because no one's going to believe it. In the end, Ballard claimed he rescued the five-year-old boy from a trafficking ring.

Now, this is the necklace that is so symbolic to our organization. It was a necklace that was given to me by one of the first children. About 10 years ago that I had pulled out of a trafficking ring, and he gave me that necklace, that little boy.

Now we have to say that. The number of inconsistencies between Tim Ballard's version of the story and the actual story, as documented by court documents and law enforcement reports, is jaw-dropping. After comparing the two, it made us think that there was something deeply wrong with Tim Ballard. We don't say that lightly. His exaggerations, half-truths and outright fabrications were staggering, given that anyone could easily cross-reference his story with government documents and see the magnitude of his fabrications. And the astonishing thing is that this dog tag moment has been used to generate hundreds of millions in donations and movie ticket sales.

The discrepancies are everywhere, but let's focus on four major areas first. There's the part of Ballard's story that his team received intelligence about Buchanan, and it was the intel that led to him being nabbed at the border. And on July 3rd, I got this call because we had intelligence that he was coming across the border with a five-year-old boy. We got intel. An American man was kidnapping children in Mexico, smuggling them into the United States.

This clearly doesn't align with the facts. In the case, there was no intel, as most sane people understand the word. Buchanan was arrested after a routine border crossing stop. The court documents of United States of America versus Earl Benton Buchanan make that clear.

On July 3rd, 2006, at approximately 4 30 p.

M. Buchanan approached the United States border from Mexico with a boy named Jose sitting on his lap. Jose was wearing a wrestling mask. A Border Patrol officer by the name of Officer Pina, asked Buchanan if he had any identification for the boy, for example, a birth certificate, Buchanan said he didn't.

So, to determine the identity and family status of the child, officer Pina directed Buchanan to drive his van to a station off to the side. Called the vehicle Secondary Lot, a place where further examinations are performed, an officer at the secondary lot, Officer Ruiz, to be exact, inspected the van and found a videotape that showed a man resembling Buchanan sexually molesting a child between the age of five and eight years old. It was about as much of a smoking gun as you can get. Buchanan was immediately taken into custody. His arrest was not a result of some intel that Border Patrol officers received beforehand, as Ballard claims.

It was the methodical work of officers during a routine border crossing stop. Second, Ballard has claimed over and over again that Earl Buchanan was kidnapping children from Mexico and bringing them into the United States. We got intel an American man was kidnapping children in Mexico, smuggling them into the United States. And at one point, he's five years old and he's being kidnapped from Mexico. This is an inexplicable claim because not only was the boy, Jose, not kidnapped from Mexico, he wasn't even kidnapped.

The court documents make this point clear as well. When asked at the vehicle secondary lot who the boy's parents were, Buchanan gave a Border Patrol officer named Officer Apolinar an American phone number for Jose's grandmother. Officer Apolinar called the boy's grandmother and learned that she was Jose's guardian and that the boy lived with her. In the United States. The grandmother did not say her grandson was kidnapped. Instead, she told Border Patrol officers that Buchanan was a longtime family friend that she'd known since Buchanan was young.

Buchanan was 62 years old at the time. The grandmother also claimed that Buchanan took Jose to Arizona to visit with friends, then Mexico to visit Jose's family. It was only after special agent Tim Ballard interviewed the grandmother that she changed her story, saying that she only gave Buchanan permission to take Jose to Chuck E Cheese. The change in her story allowed prosecutors to charge Buchanan with kidnapping.

Law enforcement often push for charges like kidnapping, even if the evidence doesn't back up that claim. So that they can convince a judge to revoke bail and keep the defendant behind bars until trial. This appears to be the case here. Because the grandmother initially told Border Patrol that she'd given Buchanan her permission to take the boy to Mexico. The grandmother never even called police to report Jose being kidnapped. The federal government eventually dropped all kidnapping charges. Earl Buchanan was never convicted of kidnapping.

After our reporting on this fact, Tim Ballard broadcasted a video arguing that the boy was in fact kidnapped. Okay, well, let me explain something about plea deals. He was charged with kidnapping. Later on, he pled out and some of the charges get dropped. This is Criminal Justice 101..

And so in the end, he didn't get convicted of kidnapping, but that doesn't mean he didn't kidnap. Actually, that's exactly what it means. Prosecutors dropped the kidnapping charges because Buchanan didn't kidnap the child, and he surely didn't kidnap the boy from Mexico because the child lived in America.

The case of Earl Buchanan was a standard case of grooming. State investigators ultimately determined that Buchanan was a landlord with several properties in southern California, as well as in Arkansas. He'd groomed his tenants and befriended their children by taking them bowling or swimming, or to amusement parks, and then showered them with toys and video games on his property. Once he gained their trust, he'd molest the children and recorded his disgusting activity with hidden cameras on his property. California state officials charged him with committing lewd acts with six boys and girls.

The kids weren't kidnapped from Mexico, they were sent to Earl Buchanan with the parents or guardian's knowledge and permission. Tim Ballard knew all of this when he told the story in interviews over a decade later, because the case had long come to a conclusion. But the story of a man kidnapping a child from Mexico just sounds better. And it also happened to fit Operation Underground Railroad's business model of rescuing foreign kids from child sex slavery.

Then there's the claim that Ballard saw Buchanan's victim, Jose, in a video. 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'm like, I didn't know I had a physiological reaction. Tim Ballard claimed that he'd experienced this transformative moment when he'd come face to face with the first child victim that he'd already seen in child pornography videos.

I was seeing this child who I had already seen, the videos of him being raped by the pedophile. Who's driving the van and he gets stopped at the border and they get him out? And on July 3rd, I got this call because we had intelligence that he was coming across the border with a five-year-old boy who he had been abusing since he was a baby. And this was a little boy that I knew from the images, from videos I had seen, and when I saw this little boy, it broke my heart.

There are a couple of problems with this claim. First. The abuse video was not found until after the routine border stop, so Ballard could not have seen the boy from the child pornography video before Buchanan was stopped at the border. But more importantly, court documents state that the boy's face was not visible in the video. In a March 12th, 2007 court filing, one of the prosecution attorneys discussed the boy seen in the child pornography video and stated quote. The boy appeared to be sleeping, but his face was not visible.

The attorney continued The identity of the boy in the video has not yet been confirmed. In other words, over nine months after the arrest of Buchanan, the boy in the video still had not been identified. Therefore, Tim Ballard could not have recognized Jose as the boy from the video. In fact, Ballard was the one who'd written the reports describing the video. I think I watched at least two because I'm going to write reports on it, right?

I got to see all the details. And in those reports. He did not identify Jose as the boy in the video, however, he did identify Buchanan as the man molesting the child. This was just another embellishment that added drama to Ballard's origin story, but, without question, the most troubling discrepancy in Tim Ballard's origin story is the dog tag moment.

And this is the point that revealed the true nature of Ballard's intentions.

Welcome back to red pilled America. So, as we looked at Tim Ballard's version of his actual origin story, we noticed some major discrepancies. But without question, the most troubling discrepancy in Tim Ballard's origin story is the dog tag moment. Ballard claims that while he was interviewing Jose, the child gave him the dog tag necklace. He said, I don't belong here.

Then he gives me this dog tag that his sister had given him, according to Ballard. That's not all that was said in his pivotal interview of Jose. He jumps into my arms and then he tells me about his sister and his sister being trafficked, and he gives me this necklace. This is a real story. And it was a little dog tag and he gave it to me, you know, he knew I had to go find his sister now.

Oh, no, yeah, and we did. We got her and he says, I don't belong here, and I'm sobbing.

And then he gives me this necklace, this is my sister, gave this to me. Will you help me? We got to get her and others out of this guy. In one version of the story told to Prageru, Ballard further detailed his pivotal interview with Jose.

There's one point I was alone with this child, I was interviewing him, I took him out to lunch, he was mostly smiley and happy.

He knew he was safe, just trying to slowly learn what in the world had happened, how he was kidnapped, where his family is now, where his sister is. And at one point, at kind of a random moment, he broke.

And he just ran to me, jumped into my arms, and he's shaking, and I'm shaking.

And he said, I don't belong here. In a later description, Ballard included even more detail about his interviews of the boy. Jose. I interviewed him at least three times about where he came from, why he was with this guy, who this man is to him, where's his sister, what other kids are hanging out with this guy?

And that's a very long process. By the way, you don't just ask those questions. I took a little kid off a burger to try to get to the bottom of it and save other kids. But court documents directly contradict Ballard's claims.

Buchanan's lawyer stated quote To the extent that Jose confirmed that he was permitted to travel with Mr Buchanan, such interviews would constitute exculpatory and material evidence. Buchanan's lawyer was looking for statements made by Jose that would counter the kidnapping charges. However, one of the prosecuting attorneys, Alessandra P. Serrano, stated that Tim Ballard himself claimed he did not interview Jose.

In a response to Buchanan's attorney's demand for notes and transcripts of ICE agents, interviews of Jose, Attorney, Serrano responded.

In an August 2023 video, Ballard held up the dog tag he claims to have received from Jose.

Ballard claims Jose asked him to rescue his sister and other kids. This all would have been related to the kidnapping case. Buchanan's lawyer asked for all interviews Tim Ballard conducted with Jose, the prosecutor responded, stating, under penalty of perjury, that even Tim Ballard claimed he never interviewed Jose about anything pertinent to the case other than where he lived and what his grandmother's name was, that's in the court documents.

Red Pilled America contacted Buchanan's lawyer and he confirmed that Ballard wouldn't have interviewed the boy. Other than to ask his name, where he lived and the name of his parents or guardian. All other questions would have been delegated to social workers. Yet Ballard claims that he asked Jose questions about being kidnapped and the child gave him evidence related to the kidnapping. All things he was required to turn over to the defense during the discovery process. Of course, the court documents would have included the dog tag moment Ballard would later try to marginalize the court documents.

But Ballard, of course, knows who wrote the court documents. It was Alessandra P. Serrano. Serrano was the assistant U.S attorney prosecuting Earl Buchanan.

Ballard knows her because, aside from working with her on the Earl Buchanan case, she'd later become the chief legal officer at the organization. He founded, Operation Underground Railroad. It was Serrano that claimed, under penalty of perjury, that ICE agents, including Tim Ballard, did not interview Jose in court documents, she wrote.

To make this claim, she relied on ICE reports filed by Tim Ballard himself. And this is where we've done some extra due diligence via a Freedom of Information Act request. Red Pilled America has acquired ICE documents related to the Earl Buchanan case, including the Tim Ballard-authored report that prosecution used to claim Ballard never interviewed Jose.

In the report, Ballard unequivocally states that neither he nor any other ICE agents interviewed Jose in the manner Ballard now describes. Ballard states in the report that the only question he and his partner asked of the boy were where he lived and what his grandmother's name was. The child confirmed that he lived with his grandmother. Ballard continued stating no other questions, with the exception of those related to the present well-being of the child. I...e. Do you need to use the bathroom? are you hungry? etc. Were ever asked of the child? By Asacca agents. Asacca agents were Tim Ballard and his colleague, special agent Harvey.

Ballard goes on to state in the report that Jose was interviewed once by child protective services and once by social workers. But that he and his colleague only witnessed those interviews and did not participate in them. In Ballard's report, he never mentioned that Jose ran up to him to state that he didn't belong here and to please rescue his sister. Ballard didn't mention that he asked the boy about being kidnapped or about his sister. He never mentioned that the boy gave him a necklace that his sister gave him. When Buchanan took him from his sister, all of these things were pertinent to the charges against Earl Buchanan.

They would have made the kidnapping case against Buchanan stronger. Yet Ballard included none of it in his report, but what Ballard did make clear in his report was that he didn't interview. Jose. Ballard didn't include the dog tag moment in his report because it didn't happen. He used the pain and suffering of a five-year-old boy, a boy whose innocence was stolen through the repeated molestation by a monster.

Ballard used that poor boy's suffering to create his own mythical origin story. He then used that mythical origin story to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in donations and movie ticket sales. Ballard exploited Jose's trauma for personal benefit. That's what's called secondary exploitation.

That's Dr. Kimberly Melman Orozco we heard from her earlier in the series. Dr. Orozco is an expert on human trafficking and the author of Hidden In Plain Sight America's Slaves of the New Millennium.

She gave us some examples of secondary exploitation.

But I think you get the picture. Sound of Freedom was using a fake story of child sex slavery to rile up the public to sell tickets. Just like BLM's hands-up, don't shoot and come to think of it. Like the seminal 1970s TV series Roots, that series claimed to be based on the true story of African slave Kunta Kinte.

In the series, the slave was savagely beaten and treated like an animal by white slave masters. The series would go on to be brought into public school classrooms and taught as U..S history. The series forever changed race relations in America for the worse. But it would later be discovered that the writer of Roots, Alex Haley, made up the story.

Kunta Kinte never existed. After careful evaluation of Earl Buchanan's case. The same can be said of Sound of Freedom's premise. It's fake.

If Ballard's not telling the truth about this, what else is he not telling the truth about?

Discovering the truth behind Sound of Freedom and Tim Ballard's origin story infuriated Adriana and I. We got a little emotional and it no doubt started reflecting in our social media posts and discussions on the topic. And that emotion made us rethink that. American Crime Journal article, the one titled The arrest of Earl Benton Buchanan. It was the article that started our journey, and we began to understand why we might have detected a little emotion in that story.

They'd been investigating Tim Ballard for years and had already come to the conclusions we'd just been arriving at. One of the guys featured in the article. He wasn't the author, but he had a video embedded in. The story had been covering Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad for roughly a decade. When we looked back at his video reports, he actually covered the story pretty straight. His name was Lynn Packer, so we gave him a call.

And by the end of our conversation, we realized we finally had our story on human sex trafficking. And the more we dug into it, the more we understood the real problem facing conservative media.

I never thought Tim would do. The things that have come out and the things that haven't come out yet that are going to come out. Hey Patrick, thanks for coming on, you're on with Stacy.

Thanks for listening.