Josh Duggar’s X-Rated Jailhouse Fantasies Exposed

"I will just just don't trust anyone, if there's anything I want from you, do not trust anyone." And yet, the oldest Dugger brother ignored this warning. New messages show Josh Dugger sent his wife Anna, things like, quote, "I miss watching you being sexy." And send me a pick of you in your Ron panties. Less we forget, Josh Dugger is currently serving a major prison sentence for a federal child porn conviction. And in the meantime, his younger brother Joseph faces some accusations of his own. "Yeah, it's been pretty intense. Yesterday was a really rough day." This is Scandal, presented by Lawn Crime. I'm Sierra Gillespie. There's a lot to unpack when it comes to the Duggers, but the newest information stems from the federal prison system, where convicted sex offender Josh Wadugger sent his wife Anna some pretty spicy messages. And herein lies the problem. Josh Dugger sent messages like, "Your sexy cleavage is amazing." And that message was sent the exact same month that he was sentenced to 151 months, almost 13 years in federal prison. So rather than thinking about all of that, he focused on sexting his wife? Meanwhile, Josh was younger brother Joseph and his wife Kendra also have recently made headlines for both of their arrests. On today's episode of Scandal, we're going through it all. The newest messages from Josh Dugger, a recap of the jailhouse calls between Joseph Dugger and his wife Kendra, and look ahead. What does all of this mean for their criminal cases? So let's start with a small explainer. At this point, you likely know who the Duggers are. They rose to fame in the early odds as an ever-growing family. There's the mother, Michelle, father, Jim Bob, and their 19 kids. They grew a major following on CLC when their show 17 Kids Encouning premiered. True to the name, they had to rebrand when they had another child, so it became 18 Kids Encouning. The show went off air in 2015 as 19 Kids Encouning, and just as a side note, I have to address that all 19 Dugger children have names that start with the letter J. Two of those kids are Joshua, or Josh, and Joseph, or Joe. So let's start with the former Josh Dugger. Now the first scandal there came in 2015. That was the same year that CLC went off of the air with their show stemming from the Ashley Madison League. Ashley Madison was a website where married people found other people to have a fairs with. At the time of the league, Josh Dugger was already married to his wife Anna, and they had multiple kids. Jumped to 2021 when Josh is then arrested. He was later charged with two federal child pornography charges for what he was convicted in 2021. On May 25, 2022, he was sentenced to 151 months or 12 and a half years in federal prison. And yet, that same month, he was sending explicit messages to his wife Anna. People magazine got their hands on the messages first, and I'm going to break them down for you now. Josh wrote to Anna things like quote, "I miss you my lover, I miss being in the shower with you scrubbing, I miss watching you try and close, I miss watching you being sexy." Josh went on to congratulate Anna in that same message, because she had found out that her "pote scale numbers were lower than expected." He suggested that she should reward herself by buying something low-cut, or you can try and close and send me a pick of you in your Braun panties' wing face, or try on "go to the private pool for sun swimsuit." By the way, you should order you a two-piece swimsuit since summer is coming on soon. Get something hot and fun. He wrapped up these messages by writing in all caps, "I love you forever hugs and kisses and everything else to exo exo exo. So I love you sexy and then some makeshift emojis." Days later, he went on to send her quote, "PS, send pics ASAP, implied I think he means, inferred, or otherwise stated LOL, nice ones with your twos in it." And just to be clear here, it seems that Josh Dugger is specifically asking for photos of Anna's chest. Just about a week later, he wrote to her, "PS, I can't wait till we can be alone again. I miss all of you. What specifically he means, are you thinking, dreaming, fantasizing about today that you miss? I miss you and miss being us. Tell me later, emoji." I have to pause all of this just to throw in a jailhouse call between Joseph Dugger and his wife Kendra. Listen closely, they're talking about Anna Dugger. "The way she's saying the e-mail." She was like, "I tried to fin you some. She just, she was like, well, to speak, you know, just know that none of this is confidential. Um, you know, it's only a little bit too, the people. So, um, as I guess, I think so, the reminder, uh, uh, uh, by way. I mean, I kind of keep it short when I'm texting." Once again, Anna told Kendra that all jailhouse emails, texts, phone calls, everything will be monitored. So it's clear that both Anna and Josh knew about all of this, and yet, Josh sent her messages on the eve of his sentencing, saying things like, "I have some great ideas what we could be doing." Saying that they could have a really awesome foot rub, a back rub, or quote, something relaxing. Josh went on to write quote, "And then we could really have some fun. Once we were nice and relaxed, so many memories flooding my mind right now." Well, I did a lot of writing. It helped. It was inverted. Both of us going. Both of us being alone. Both of us enjoying our newest adventure. Both of us having fun with only us. Both of us enjoying each other and taking things up a notch. The intensity is off the charts. You are amazing. You are fun. You're gorgeous, sexy, and beautiful. All in one, you are my precious, lovely bride. My lover, my passion, my dream girl. I am yours and thank you for being mine. I love all of you, Anna. XOXOXO, and some emojis. So there's a lot happening there. We'll talk about those messages a bit more with today's legal guest, but we're not there quite yet. I still have to impact the allegations against Josh's younger brother, Joseph, or Joe. And we've talked about this a lot on Lawncrime because the allegations are shocking, but so too is the fact that yet another Dugor son has been arrested in connection to child sex crimes. Joseph Dugor's arrest came on March 18th of this year. He was arrested in Arkansas where he lives, but the charges came out of Florida where the allegations stem from. And according to prosecutors there, Joseph Dugor allegedly sexually assaulted a then nine-year-old girl while on vacation with his family. She eventually came forward in the recent past. She's now 14 years old and that's where the Florida charges stem from. Joe now faces separate charges out of Arkansas and so too does his wife Kendra for alleged child endangerment and false imprisonment. The allegations stem from reports that the Dugor's had locks on the outside of their children's doors, meaning they would have been trapped inside of their rooms. And then there are the jailhouse calls between Joe and Kendra. They're very interesting to say the least. First of all, the way Kendra talks about an attorney. Travis, get a hold of you. Yeah, I've been talking to Travis. Okay, good. I've got him as my attorney right now. If you know that, I wouldn't be my attorney. Yeah, I didn't know how exactly we so with this guy. Well, it's not for you, it's only for me. I mean, I mean, he can work with you, but it's just, I said I needed somebody for the case of it. We've got going the kids and stuff. Joe also talks about being held in solitary or being alone for all but one hour of the day. How are you? I'm alright. I mean, I've been spending a lot of time praying and reading the Bible. They got me a Bible in here, so I'm in solitary, so I'm only, I'm in the, so I'll for 23 hours of the day. So, but really? Yeah, so it's like an 8 by 10 area, pretty small area, but I've been able to read a lot. I actually have been resting some, but I'm not sleeping great through the night. But yeah, but anyway, but it's good to hear your voice. Yeah, it's good to hear from you. I'm trying to not have too much anxiety. Well, I mean, I, I didn't know how it would go, and I, I realized I missed your call yesterday. Yeah, I, I tried to get out a little bit later today, so that way we could figure it out and call you. Well, once I saw that, I like to have left my phone on, so that I can always get your calls, hopefully. I just didn't know that I didn't know what the situation was, and so I, I emailed you, I think, and so you can see if that came in. Oh, really? Keep your, yeah, keep keep in mind that I might try to do it that way too. I think those are free. A throughline of all of their communications is religion and the Bible. God's still on our side, okay? God, God knows where we are. You know, so I've been encouraging myself and was like, you know what? It doesn't matter where we are, what's, what's going on and everything. God's going to, if we're, if we're, you know, honest before God and before everyone, then we just, we, we can't worry about what the world's going to want to do to us, because the world doesn't, the world doesn't love God, you know. But we can still love God. we can still honor him. And, you know, we'll be careful, but we also just, we have to trust that guy. That recording gets cut off right there, but it picks back up with a couple talking about trusting no one. So the thing that you mentioned in the first part of this conversation, somebody tell you that I talked to somebody? Yes. Yeah. And I'm going to have to circle back in and start now that I've talked to you because we were like, I don't know what's happening. Yeah. I've only had one conversation with anybody. But what I would say, I would just just don't trust anyone. If there's anything I've learned from this, do not trust anyone. That's all I can say. I'm trying to, I'm supporting that in our role. Yeah. Protect, yeah, protect your words for sure. But yeah, I, I agree. And, you know, someone like, you know, it's like, I can't. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean, that might be harder for me, but it took to like, but I think I'm boarding up the hatches and trying to do everything all so that's because I do so. Yeah. Yeah. I don't really get anything. Yeah, I'm making things worse for sure. Absolutely. I agree. And maybe, maybe I should. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, something happened last night when we were, we were having a great time. I have a year about it. I just have to say, look, it's really, and then these regulations started getting passed around and so we started just, I just want to start laughing control and just, I wish I could talk to you. You have three minutes remaining on this call. I wish I could talk to you normally. Those same rules don't extend to the Dougher family, though, who seemingly have their hands in everything. They all have their department. They just, they're taking, they're taking nothing right. Wow. Yeah. It's like, the, the, the, when they're working on the kids, these ones, they're working on me, these ones, they're working on me. They're trying to give you these kinds of working on business. They don't get me. It's just, I mean, they don't feel family. I think they, just, they know me. They don't understand me. So they're just for you. They told me they said, we don't want to make any decision for you. They just send, or she would just support you because, and I've been struggling because I was like, I just, you know, you know, what's going on in some regards, but I can't carry the word at all. I'm supposed to, yes. You have to do everything I'm comfortable and you don't want something. Everyone's like, you know, what did you take on there? You're like, right? I've been trying to because I want to be able to take everything over and I want advice that I don't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I like how that. The Dougher involvement meaning Jim Bob and Michelle is worth noting, given the allegation that Joseph confessed about this alleged sexual assault to his father. And we're going to dig into all of that during the interview, but first an update as to where we are right now. Both Kendra and Joe are out of jail back in Arkansas. Both originally had no contact orders with their children, but that has since been lifted for Kendra only. And a trial has now been scheduled in Arkansas for the allegations there. It's set for August 10th. Whoa, the Dougher drama just does not slow down. I mean, we gave you a recap of it all. And now I want to bring on today's guest to give us kind of a legal perspective to all of it. We're joined now by former state attorney of Palm Beach County, Florida. It's Dave Aaron Berg. Great to see you Dave. Thanks for coming on scandal. And let's talk about the newest info, kind of why we're here. These texts between Josh Dougher to his wife, Anna, sex. I guess I'm just going to say I read through them in the episode. So I'm not going to say that all again. What are your thoughts about them? Well, I'm not that surprised. I mean, he's locked up. He's going to be locked up for a long time. And he loves his wife, but apparently not so much that he wouldn't do things like receive child pornography because that's why he's behind bars. So he's obviously got issues and he's got a big sexual appetite that he knows these things are public and yet I guess didn't care that he's communicating in this way for the world to see. It's so interesting because the Dougher's were known from their TLC show. What was it for 17 kids, the 18, the 19 kids and counting and a huge part of it was, you know, the religion of it all. And I'm not here to, you know, throw stones and say you shouldn't be sexting your wife or husband or whatever it may be. But it is just interesting. The juxtaposition of, you know, we're praying. We're reading the Bible and then having these kind of salacious texts knowing full well that their names are public, that any sort of texts or emails or correspondence like that from jail could be made public. I mean, what's your opinion on all that? Well, I'm a former prosecutor. I was state attorney for eight years and we used to feast on inmate communications. I mean, they could be told repeatedly on their calls that their calls are recording yet. They would still make incriminating comments. They could be told that their text messages or emails are public. And yet for whatever reason, they continue to communicate. I, I, there's a disconnect there. But if we didn't have stupid criminals, then prosecutors would not be as successful. So these racey messages just underscore that there's zero expectation of privacy when you are behind bars. Every word is a potential exhibit in future litigation or when it comes to public record requests. And that's kind of a good segue into the next half of this because of course, Josh Dugger, Joshua Josh, whatever he wants to go by. He's really the one who we started talking about, right? Because of this child pornography, the conviction he has, you know, months in federal prison that he's serving years rather. So we kind of were talking about him. And then this year news broke about Joseph Dugger and the allegations that he faces. And I know you've been on long crime. I believe you've been on with my pal Jesse Weber on sidebar talking about the jail phone calls between Joseph Dugger and his wife Kendra. So again, does that go to show? We're recording everything prosecutors. Are they keeping a close eye on any sort of calls like this? Oh, yeah. Because these calls, these messages can be a prosecutor's best friend because here you have the comments from the defendant, this the suspect or in this case, the inmate because it's one thing when you have hearsay from someone else out there that's that third party comments, but when you have it directly from the horse's mouth, it is not considered hearsay. It's a statement by a party opponent. It comes in. And boy, it is just a gift to prosecutors. And we always wonder, why do they keep spilling the beans? And I think it's just because when we sign our software agreements or just by anything else, it's boilerplate. Yes, click here, click here. We don't think about it. I think it's the same thing. I think it's just generational where we're so used to just clicking yes on everything that you see a disclaimer. Okay. All right. But once you get bit, it's amazing that some of these criminals will get bit again. That's a thing. You know, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Yeah. And I mean, I guess I have to kind of put it into perspective. If they're living in jail, Josh Dugger living in prison, I mean, that's his address. Joseph Dugger has since been released and is out on bonds. But if you're there for an extended purity of time, like I'm just knowing my personality, I am not one who can keep secrets in. I'm like, spill the tea. I want to talk about it. Like I want to write my journal. I want to do all these things. So honestly, for me, I would be like, okay, I know that this could be used against me, but like it's killing me inside. I have to say it. So I wonder if that's part of it, too. And okay, so we could dive into all of that. But what I wanted to ask you, because I have you here, you're out of Florida. I know that you're familiar with this case against Joseph Dugger. What are your thoughts about, you know, the prosecution's case? Do you think it's pretty strong? Well, the case against Joseph Dugger. And also remember, his wife Kendra also faces charges in Arkansas. So you got Florida, Arkansas. Yeah, I think the case against Joseph is very strong because he admitted allegedly to the acts, both through his father and later to detectives on a recorded phone call. So I mean, again, your own words come back to haunt you more than anything else. And I'm again, not here to cast stones, not here to throw judgment in any way, but it's interesting that I was going through the jailhouse phone calls between Kendra and Joseph. And so much of what they're talking about is he's saying, you know, I'm reading the Bible. I'm, you know, praying. I'm doing devotionals. I'm doing all of these things. So he's there with God. And like one of the pinnacles of Christianity, myself being raised to Christian, you got to tell the truth. You know, you got to be honest. You got to fast up. If you do something wrong, which we all do, I, I myself have made many mistakes. You just got to admit to it, ask for forgiveness. That's kind of the tenement of, you know, Christianity, the belief there. And so I'm wondering, like, let's say this goes to trial. Would prosecutors kind of rely on that and say, I know that there's a separation of church and state, of course, you know, the fact that he's a Christian isn't going to be used against him. But would prosecutors say, so let's look at this. You're a devout Christian. You're praying. You're doing all of these things. You know, how does that line up with the accusations that you have against you? Well, it depends on if he takes the stand. They're limited as to what they can bring up. he doesn't take the stand. If he takes a stand, they can go after him for a lot of things. But if he decides to invoke his fifth member right against self-incrimination, then it's getting much harder to make him look like a hypocrite. Now, it may perhaps the defense will open the door to that in some way, jurors hate hypocrisy. And if you can get in there somehow, that they hold themselves up as this moral paragon of virtue, and then here's what they're actually doing, that'll make him look terrible. Remember, Joseph was arrested for lewd and the serious behavior on a child under 12 years old. So it doesn't get much worse than that, right? I mean, that's really bad. You know, you have a, this was a family vacation back in 2020 in Panama City, and the 14-year-old girl has now come forward during a forensic interview saying that Joseph molested her multiple times when she was nine, and so that's what this stems from. So jurors will not like him, and I think if he does get convicted, the inmates will not like him. Apparently, inside a prison, the low man on the totem pole is a child molester. Yeah. I mean, that's something that we all hear about the prison justice of it all. You know, everybody who's in there has been convicted of something, or, you know, that's what we like to think, but you're right. I mean, there's no slack for these type of people, and again, he has not been convicted of this, you know, he's innocent until proven guilty. But one of the things that you mentioned about all of this, too, is that the girl is now 14 years old, so a little bit older, thankfully. But when it happened, she was age nine. And I mean, even 14, you're still a kid, you're still even whatever age, if you have to talk about some sort of sexual assault, again, alleged at this point. But if you have to talk about that in front of anyone, that's really tough, you know. So if she, you know, if this does go to trial, would she, would prosecutors have to have her take the stand? You know, there are some protections for young children, but you do have a six-member right to face your accuser, right to a fair trial, right to confront witnesses, right to fair, to your lawyer. So there's all these rights you have to protect the accused. And so now that she is 14, yeah, I think that she would be called to the stand. She's of age now, and she can recount what allegedly happened to her. So yes, but there's certain protections for someone who's really young, and you could do it in a safer place as opposed to the cold, scary courtroom. But now that you're 14, I think that she would, by the time this goes to trial, be called to the stand. Yeah, that's just so hard for anybody who has to do it, adult, male, female, whatever. I mean, it's just so hard. And then on top of that, because a lot of people have to testify in cases like this that happen, unfortunately, every day. But on top of that, she knows that this person was on this TLC show. People magazine is writing about it. We're talking about it here on Lawn Crime. You know, all eyes are focused on this case. So for her, I mean, my thoughts are with her and her family, but something you mentioned to you about all of this is Kendra is entangled in this two Joe Dougher's wife. She faces charges and he faces multiple out of Arkansas and Florida. So how does that work? Is it like one right after the other? Like, can you swing the logistics there to me? Yeah, the States, the prosecutors will generally work it out now. It just depends on a bunch of factors. I would think that the more serious one here would go first. I think, you know, when it comes to the Arkansas one, the wife involved with it because apparently they had allegations of child endangerment, like locking locks from the outside of their room. So what happens if there's a fire God forbid, they can't get out. So that's your child endangerment. That's the white. I think they're going to move ahead with the more serious crime here in Florida. I think that was the one he was originally prosecuted for. That's the first one. Then you have the stuff in Arkansas. Unless I have the timeline wrong, I think Florida is going to go first. Yeah. And that is what I think first to be in Florida. Then kind of as the spotlight was focused on Joe or Joseph Dugger, then it kind of, oh, okay, let's take a look at Kendra. Now, these other charges out of Arkansas, their home state, all of that. So I tend to agree with you. I think Florida will come first. Something else you mentioned to is that allegedly Joe Dugger confessed in a way to his father, Jim Bob Dugger. And if anybody has followed any of the Dugger cases, Jim Bob is like the head of the family, you know, he's kind of like the icon of the family. And think whatever you want about Jim Bob, but would he maybe have to testify about all of this or would it be hearsay? Oh, well, if, and I said this earlier, if Joe confessed to Jim Bob, anything that Joe said is admissible as non hearsay because it's a statement by the defendant, a party opponent, you, it comes in. Now calling his wife, you have a spousal privilege. And that will protect him from having his wife to testify against him. But when it comes to the father, there is no father, son privilege. And so you can call the father to testify, but will he testify truthfully? And will he testify at all? Maybe he wants to hide behind the Fifth Amendment. I don't know. I think that you can try. You could subpoena him and you can even prosecute him if your refuses to. But that's going to be one of the most explosive elements of this case, because the Dugger playbook seems to be we're going to handle everything internally. Well, let's see, because I think prosecutors could call him to the stand and then it's game on. I mean, okay, so you talked about the Dugger playbook. I like what you, what you said about that, because there have been literally documentaries about this, you know, articles written things of the like. And it kind of stems from Josh Dugger, the older brother who's now been convicted. We've talked about him at the beginning. But there are allegations that he was sexually assaulting family members from the time he was a kid. Jim Bob knew about this. Maybe even Michelle the mother knew about it too. So I mean, how does this factor into the fact that now we have two brothers, one who's been convicted, another one who's accused of kind of similar crimes, I would say. It's involving sex crimes, involving a child. How does it work in terms of an investigation into the family? What it was like, because I know that they had 19 kids, some are still actually adolescents, children. A lot of them are adults, you know, married, have their own kids, their own lives, etc. But how does that work? I mean, is there justification for any sort of investigation into the Duggers who currently have some kids who are under the age of 18? You know, they have DCF, which is the Department of Children and Families, and they can go ahead and investigate and you don't need the same type of higher burden that prosecutors need because their goal is to protect children. And if it looks like children are at risk, then go in there. They can investigate. They can take kids away. They are empowered to protect children. Prosecutors have a different burden. You have to go to a judge, get a subpoena. You have to show probable cause that there's evidence of a crime and that a crime exists. And so you have to get a judge to sign off. And then you have the subpoena where you can go request things or you could go in there and raid the place if you've got a warrant. So you can, there are a number of things that you can do as a prosecutor. But I think what they're going to do is go through the state, the Department of Children and Families to make sure the kids are safe. And if any other evidence of criminality is uncovered, yeah, then the prosecutors and law enforcement can do things like search the premises or request documents. I mean, there's certain things that that you can do in law enforcement. It's just so hard to have to think about things like that. And I'm not pointing fingers saying, you know, Jim Bob and Michelle are guilty of whatever. No, I'm not saying that at all. But I'm just thinking about children. That's what's paramount here is making sure that the kids that they're raising, any kids that anyone's involved with, that they're safe, that they don't have to worry about the allegations that we're talking about here. So Dave, I've taken up so much of your time. So I'll end with this question. What do you expect for the future of this case? If you had to hypothesize the one out of Florida, because as we've talked about, I think that's kind of the more severe charges that Joe Dugger faces. What would you expect? A conviction, a plea deal, a trial? What are your thoughts? I mean, I think they've got good evidence. I've got his own words against him that got a confession. I think that he's gone down for this and I don't know whether it'll end up in a plea deal, which will ensure his incarceration or if he goes to trial. If he goes to trial, I expect the guilty verdict and I expect him to serve many years in prison. So for his sake, I would say, you should probably try to settle this case because he can try to put the girl under, you know, withering cross examination. If she's required to testify in person, there's always that chance that she could be allowed to testify via closed circuit because of Florida rules, because she's a minor and because there's child abuse here allegedly. But I don't think you can depend on your lawyer to make this victim look bad to get yourself off of these charges. So my advice then would be talk to the prosecutors about cutting a deal because it's not going to get much better from here on out. Yeah, I tend to agree with you. I think plea deal, plea bargain might be the route that this case takes. I guess we're going to have to wait and see. Dave Aaronburg, thanks for coming on scandal with us today and talking us to us a little bit about the duggers. Thank you. And that's where today's episode of Scandal leaves us for now. If you like what you saw and you want to see more or connect with me on social media, you can find me on places like Instagram at Sierra Gillespie. Thanks for watching today's episode of Scandal. As always, I'm your host Sierra Gillespie, and I'll see you next time.