Brian Laundrie's parents faced protests amid search for Gabby Petito. Were they charged?
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Gabby Petito's parents reach settlement
The parents of Gabby Petito have reached a settlement in a civil lawsuit against Brian Laundrie's parents and their attorney, Steve Bertolino.
Fox - 10 Phoenix
A new docuseries on the investigation into the 2021 killing of Gabby Petito has brought a fresh wave of attention on the parents of her alleged killer and their controversial actions amid the search for Petito.
The docuseries, "American Murder: Gabby Petito," showed Christopher and Roberta Laundrie stonewaling investigators and Petito's family amid a high-profile search for the 22-year-old who went missing while on a cross-country roadtrip with Brian Laundrie.
Petito was reported missing after Laundrie returned, without Petito, to his Florida home, where he was living with his parents. As the search for Petito gained national attention, the Laundries mostly ignored relentless protesters assembled outside their house amid constant surveillance from law enforcement.
"Speak up!" demanded one protest sign seen at their North Port, Florida, home.
The documentary showed evidence that Laundries retained a lawyer before the search for Petito began and refused to cooperate with police as they started to investigate Petito's disappearance.
Though speculation over the extent of their involvement was rampant, the Laundries were never charged with a crime. (Petito's parents filed suit against the Laundries for emotional distress and settled last year out of court.)
Legal experts in Florida consulted by USA TODAY were unsurprised by the lack of charges.
The Laundrie parents were not legally obligated to speak to authorities or to Petito's family even if they did know something, said University of Miami law professor Craig Trocino, who also directs the school's Innocence Clinic.
"There are a lot of facts that don't look good," he said. "It's a bad case. It's horrible any way you dice it... but the law is the law."
The documentary also depicts the events leading to Brian Laundrie's death.
While authorities searched the country for Petito, Brian Laundrie also went missing. Petito's body was found near a Wyoming campground on Sept. 19, 2021, and investigators said she had been strangled.
The documentary shows a massive, weekslong search for Laundrie that only ended with the discovery of his body when his parents joined the search. Authorities believe Laundrie died by suicide.
The Laundries' attorney, Steven Bertolino, issued a statement to USA TODAY that was critical of the documentary, saying it "contained many inaccuracies, incorrect juxtapositions of timelines, and misstatements and omissions of fact - perhaps deliberate to capture their 'truth,' perhaps due to simple error.
The statement continues: "We all know Brian took Gabby's life and Brian then took his own as well. Let the parents of both Gabby and Brian mourn and remember them in peace."
The right to remain silent
Any person generally has the right to remain silent when speaking with police, which can lead to some moral quandaries, experts said.
"If I'm walking down the street and I see you shoot somebody, morally, I'm compelled to call the police and say, 'I just saw this.' Legally, I don't believe you have any obligations to do that," Trocino said. "Especially if it puts you in the crosshairs, if it implicates you."
In the Laundries' case, it's also unclear what the parents knew about Gabby Petito's death, said Randolph Braccialarghe, a law professor at the Nova Southeastern University College of Law, in an email.
"The difficulty with charging the parents was that the police did not know what Brian Laundrie had told his parents," Braccialarghe wrote.
(The issue came up in a deposition for the civil suit, where the Laundries said they weren't sure that Petito was dead when a panicked Brian contacted them on Aug. 29 and asked them to call a lawyer.)
But questions of "who knew what, when?" aren't the most important legal consideration, according to Trocino, who said the parents would have been within their rights to withhold information from police and direct questions to their lawyer.
That's exactly what footage in the documentary shows, when Florida officers starting their investigation asked to speak with Brian.
"He's not going to talk to anybody," Christopher Laundrie told Florida officers. "Goodbye for now. You can call our attorney."
Law enforcement may have considered charges like being an accessory to the crimes their son allegedly committed, Trocino said. But those charges would have required evidence they had helped him evade capture while knowing he had killed Petito.
What about the 'burn after reading' letter?
The docuseries also highlighted a letter Roberta Laundrie acknowledged she wrote to her son, contained in an envelope that said "burn after reading."
"If you're in jail, I will bake a cake with a file in it. If you need to dispose of a body, I will show up with a shovel and garbage bags," she wrote in the letter that was undated.
See the letter: Brian Laundrie's mom wrote him letter saying she would help 'dispose of a body'
Roberta Laundrie said in statements through a lawyer she wrote the letter months before Petito's death, but Petito's family argued in court documents in their civil suit that it was evidence the Laundrie parents knew about their daughter's death.
"It is really bad. That's kind of a messed up thing for a mother to write to a son, even jokingly. But is it criminal?" Not by itself, Trocino said.
What happened to Gabby Petito?
Petito and Brian Laundrie, 22 and 23 at the time, were an engaged couple who set out on a cross-country road trip in a van in July of 2021. Petito's friends and family said in the documentary that she wanted to build a large following on social media by making "van life" videos, and her footage and posts to social media depict a blissful couple in love and on the adventure of their lives.
But the next month, a passerby called 911 to report a domestic dispute between them: "the gentleman was slapping the girl," the caller said. Police in Moab, Utah, responded and separated the couple for the night, and believing that Petito was the aggressor, found Brian Laundrie a place to stay.
Brian Laundrie returned home to North Port, Florida, with the van but without Petito in early September. After she didn't respond to her parents' texts or calls for days, they reported her missing in their home state of New York.
After he and his parents refused to speak to law enforcement, Brian Laundrie soon vanished as well, telling his family he was going hiking in a vast reserve near the home on Sept. 13, slipping out of the house undetected by law enforcement keeping watch. His parents reported him missing on Sept. 17.
By the time Petito's body was found in Wyoming on Sept. 19, 2021, the search for Laundrie as the prime suspect turned into a massive manhunt that lasted weeks before his body was also found on Oct. 20.
Authorities found a journal with his belongings in which they said he confessed to killing Petito.
Contributing: Grace Pateras Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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USA Today
12 hours ago
- USA Today
ICE deported teenagers and children in immigration raids. Here are their stories.
Several students who attended K-12 schools in the United States last year won't return this fall after ICE deported them to other countries. An empty seat. Martir Garcia Lara's fourth-grade teacher and classmates went on with the school day in Torrance, California without him on May 29. About 20 miles north of his fourth grade classroom, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested and detained the boy and his father at their scheduled immigration hearing in Downtown Los Angeles. The federal immigration enforcement agency, which under President Donald Trump has more aggressively deported undocumented immigrants, separated the young boy and his father for a time and took them to an immigration detention facility in Texas. Garcia Lara and his father were reunited and deported to Honduras this summer. Garcia Lara is one of at least five young children and teens who have been rounded up by ICE and deported from the United States with their parents since the start of Trump's second presidential term. Many won't return to their school campuses in the fall. "Martir's absence rippled beyond the school walls, touching the hearts of neighbors and strangers alike, who united in a shared hope for his safe return," Sara Myers, a spokesperson for the Torrance Unified School District, told USA TODAY. Trisha McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said his father Martir Garcia-Banegas, 50, illegally entered the United States in 2021 with his son from the Central American country and an immigration judge ordered them to "removed to Honduras" in Sept. 2022. "They exhausted due process and had no legal remedies left to pursue," McLaughlin wrote USA TODAY in an email. The young boy is now in Honduras without his teacher, classmates and a brother who lives in Torrance. "I was scared to come here," Lara told a reporter at the California-based news station ABC7 in Spanish. "I want to see my friends again. All of my friends are there. I miss all my friends very much." Although no reported ICE deportations have taken place on school grounds, school administrators, teachers and students told USA TODAY that fear lingers for many immigrant students in anticipation of the new school year. The Trump administration has ramped up immigration enforcement in the United States. A Reuters analysis of ICE and White House data shows the Trump administration has doubled the daily arrest rates compared to the last decade. Trump recently signed the House and Senate backed "One Big Beautiful Bill," which increases ICE funding by $75 billion to use to enforce immigration policy and arrest, detain and deport immigrants in the United States. Although Trump has said he wants to remove immigrants from the country who entered illegally and committed violent crimes, many people without criminal records have also been arrested and deported, including school students who have been picked up along with or in lieu of their parents. Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House, says the Trump administration's immigration agencies are not targeting children in their raids. She called an insinuation that they are "a fake narrative when the truth tells a much different story." "In many of these examples, the children's parents were illegally present in the country – some posing a risk to the communities they were illegally present in – and when they were going to be removed they chose to take their children with them," Jackson said. "If you have a final deportation order, as many of these illegal immigrant parents did, you have no right to stay in the United States and should immediately self-deport.' Parents can choose to leave their kids behind if they are arrested, detained and deported from the United States, she said. Some advocates for immigrants in the United States dispute that claim. National Immigration Project executive director Sirine Shebaya said she's aware of undocumented immigrant parents were not given the choice to leave their kids behind or opportunity to make arrangement for them to stay in the United States. In several cases, ICE targeted parents when they attended routine immigration appointments, while traffic stops led to deportations of two high school students. School principals, teachers and classmates say their absence is sharply felt and other students are afraid they could be next. From Los Angeles to Massachusetts: arrested, detained and deported The coastal community of Torrance is in uproar over Garcia Lara's deportation. After hearing about the arrest of him and his father, Jasmin King, president of the PTA for Torrance Elementary School, asked parents in the group for advice on how to help them. "One of our students, Martir Garcia Lara, 4th grade, who has been one of our students since 1st grade has recently been held captive in an ICE facility located in Houston Texas," King wrote in a memo to school parents obtained by KTLA in late May. "We are trying to help Martir and his family." School district officials also received inquiries from the community about what people could do to assist Garcia Lara and his family, said Myers, the district spokesperson. In the end, they couldn't do much to help the child stay in the United States. Elementary, middle and high school campuses have historically been safe settings for immigrant students and their families, but students may be picked up by ICE when they are off-campus. 'One of our classmates was deported' About 10 miles north of the White House, Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, also lost a high school junior near the end of the school year. ICE deported the student to Guatemala, according to the student organization Montgomery Blair Students For Asylum and Immigration Reform. Liliana López, a spokesperson for the district, said ICE has not appeared on the district's campuses. 'Last week, one of our classmates was deported,' the group wrote on social media. 'We're heartbroken, we're angry, and we're not staying silent.' Kyara Romero Lira, 17, who attends Montgomery Blair, said she found out about the student's deportation through a friend who was close to the girl. She said she could not name the student because the student and her family requested privacy. ICE did not respond to an inquiry from USA TODAY for more information about the student or why she was deported. School officials said they could not confirm the student's status or name due to privacy regulations. The teen's arrest elicited an emotional student walkout on the school campus in June. Romero Lira and Senaya Asfaw, the leaders of a student group on campus called Students For Asylum and Immigration Reform organized the walkout. They are both daughters of immigrants. Other high schoolers joined them on campus on June 12 in protest of the student's deportation. The teens described the protest as "extremely successful." Asfaw said there is an increased presence of ICE in their community, which has a large immigrant population. "There's been unrest, confusion and fear since the new administration came in," Asfaw told USA TODAY. "There's been a lot more ICE sightings in general, not on campus, but in the community." Romero Lira said the student's deportation "brought something that felt so far away to our doorstep." She feels "extremely scared" even though she's in a community that's historically friendly to immigrants, she said. Asfaw agreed and reiterated the surprise about the student's deportation hitting so close to home. "Our school does so much to try to help the immigrant students and parents and families. You can see that within the hallways of Blair," Asfaw said. "There are all kids of immigrants, a lot of Latino immigrants and other immigrants from all over the world." Detroit teacher will 'miss him in my classroom next year' Immigration officials arrested Detroit teen and high school senior Maykol Bogoya-Duarte on May 20 when he was driving to a school field trip. Authorities say he was tailgating a car in front of him, which turned out to be an unmarked police car. Local police officers found out he didn't have a driver's license and arrested the teen during the traffic stop, said his attorney, Ruby Robinson with the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. A copy of the police report in the case, provided to USA TODAY by the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, showed that police officers called local border patrol agents on the scene to "provide interpretation" between officers and Bogoya-Duarte. Robinson said immigration agents learned then that Bogoya-Duarte was undocumented and had a deportation order and arrested him. He was 18 at the time of the arrest. He was also just 3.5 credits away from graduating high school. Authorities sent him to an immigration processing center in Louisiana and deported him to Colombia in June after he lost his legal appeal to stay in the country to earn his high school diploma. Bogoya-Duarte had lived in the United States since 2022 and was denied asylum to stay in the country in 2024, Robinson said. Bogoya-Duarte was planning to return to Colombia with his mother after he graduated from high school. He was in the process of obtaining a new passport. Jackson, from the White House, said Bogoya-Duarte had "previously ignored a judge's removal order and lost his appeal." "His asylum request was adjudicated prior to removal," she said. Dozens of community members spoke at a recent Detroit Public Schools meeting condemning Bogoya-Duarte's arrest, Chalkbeat Detroit reported. "On the day the rest of his classmates were starting summer and graduating, he was in a detention center," Robinson said. He described the teen as conscientious, focused on school, and said his grades had been improving since he entered the United States. "It was an opportunity cut short for him," he said. Robinson said Bogoya-Duarte was unable to apply for or receive a drivers license because of state restrictions that don't allow undocumented immigrants to obtain them. Angel Garcia, principal of Western International High School where Bogoya-Duarte attended school, called it "a really scary time" for his community. "I feel terrible for Maykol's family, but also for our other families who witnessed what happened from afar," Garcia said. Bogoya-Duarte's deportation and the Trump administration's heavy hand on immigration enforcement caused "quite a dip" in attendance last school year, he said. Kristen Schoettle, Bogoya-Duarte's teacher from Western International High School, told Chalkbeat Detroit that she's "devastated" and will "miss him in my classroom next year." 'This kid, my bright student, was passed along to prisons for a month, scared and facing awful conditions I'm sure, for the crime of what — fleeing his country as a minor in search of a better life?" said Schoettle to Chalkbeat Detroit. "And the US government decided his time was better spent in prison than finishing out the school year." 'The speed, brutality, and clandestine manner in which these children were deported is beyond unconscionable' Younger school children who attended Louisiana schools have also been caught in the crosshairs. ICE deported a 7-year-old girl in New Orleans to Honduras with her mother and her 4-year-old brother who has cancer in late April, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The children are both United States citizens and lived their entires lives in the country, said Sirine Shebaya from the National Immigration Project, which is representing the family. The family was attending a routine immigration appointment when they were arrested and the mother did not have a criminal history, she said. The United States Department of Homeland Security said the kids' mother "entered the country illegally and was released into the interior in 2013." "She was given a final order of deportation in 2015," reads an April 29 post from the agency on X. "In February of 2025, she was arrested by Kenner Police Department in Louisiana for speeding, driving without insurance, and driving without a license," the agency wrote. "When she was taken into ICE custody in April 2025, she chose to bring both children, who are American citizens, with her to Honduras and presented a valid United States passport for each child." Shebaya said she was not given the option to leave her kids behind or make arrangements for them to stay and they were deported within 24 hours. "ICE is supposed to give families time to figure out what options there are for care for their children, but in any cases families are taken into routine check ins, taken into hotel rooms for an extremely brief time and they're told deported tomorrow," Shebaya said. ICE also deported another New Orleans family, including the mother of an 11-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy, who is an American citizen, after they attended a routine immigration appointment in April. They were given 72 hours before they were deported, Shebaya said. The mother and the daughter entered the United States together during the first Trump administration and were undocumented immigrants. The young girl was attending school in the United States for about four years, Shebaya said. Officials from the Department of Homeland Security said on X that the mother "illegally entered the U.S. three times." "Her and her daughter were given final orders of removal in March of 2020," they wrote."When she was taken into ICE custody in April 2025, she chose to bring her daughter, an American citizen, with her to Honduras." Shebaya said the mother was told to bring her children and their passports to her immigration appointment. ICE is "actively instructing people to bring kids in some situations," she said. "If you're a child going to school or family with mixed status within it, there's a shock factor for families and for schoolmates going to school with them and not seeing them showing up," she said. "If anything, it creates terror day in and day out. Kids are being affected by it." DHS officials said in a statement about the New Orleans cases that the agency is "not deporting American children" and "takes its responsibility to protect children seriously and will continue to work with federal law enforcement to ensure that children are safe and protected." "Parents, who are here illegally, can take control of their departure," they wrote. Immigration attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigration Project and other advocates have condemned both New Orleans families' deportation and Trump's immigration crackdown, particularly when children are affected. 'Deporting U.S. citizen children is illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral," said Erin Ware, a senior associate at the law firm Ware Immigration, in a news release from the American Civil Liberties Union, about the New Orleans case. "The speed, brutality, and clandestine manner in which these children were deported is beyond unconscionable, and every official responsible for it should be held accountable.' 'I was hoping to graduate with my friends' Nory Sontay Ramos, a 17-year-old honors student at Miguel Contreras High School in Westlake, Los Angeles was preparing for her senior year before she and her mother were arrested by ICE at an immigration appointment. 'ICE took us to a room, and they ended up telling my mom, 'Your case is over, so we have to take you guys with us,'' Sontay Ramos told the news outlet The 19th. The teen and her mother were undocumented. The duo entered the United States as asylum seekers when Sontay Ramos was 6 years old, NBC 4 Los Angeles reported. McLaughlin said Sontay Ramos and her mother "exhausted all of their legal options to remain in the U.S." "On March 12, 2019, an immigration judge ordered their removal," she said. "On August 12, 2022, the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed their appeal." Authorities took the teen and her mother to Texas and deported them to Guatemala on July 4. 'I feel really sad because I was hoping to graduate with my friends and be there with them doing track and field,' she told NBC 4. At Miguel Contreras Learning Complex where she attended school, physical education teacher Manuel Guevara told The 19th that she was "happy-go-lucky." 'Nory is going into her senior year, which is another thing that's just killing me," he told the news outlet. "She was going into her senior year with all this momentum.' 'Nobody should be in there' A student who was detained and later released on bond is left with emotional scars after his experience in a Massachusetts detention facility. ICE pulled over and arrested Marcelo Gomes da Silva, 18, on his drive to volleyball practice at Milford High School in Massachusetts on May 31. The next day, Gomes da Silva's girlfriend and the other seniors at Milford High School graduated under a cloud of angst. Gomes da Silva, an 11th grader, was absent, as were two of the graduating students and the families of many others who feared arrest and deportation if they showed up. "I heard many stories of people who didn't cheer for their children," for fear of being exposed to immigration authorities, Coleen Greco, mother of a volleyball teammate of Gomes da Silva's, told USA TODAY. Federal officials said they were targeting Gomes da Silva's father, who owns the car he was driving, because he is undocumented and has a history of speeding. Gomes da Silva's attorney Robin Nice said his father has no arrests or convictions for speeding. The family moved to the United States from Brazil when Gomes da Silva was 7 years old and overstayed their visa, according to Nice. At the school's graduation ceremony, Milford High School Principal Joshua Otlin referred to the community's lingering "fear and anxiety" after Gomes da Silva's arrest. 'There is wrenching despair and righteous anger, where there should be gratitude and joy," he said. Gomes da Silva was later released from the ICE detention facility after six days in custody. He has applied for asylum in the hopes of avoiding deportation. A new surge of fear for immigrant families with school children Officials at schools with large immigrant populations say many students have been fearful since Trump ramped up immigration enforcement. "There's been very high levels of anxiety in the community about immigration enforcement for many months," said Otlin. Many immigrant families in Los Angeles County, where Sontay Ramos and Garcia Lara lived, avoided graduation ceremonies after Trump sent National Guard Troops to the Southern California city when Angelenos protested ICE arrests there in June. How LA school graduations Became the epicenter of fear for ICE family separations Los Angeles Unified School District has produced 'know your rights' cards with directions on how to respond if approached by immigration agents to students who request them, said Christy Hagen, a spokesperson for the district. Officials there are urging parents and guardians to update their students' emergency contact information and designate a trusted adult as an authorized caregiver in the event they are detained, she said. School officials elsewhere said they are also making plans to aid immigrant students ahead of the new school year. Garcia, the high school principal from Detroit, said the school may increase English language instruction for students who speak it as a second language. He wants to give students "more agency in knowing their rights." "We have to be more up front and honest with students about the dangers that we're currently experiencing in our country, especially for those who are not citizens." he said. While Garcia Lara won't return to nearby Torrance Unified in the fall, Myers, the spokesperson for his old school district, said the school community's concern about the young boy and his father's well-being has "reaffirmed our district's belief in the human spirit." Contributing: Ben Adler, USA TODAY; Max Reinhart, The Detroit News Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@ Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.
New York Post
a day ago
- New York Post
Tulsi Gabbard fires back at Obama: ‘absolute failure'
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard fired back at former President Barack Obama, accusing him of deflecting from his administration's 'absolute failure' to vet intelligence reports used to fuel narratives of Russian collusion with the 2016 Trump campaign. 'The treasonous conspiracy that we have now released to the American people — the complicity, the deflection, and the silence of politicians, of the mainstream media, and of those directly implicated into this speaks volumes,' Gabbard said on Fox & Friends Saturday. 3 Gabbard fired back at Obama Saturday on Fox. MediaPunch / BACKGRID Advertisement On Tuesday, President Trump called for criminal charges against Obama, 63, for allegedly ordering an intelligence report saying Russia meddled to help him win the White House in 2016. Trump was referring to documents Gabbard declassified last week. Obama's office responded, calling the claims an attempt at distracting from the scandal over the administration's handling of the Epstein files. Advertisement 'Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,' Patrick Rodenbush, a spokesman for Obama said. 3 Obama called the claims against him 'bizarre.' Corbis via Getty Images 'But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,' he said, referring to the mounting pressure on Trump to release the Epstein files. 'Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes.' Advertisement 3 Gabbard released documents last week about Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Anna Wilding / Gabbard lashed out at Obama's answer during her Fox appearance. 'President Obama's very carefully worded response that came from his office, again, deflects away from addressing any of the truth that was revealed,' she said. 'They would have to admit and actually address the details of their complicity in this or their absolute failure in conducting the most basic responsibilities of, again, asking, where is this intelligence coming from? Advertisement Gabbard sent a criminal referral to Attorney General Pam Bondi Friday against Obama.
USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
Former CEO of Christian nonprofit pleads guilty to possessing child pornography
The former CEO of My Faith Votes, a nonprofit that encourages "Christians in America to vote in every election," has pleaded guilty to possessing child sexual abuse images, months after his arrest. Jason Christopher Yates, 56, pleaded guilty to two of eight felony counts of possession of child pornography on Tuesday, July 22, in a district court in McLeod County, Minnesota, according to a plea petition obtained by USA TODAY. Yates was initially charged and arrested in October 2024, according to Minnesota state court records. My Faith Votes told Religion News Service that Yates served as its CEO until August 2024. 'In early August 2024, the My Faith Votes board of directors separated Jason Yates from My Faith Votes and board member Chris Sadler assumed the position of Acting CEO," the statement reads. "Over the last three months Chris has been working with the dedicated My Faith Votes team to encourage millions of Christians to vote, pray and think biblically about this election in America.' Yates became the CEO of My Faith Votes in 2015 during the nonprofit's inception, according to his Truth & Liberty Coalition bio. USA TODAY contacted My Faith Votes on Saturday, July 26, but has not received a response. The Tamburino Law Group, whose attorneys served as Yates' legal counsel in the case, told USA TODAY in an email, "We are not commenting on this matter." What did Jason Yates do? According to a probable cause affidavit obtained by USA TODAY, an individual gave the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension a hard drive that contained child sexual abuse images on July 31, 2024. The person told agents that they received the hard drive from a relative of Yates who "accidentally discovered it" inside a dresser in the former CEO's office in McLeod County, Minnesota, according to the affidavit. Yates' relative stumbled upon the child sex abuse images when they tried putting the hard drive in their computer for more storage, the affidavit reads. The hard drive contained more than 100 sexually explicit images of children, according to the document. When agents met with Yates on Sept. 13, 2024, he confirmed that the child sex abuse images on the hard drive did not belong to the relative who found them, the affidavit states. He also told the agents that he had a prior conviction for possessing child sex abuse images, but it had been expunged, the document continued. What is My Faith Votes? My Faith Votes describes itself as a "non-partisan movement" that motivates Christians in the U.S. to vote in elections, according to the Fort Worth, Texas-based nonprofit's website. "We desire to see an America where God is honored in the public square and biblical truth is advanced in our culture," My Faith Votes' website states. The nonprofit was founded in 2015 by Sealy Yates, an attorney who previously served on President Donald Trump's evangelical advisory board, according to Politico. He is also Jason Yates' uncle, according to Christian news site The Roys Report. Both are also literary agents representing Christian authors. While My Faith Votes claims to be "non-partisan," the nonprofit has backed several Republican officials and conservative views, including anti-abortion. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was My Faith Votes' honorary national chairman before becoming the U.S. Ambassador to Israel under Trump's administration, according to the nonprofit. Dr. Ben Carson was the founding honorary national chairman for the nonprofit before he became the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during Trump's first presidency. Jason Yates is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 29, according to Minnesota court records.
