Mormon Stories has been reporting, with more and more evidence, that Tim Ballard has been excommunicated. This is after the LDS Newsroom already virtually excommunicated him by saying he was engaged in morally unacceptable activities. At this point Ballard appears to have lost all of his power base:
- Operation Underground Railroad, the group he founded, has severed ties with him.
- The LDS church has excommunicated him, meaning his influence among LDS donors is basically zero
- This is speculative, but I'm guessing at this point Glenn Beck has quietly removed him from his friends list. Beck wants to keep in good graces with the LDS hierarchy for access/ego purposes.
The only option I see for Ballard to regain some power, influence, and money is to go completely scorched earth against the LDS church. I think it would actually be pretty easy to do for Ballard. All Ballard would have to do would be to accuse the LDS church of protecting pedophiles. Easy to do, because there's plenty of evidence that they are. He could easily re-focus sting operations on local LDS leadership and make lots of noise in turning over LDS leadership to local authorities. We know he likes to film himself doing all of this.
At that point, he could just make non-specific claims against upper leadership that they knew about this (plausible) and that they are covering it up because they are also pedophiles (not as plausible, but his target audience would eat it up).
Just to be clear, I'm not condoning this, though if actual pedophiles are arrested, that's fine by me. My question is: What do you think the chances are that he does something like this?
