Josh Duggar faces trial later this month after being charged with receiving and possessing child pornography.- Duggar's lawyers and prosecutors are currently arguing over what evidence can be used in the trial.
Josh Duggar's statement after being caught up in a hack of a website for people seeking extramarital affairs has become a point of contention as the former reality TV star prepares to head to trial on child pornography charges.
Duggar, 33, a former star of his family's cancelled TLC show "19 Kids and Counting," was charged in April with two counts of downloading and possessing child pornography. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Federal prosecutors and Duggar's lawyers each argued in court documents filed Wednesday over a statement Duggar gave after being outed as a user of Ashley Madison, which brands itself as dating website for married people looking for "discreet relationships."
Following the 2015 hack of the website, Duggar released a statement saying he had been "the biggest hypocrite ever."
"While espousing faith and family values, I have secretly over the last several years been viewing pornography on the internet and this became a secret addiction and I became unfaithful to my wife," the statement said.
Duggar's initial statement was later amended to remove the reference to pornography, CNN reported at the time.
Prosecutors want to use this statement to explain why Duggar had an anti-porn program called Covenant Eyes downloaded onto his computer. Convenant Eyes is a program designed to help curb porn viewage by reporting any porn searches to a specially designated accountability partner, in this case Duggar's wife, Anna.
Duggar was able to get around the Convenant Eyes software to view child pornography by installing a special browser which allowed him to surf the dark web undetected, prosecutors said.
But Duggar's lawyers want a judge to block the Ashley Madison statement from being used against him in court, because it could turn the jury against him.
They argued that his membership to a dating site for consenting adults, and admissions to infidelity or viewing adult pornography, "are not in any way relevant to whether Duggar committed the crimes pending in this case," and would be "unfairly prejudicial."
"If the jury learns of allegations that Duggar was in some way unfaithful to his wife or had a supposed 'addiction' to viewing adult pornography, an unacceptable risk exists that the jury will convict him in the case, not because the Government has proven him guilty of the crimes charged beyond a reasonable doubt, but because the jury will improperly conclude that these unrelated allegations against Duggar somehow make it more likely that he committed the charged offenses in this case," the defense lawyers argued in their court filing.
Duggar faces up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 on each count if convicted. The trial is set to start November 30.