SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Attorney General’s Office believes it’s the proper agency to open a criminal investigation into Tim Ballard and the nonprofit Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) despite previously receiving approximately $1 million from the nonprofit in donations.
Earlier this month, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes apologized for his “past friendship” with Ballard, the former CEO of OUR.
For years, Reyes and Ballard have referred to each other as close friends.
In December, Reyes announced he would not be seeking reelection. He promised to open a criminal investigation into Ballard and OUR after meeting with five female OUR employees who accused Ballard of sexual misconduct.
“I am now recused, meaning I will have no involvement,” Reyes said, “but my office will conduct a statewide investigation.”
The case will not be the first criminal inquiry into OUR, Ballard, or Reyes.
In 2020, prosecutors in Davis County launched a criminal fraud investigation related, in part, to the donated funds.
Donors like BYU student Rachel Allred stated they were not concerned with the pending investigation.
“I felt so inspired, and I felt like God loved these people that they were helping,” Allred said at a school fundraiser in 2020. “Maybe, you know, organizations are not perfect. I don’t know all the details of what really happened... I don’t know too much about what is actually going on [with the investigation], but I really don’t think that there is any real cause to be concerned.”
OUR donated anywhere from $950,000 to $1 million to the Utah AG’s Office over a span of multiple years, according to emails obtained by FOX 13 News.
The Utah AG’s Office collected the money and distributed it to law enforcement agencies across Utah. Additionally, the Utah AG's Office sent at least 13 thank-you letters to OUR with detailed statistics, outlining the number of police cases that were positively impacted by OUR’s donations. In exchange, OUR was able to fundraise using the numbers supplied by the Utah AG’s Office, taking at least partial credit for cases solved by local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for OUR confirmed its donations to the Utah AG’s Office were used for its intended purpose, "to directly aid in local arrests and enhanced enforcement of crimes against children."
In an interview with FOX 13 News in February 2023, Ballard stated OUR has never exaggerated its accomplishments.
“It’s funny. When we give our numbers, we’re actually pretty conservative,” Ballard said. “We don’t do operations unless law enforcement is in — we're working as an extension of [them] or consulting [them] — and we want people to know that’s how we work.”
OUR “permanently separated” from Ballard in 2023 after an internal affairs investigation into sexual misconduct claims. In a civil lawsuit, plaintiffs stated Ballard was fired and eventually rehired so he could resign on his own terms and save face.
Emails from Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings show police did not realize they had received money from OUR. Instead, they believed the Utah AG’s Office was distributing federal grant money to local law enforcement.
Rawlings stated it was improper, at one point calling it “BS.” At the onset of his fraud investigation, he warned donors about nonprofits taking credit for police work.
The case was at least partially concluded in 2023 without the filing of charges.
Nevertheless, Rawlings still believes Davis County was intentionally duped by the Utah AG’s Office.
“The [contract] is self-explanatory,” Rawlings wrote in an email to FOX 13 News. “We were intentionally led to believe [by the Utah Attorney General’s Office] that we were receiving [federal] money. We were never, not one time until our investigation inquiry, informed that we were NOT receiving [federal] money... In essence, the Davis County Attorney’s Office contracted over multiple years to receive horses, thought we had received those horses, won awards with those horses, but are now asked to believe those horses were actually amazing donkeys in disguise.”
In response, the Utah AG's Office acknowledged there was a misunderstanding with the money it received from OUR and that it should have been more clear from the contract that police were receiving state money, not federal grant money.
FOX 13 News reached out to the United States Department of Justice to see if it’s happy with the way the Utah AG’s Office handled the federal money Davis County thought it was receiving. So far, we have not received a response.
The Utah AG’s Office says it ceased taking donations from OUR in 2020 and that the previous years’ transfer of funds will not impact its sexual assault investigation into Ballard and OUR.
Lance Bastian, a former prosecutor with the Utah County Attorney's Office, disagreed with the decision.
“To me, that definitely smells like a conflict of interest,” Bastian said. “They were being investigated, sort of together, over some of the same issues. I mean, it couldn’t be messier than that.”
Bastian, who is now a criminal defense attorney with the firm Nelson Naegle, said he believes prosecutorial agencies have a responsibility to maintain the public’s trust – which includes avoiding cases with even the appearance of a conflict.
As such, he believes the Utah AG’s Office shouldn’t go anywhere near a case involving OUR.
“An amount of money was donated to the Utah AG's Office. If that donation had been to Sean’s campaign specifically, there would be no question that Sean would say, ‘I am conflicted off of this, and I can’t be part of it,’” Bastian said. “So why is there a question when the money is given to the Utah AG's Office as an entity that the whole entity is not tainted in the same way?”
Utah Governor Spencer Cox disagreed, even after learning of the approximately $1 million donation.
“I have great faith in the professionals that work in that office,” Governor Cox said. “It’s a collection of attorneys who all have ethical obligations.”
Governor Cox also stated he’s aware of other criminal investigations involving Ballard by other prosecutorial agencies.
“But that’s not the point,” Bastian said. “Let any one of them take the lead on this thing... Just because someone’s professional, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be conflicted... I like and respect Governor Cox, but I hope he’s not asking the public to just say, well, even though there appears to be a conflict, there are some other factors that may also give us some confidence in their ability to do this without bias, and mostly on his say-so that he knows and trusts these people? The public should feel good about that? I don’t think that’s enough.”
Mike Green, an attorney representing Ballard's five female accusers, released the following statement to FOX 13 News.
"It would be improper (for us) to comment on who is investigating, though our clients take comfort in the Governor's statement that there are multiple eyes on it," he wrote.
“To me, this is a pretty easy call,” Bastian said. “If an investigation is biased from the beginning, then whatever results from it is poisoned fruit.”
A spokesperson for OUR said the nonprofit will comply with the Utah AG’s Office investigation.
A civil lawsuit against Reyes, accusing him of using the Utah AG's Office to silence critics of OUR, was dropped shortly after Reyes' announcement to not seek reelection. Attorneys for the plaintiff in that case say the lawsuit could be refiled if additional evidence comes to light.