Whistleblower calls out Pastor David Wigington for secret, sexual exploits

SPEAKERS: Julie Roys, Jo Fipps

Note: This is a rough transcript and may contain some errors or mistranscriptions.

Julie Roys: Well, welcome to a live edition of the Roys Report. I’m Julie Roys, and over the weekend, we published a bombshell investigation concerning Pastor David Wigington of Cornerstone Christian Fellowship in Bloomington, Indiana.

Our investigation revealed reams of email and text evidence indicating that Wigington visited escorts and massage parlors while on ministry trips out of town. Texts like this one:

“Hey, I saw your ad on Adult Search. Are you available tomorrow at all?”

“Yes, baby. Where are you located?”

“I’m coming to St. Louis for a meeting tomorrow afternoon and was wondering about hooking up in the morning.”

“Okay, in-call or out?”

“In-call.”

“$200 an hour.”

“Okay. Can you do 10 a.m.?”

“Yes.”

Despite dozens of exchanges like this, Wigington, who’s also a director with Project Rescue, denied any wrongdoing when we reached out for comment, and he threatened us with legal action. We published our story anyway.

Then on Sunday morning, the church turned off its usual online live feed, and Elder Gregory Lamar read a five-minute statement to the congregation. We know about this because someone recorded the statement on their cell phone and sent it to us.

I’m going to play that video of this statement in just a minute, but first, I want you to meet the whistleblower who gave us the incriminating emails and text messages.

His name is Jo Fipps, a longtime congregant at Cornerstone and former staff member with Chi Alpha, a Cornerstone-supported ministry with students at Indiana University.

So, Jo, welcome, and it’s a pleasure to have you join me.

Jo Fipps: Yeah. Thanks for having me, and thanks for your help bringing the truth out there.

Julie Roys: Yeah, and Jo, I know this has been quite the ordeal for you. My understanding is that the first time you stumbled on your pastor’s alleged misconduct was five years ago. Would you explain how you first became concerned about Wigington’s possible misconduct? How did that come to light?

Jo Fipps: Yeah, so it’s a crazy and weird story, but essentially five years ago, I was attending the church—I’d been there for over 10 years. I was serving as a missionary. I was raising money to buy a new computer because I was using a super old computer from freshman year of college.

And I had asked David and I had asked Eric Cooper, his brother-in-law, if they would donate money. And they initially said that, yes, they would give me a matching fund of half the amount of money I was trying to raise.

But then eventually, David came to me with a different idea, which was he had a computer he was not using. And so, if I wanted, he could just give me this computer, and then I could either use it or sell it, you know, on eBay or whatever, and then put that money toward a different computer.

So I said I would take the computer. He gave it to me. This was in the fall of 2021, in November. And he had not wiped his computer off fully before giving it to me.

So I get it, there’s a bunch of files on it. So I was just poking around because, you know, I kind of wanted to know if there was anything important that he needed, slash just what’s on this computer, because I own it now and there are random files on it.

And I basically came across a picture of a girl. It was a selfie. It was not inherently sexual. Like, you know, she had clothes on. It was a Live Photo. And there was just something about it that seemed intimate or personal.

Like, I was trying to think, why would he have a picture of a random girl? And, you know, say he were putting together a missions presentation and he was texting a missionary, “Hey, can you send me a picture for this PowerPoint?” or whatever. It just did not feel like the kind of photo that you would submit as a headshot or, “Here’s a picture for the church service,” or whatever. It felt personal.

And so I did some digging. I looked into the metadata of the image. I could see that it was texted to him at, I think, 10:18 p.m., actually a year prior. I could see the phone number that the photo came from.

And so, you know, it was pretty crazy. Some girl was sending this picture at 10 o’clock at night to him. I wound up searching the phone number online. I found the girl’s name. She’s from Florida. Wound up finding a profile on this modeling website. But I could not find any—I found social media from her and her family—but I could not find any ties to the Assemblies of God or to David.

So it seemed like just this very weird thing. Certainly not enough, in my opinion, to report or accuse anyone based off just a random photo that was sent to him. But it seemed very strange.

And so I just kind of put it in the back of my mind. I did end up selling the computer on eBay. And so I wiped it off and sent it to somebody.

And then actually, after I sold it—and there’s a reason I’m sharing these random details—there was still an iCloud lock, like an activation lock or whatever, on the computer, even though I wiped it off. And so then I had to text David asking for him to basically log on to his account on his computer, go onto iCloud, and remove this device.

And the reason I say that is because I’ve heard that David—he’s remembered that he gave me this computer—I’ve just heard that he has accused me potentially of trying to trick him into giving me access to the computer. And that’s just not what happened. And I have the messages still from that eBay seller.

So I know that’s more information than you probably wanted, but I just wanted to mention that.

Julie Roys: Well, but there are some details that will become relevant later because with that computer, that whole situation, there were some finances involved, and we can get into that in a little bit.

But so after that, you kind of tucked that away. And as you said, it wasn’t enough to report, but then you discovered something else. Talk about how that happened and what it was that you discovered.

Jo Fipps: Yeah. So just to explain a little bit for people watching who don’t know me: I was a missionary with a college ministry at IU, and we had office space at Cornerstone, David’s church. So I physically worked at the church, but not for the church. So it was kind of a weird situation.

So basically, in the spring of 2022, maybe five-ish months later, I was doing some work in the sound booth at the church for an event for the college ministry. And I realized that on the church sound booth computer, David’s iCloud was logged in.

And, you know, I had this picture in the back of my mind. I had this girl’s phone number, so I thought I should see if there are any messages from this girl because, you know, something just felt off about this. And so, if anything shady is going on, I should try to find that out.

And so I searched. I did not find anything about this girl. I could not find any messages or anything like that. But I did stumble upon some other messages that were extremely concerning and messages that should not be on anyone’s account, let alone a pastor’s account.

Julie Roys: What was the nature of those? What was the nature of those?

Jo Fipps: Yeah. So I’ve not really talked a lot about this, to be honest, partly just to protect the people involved because there’s plenty of other junk that I ended up finding that I think is maybe easier to talk about.

But basically what I found were text messages that, to me, seemed very emotionally abusive and manipulative. And messages that I did not feel were explicit enough to report.

Again, just from being a pastor, being in the church world, I know how things like this can often go down and how hard it can be to have people held accountable or have honest investigations. Obviously, we’ve seen that for five months now.

So again, I was finding things that were concerning to me that I felt like needed to be addressed, but I did not feel confident that it was enough to bring up and trust that it would actually be addressed appropriately.

So again, I just kind of filed that away in the back of my mind.

Julie Roys: Were those people within—sorry, were those people within the church, though? Those somewhat abusive, it sounds like, from your standpoint?

Okay, so this was the way the pastor was treating some of the people that was concerning to you.

Jo Fipps: Yeah, yeah. One person in particular. And yeah, so it was definitely concerning, definitely a big red flag.

And I just felt very strongly, like, in my spirit that there’s something else going on, and no one else knows but me. And so I kind of have a duty to figure that out and, you know, get to the bottom of it.

And so a couple times over the years, I basically kept looking. And then eventually, a year ago, stumbled into a whole crazy mess that I never expected to find.

Julie Roys: Yeah. And that’s when you got sort of the mother lode, right? I mean, this was up to—I mean, hundreds, literally hundreds, of texts and emails.

And when you saw those—and we showed just one of the texts—you gave us an entire document, which is linked in our article. I’m a little nervous to go through it because some of it’s a little risqué. I mean, the pictures that were sent—it’s not for—I mean, you just have to be prepared if you’re going to go through that.

But clearly, if these texts and these emails belong to the pastor, we’re talking about a pattern stretching over years, involving dozens of ministry trips.

And this is your pastor for the past decade. What happens to you when you see these? Like, how do you internalize it? How do you feel? How does that impact you?

Jo Fipps: Yeah. I mean, I was freaking out, panicking for a lot of reasons.

I mean, I felt very strongly that there was something going on. And I just felt like I had to find out what it was because, again, no one else—to my knowledge, no one else knew. And so it, for whatever reason, just kind of fell on me to find the truth.

But then when I found—like, I never expected there would be messages to sex workers, and it would be all over the country, like you said, years of messages. I mean, it just blew my mind.

And I knew, like, I have to do something about this. Like, this cannot continue. But I did not know what to do.

And also, I knew that the gravity of what I found was like a—what could feel like, you know, a life-ending amount of evidence uncovered. Not that—I mean, I believe in restoration and reconciliation and redemption—but it can feel like this is a career-ending, family-ending revelation, potentially.

Like, this is very serious. And I’m going to be in some hot water because most likely, someone doing these things is not going to want this to come out. And it’s going to be a crazy battle, probably, trying to reveal all this.

So yeah, my head was spinning.

And then, you know, I volunteer at my church. So shortly after this, I’m on the worship team. I’m on stage on Sunday morning and just trying to act normal and trying to pretend like everything is fine, and just looking around the room thinking, like, all these people are about to be hurt by what I know.

Julie Roys: Yeah. And that is—literally, we have some comments that have—in fact, I just want to put some of these up.

I mean, here’s one that says, “You are so wrong to be exposing this pastor. The godly way to handle this would be to take your info to the church leadership and hold them accountable to remove this pastor and help him with his sin.”

How do you respond to critics like that, who are responding that way?

Jo Fipps: I appreciate the input. I did take this to church leadership five months ago. And I’d love to—I don’t know if now’s a good time to share—I’d love to share why I went public.

Julie Roys: You know what? I want to get into that. Actually, I would like to know why you went public, and then we can talk about your journey.

But I do want to play this statement from the church leaders. But yeah, just state that first. Like, why did you go public? Because I’m sensing this was not—this isn’t fun for you. This is an absolutely emotionally grueling ordeal that you went through. Why did you do it?

Jo Fipps: Because it’s the right thing to do, first of all.

Like, I have put myself and my family through hell in a lot of ways. But it’s just worth it because his behavior cannot continue. And the church deserves to know what’s going on. They deserve to know who their pastor is. They deserve to know where their money is going.

He serves several national, international organizations that pay him, that send him on trips all over the world, that allow him to manage thousands and sometimes millions of dollars for them. And them knowing the truth is worth whatever I have to go through.

And I just think, you know, the biggest problem in our world today is people looking the other way and people not brave enough or not willing to make the hard choices to do the right thing, to stand up for what is right.

And so, yeah, I just felt like I have to bring this forward.

And then specifically, do you want me to share now kind of why I’m going public with it?

Julie Roys: Yeah.

Jo Fipps: So I started reporting this in April. So David works for the church, obviously, Cornerstone. He also works for Project Rescue, Live Dead—

Julie Roys: Are you going to go into the story of everybody you went to and what happened?

Jo Fipps: I don’t have to right this second, but yeah.

Julie Roys: Hold on that story.

Jo Fipps: Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

So just briefly, I reported this to several organizations. The only board I did not report this to was my church’s board. And that is only because, after 10 years as a member, I have no clue who was on the board.

I saw a video of them making a statement on Sunday, and I didn’t even know what half of their names are.

Julie Roys: So it’s not listed anywhere?

Jo Fipps: Not to my knowledge. I could not find it. I do not remember the last time there was an annual business meeting or when the board was elected or introduced.

So I just still, today, I literally do not know who was on the board. If someone, please, would tell me, I will immediately email all this evidence. I’m not joking. Like, I literally do not know.

So anyways, I’ve reported all that for months. Everyone besides the Indiana District of the Assemblies of God refused to investigate. Everyone refused.

I mean, the vast majority of the staff and local church leadership refused to look at the evidence. His family won’t look at it. No one will investigate.

The district has been investigating, and I won’t go into all the details right this second. In July, I met with them, and they closed the investigation. They read me a prepared statement. They closed the investigation, and I’ll go more into that.

Since July, Chad McAtee, the superintendent of the Assemblies of God in Indiana, has refused to tell me if the investigation is even still open. I’ve asked him multiple times via text message, and he will not answer the question, “Is the investigation still open?”

He has stopped responding to my emails. He stopped responding to my lawyer’s emails.

So the last official thing I heard from the district in July was, “We are closing the investigation.” They told me they were going to ask their lawyer if they could do some other things, but they literally stopped talking to me.

I don’t even know if it’s still going from them. They have not told me.

And so after two months of not knowing if this is even being investigated, I felt like the only option I had was to go public. And so that’s why I came to you guys a few weeks ago.

Because I just had no—it’s like no one else is investigating, and this one group, I don’t even know if they are because they won’t tell me and they won’t talk to me anymore.

Julie Roys: Well, and that’s why The Roys Report—that’s why we’re here. And that’s right. We never really asked to be in this position either, but we just noticed there was this huge gaping hole and nobody was willing to report it.

So many of the Christian media won’t report because they have connections, and those connections make it so that it’s inconvenient to report the truth on their friends. And the secular media seems to ignore it half the time. And so we get put in this position.

But I mean, here’s the thing. Scripture is so clear. Like, when I hear from other Christians, like, “What are you doing? This is wrong,” blah, blah, blah.

First Timothy 5:20 says, if an elder persists in sin, you are to expose him before all so that others may stand in fear.

I mean, if David Wigington or any other pastor can engage in this kind of behavior when he goes out of town, I mean, the next pastor who may think he can get away with it, right? I mean, he’s going to say, “Well, David’s doing it.”

And imagine what that does to the morale of other pastors when they see this kind of ridiculousness going on and pastors getting away with it.

I mean, this is the house of God. God cares about holiness, and he cares about the holiness of his people. I mean, just read the Old Testament. How many times did he punish his own people and exile them because they weren’t holy? They weren’t righteous. And he really didn’t care about humiliating them to the other nations.

I could go on that soapbox a really long time, but I want to play this statement from—again, this is from Sunday. The elders got up. This is right on the heels, within hours, of us publishing on Saturday afternoon, early evening.

We published literally reams—and I will have to go through some of this in the PDF file—reams of evidence.

And then they make this statement. So take a listen.

Gregory Lamar: Again, this is all ministry. We will continue. We will continue. We will continue. We will continue. We will continue. We will continue. We will continue. We will continue today about Pastor David and Shauna and about a matter that we know will raise questions and concerns.

False allegations that are unrelated to his work here at Cornerstone have been brought forward concerning Pastor David.

From the very beginning, David brought this matter to our district leadership and voluntarily submitted himself to the district’s process and to the accountability of this board.

He has cooperated fully throughout this process, which has now continued for more than four months. And as of today, we are still awaiting its conclusion.

While we continue to wait, we want our church family to know a few things clearly.

First, we believe Pastor Dave. We believe in his innocence, and David and Shauna have this board’s full confidence, love, and support.

We have walked closely with them throughout these past four months. We have watched David willingly submit himself to accountability and cooperate with everything that has been asked of him.

Our support for David does not mean that the allegations should not be taken seriously. They should be.

This is precisely why David submitted himself to the district’s process from the beginning.

We believe accountability matters. We believe fairness matters. And we remain hopeful that the process will soon reach its conclusion.

At the same time, these past four months have taken a significant personal and emotional toll on David and Shauna.

They have continued leading, serving, and loving this church and carrying the normal responsibilities of ministry while living under the weight and uncertainty of this situation.

As their board, we care about them, not simply as our pastor and his wife, but as people we deeply love.

For that reason, the board has asked David and Shauna to take some vacation time away from Cornerstone. To rest. To spend time together. And begin to heal from the toll these past several months have taken on them.

We want to be very clear about what this means. This is not a suspension or discipline. And it does not represent any change in this board’s confidence in David.

Quite the opposite. This is their board saying to them, “You have carried enough for a while. Let us carry some of this for you.”

While David and Shauna are away, Cornerstone will continue to be well cared for.

Our staff, board, ministry leaders, and preaching team will continue serving and leading our church.

We ask our church family to help us give David and Shauna the freedom to genuinely step away.

Let them rest. Give them space. Pray for them and their family. Pray that these days bring rest and healing. Pray for wisdom for everyone involved. And pray for the continued unity, health, and mission of Cornerstone.

When the district process concludes, we will communicate appropriately with our church family.

Until then, we want there to be no uncertainty about where this board stands.

We believe David. We stand with David and Shauna. We love them.

And right now, one of the most important ways we can demonstrate that love is by giving them permission to step away for a little while. Rest. Heal. And simply be David and Shauna rather than Pastor David and Shauna.

Cornerstone will continue its ministry. We will continue—

Julie Roys: Now it gets cut off right at the end. We happen to have an audio of this statement as well, and he just simply says, “We will continue trusting God, and we will walk through whatever comes next together.”

So that’s all that’s on the end there.

I’m listening to this, and I mean, my mind is just blowing because I’m like, we just published dozens of these texts and emails. And that’s not seemingly incredibly incriminating evidence?

There was not one thing in that entire statement even addressing it. Like, not even—give me an explanation.

Which is exactly like when we reached out to David Wigington and he emailed us back basically saying, “Hey, I’m hiring the best defamation lawyer there is in Indiana. If you want to talk to me, you see my lawyer.”

But again, there’s no explanation.

So we reached out to the lawyer and we said, “Hey, okay, so he’s denying that he did anything wrong. Help us explain. Can you explain these texts and these emails? What’s going on?”

I mean, nothing.

I can’t imagine being a member or a congregant there at Cornerstone right now. You get a message like that and it’s like, we’re supposed to believe you because you say so.

I mean, literally, that’s what they’re saying. There’s no explanation. There’s no alternative context. I mean, there’s just nothing, nothing in that statement.

And I’m curious, too. So this leader that’s up there, that man’s name is Greg Lamar, from what I’ve been told. So is he like the chairman of the elder board? From that, I mean, it kind of seems like that. Do you know this man, this Greg Lamar, from being there for 10 years?

Jo Fipps: Oh, yeah. I mean, I know who he is. Don’t ask me what his position is, because I didn’t.

There’s one person who I thought was on the board, and I don’t even think he was on stage during that video. Maybe he was at a different service or something.

So, I mean, yeah, I’ve said hi to Greg at church a thousand times. I’m assuming he liked me a few months ago before he found out I was bringing these allegations.

You know, I always thought he was a great guy, but I do not know anyone’s position. I did not know he was on the board until I saw him reading this statement.

Julie Roys: So when you met with—you said that you met with church leaders. Who’d you meet with?

Jo Fipps: Yeah. And real quick, if I could just mention something, and we can talk more about this later.

Just something, too, that’s crazy about everything with that statement is that they’re saying that the allegations are false, but they’re also saying that they’re awaiting the district’s investigation. So that seems contradictory.

But also, something that I’ve provided to the church staff, to the district, to a bunch of other people, is I sent all of the evidence I have to a data forensics firm called Avansic, and they authenticated everything I have.

Like, I’ve literally proven that it’s all legitimate. It’s not AI-generated. It’s not Photoshop. All these text messages came from his iCloud account. I have proven that. Professionals have proven that.

Julie Roys: And you paid out of your pocket for that? Did you pay for that yourself, or did somebody give you that money?

Jo Fipps: Yeah.

Julie Roys: That’s amazing. But this is what the church should be doing. The church should be doing a forensic—or the district who’s actually claiming that they’re investigating.

Would have been nice if they did this four months ago.

Jo Fipps: But I mean, it’s been proven, unless someone thinks I’m a computer genius who is fooling professional data forensic analysts. It’s been proven.

So I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore.

And that was in August. So it’s been like six weeks since I’ve been sending this letter out, and everyone’s just ignoring it.

Julie Roys: Wow. Wow.

I want to give a chance for some people to weigh in here. Somebody said, “The article mentions Jo’s trauma being used against him to deflect from the issue. Was David told the trauma in confidence from Jo years before this? Thank you for your courage, Jo.”

Jo Fipps: Yeah, so that’s a great question to clarify.

So what happened is I met with the district leadership in May. Went through how I found all the evidence, showed them everything, showed them more stuff that’s not in the PDF, just to further corroborate some of those messages.

And during that meeting, I told them about a traumatic experience I had a few years ago with my family, where I essentially learned that a family member had abused somebody else and I had to confront them and essentially just tear apart my entire family.

And I told them more details than that. But I told them this to let them know, like, I understand the gravity of these allegations. Like, I would not just make this up. I would not say this if I did not have concrete proof.

Like, I understand how hard it’s going to be for his kids, for his family, to hear this stuff because I’ve gone through this a few years ago myself.

And so I told them that in May, and I felt very confident after my meeting in May that they believed me.

But then in July, when they brought me in—

Julie Roys: Well, who are the leaders, though, that you met with?

Jo Fipps: Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Roys: You mean your local church, or you’re talking—

Jo Fipps: It was the district leadership.

Julie Roys: Okay, district leadership.

Jo Fipps: So Chad McAtee is the superintendent. Robbie Bradford is the assistant superintendent. Scott Burr is the secretary.

So those are the three guys I met with in May. I met with them again in person in July, and Chad read me a statement. And I recorded it, so I have proof that this happened if anyone doesn’t believe me.

But he literally told me—and I can just kind of read part of it—essentially said:

“Jo, I just want to read something to you before we get started. We feel like you had a traumatic experience with your family member and what you discovered with them and all that you had to walk through with that situation. So first of all, we want to say we’re sorry that you had to go through that, but we feel you’ve taken the same approach with David, another leader in your life. And after having a feeling, you began to look for things. And we believe that you found things that we feel are not real. Looking through the lens of what you had been through with your family member, that you think just because David had massages all over the world, which we’re not denying, that maybe some of them were prostitutes, and we don’t believe that’s true. David did have massages all over the world, but they were not for some kind of sexual encounter.”

And there are records documenting—and they kind of go on. They’re claiming there are records documenting that he’s not in these places, even though I have records proving that he is in most, if not all, of them.

And he’s saying that sometimes he’s with Shauna, his wife, or other leaders, so there’d be no way he could do this.

And so, you know, they told me that, “We believe these accusations are unfounded,” and, “We’re closing the investigation.”

Julie Roys: So basically what they did, they just gaslit you. They just said, “You’re making this up.”

Oh, this is so wicked. They’re saying—they’re using this thing in your life that was very traumatic, which I’m sure this does trigger bad memories. I’m sure it does make you wrestle with it. It also gives you empathy for the family and what they go through.

But it’s irrelevant to the facts. It’s irrelevant to—like, it’s making you think and doubt yourself.

Now, it doesn’t sound to me like you doubted yourself, but he’s certainly trying to make you doubt yourself and think, “Well, this is just because you’re traumatized.”

I mean, that’s all—I mean, that is just—I mean, it’s classic playbook kind of stuff. But I just—it’s so low that I can hardly believe that he did that.

And it’s just blatant. Wow. Wow.

Okay, so I want to show some of these. I want to show this PDF. I want to get this PDF up here.

Again, this is—folks, I’m not going to go through it real slowly and read everything, but these are linked in the article.

Jo Fipps: Yeah, it’s all linked in the article.

Julie Roys: But I just want to go—okay, so you have in this PDF, you have instances here where the calendar shows where he is, and then you can tell these text messages at the same date put him in the same location.

And then as we’re going through, folks—oh yeah, that, no, that doesn’t look like an erotic kind of a massage that you would get from her. No, no, no. I mean, those pictures—that looks like the sort of thing—yeah, just no big deal there, folks.

I mean, if you’re a church member, go through, see these. These pictures are pretty small, and maybe we just keep it that way. We’ve blocked out some of these because they were obscene, folks.

But you need to read this. You need to look at the evidence. I mean, this is unbelievable. Just reams of it.

Jo Fipps: Nobody has to take my word for it. It’s just there, and you can read it.

Julie Roys: And there’s like no other way—there’s no other way to interpret this. I mean, this is just insane, what’s in this document.

So I just want to say—again, we can take it down now—but yeah, go through the document, folks.

If you’re going to accuse Jo of just being traumatized and him making this up, go through the document. Look at the evidence and face the facts, and then do business with it.

But I mean, for the district officials to say that is—I mean, it’s just wicked. I don’t know what else to say. It’s throwing everything back on the whistleblower and refusing to deal with sin in their camp.

And, you know, read Scripture. It didn’t go well with Achan, and it won’t go well for the district.

So after that, though, you did get some sort of inclination that they’re reopening this investigation. Is that right?

Jo Fipps: So it was very confusing.

So we had a long chat, the three of us, in July because they were telling me that this wasn’t real, that I was misinterpreting the messages.

They also told me that his computer had been examined and none of the messages were found. So that was pretty confusing to me because how could I misinterpret something that doesn’t exist?

And I asked them straight up, “Do you think I’ve made these up?” And they just said, “We don’t know.”

And I said, “How do you explain these messages?” And they just said, “We don’t know. We don’t have an explanation.”

And so it was just a very confusing, very frustrating conversation.

We ended the conversation by them—because one thing I was very upset about in the meeting was that they had done a forensic examination of David’s computer, which I think is great, but they had not examined any of the evidence I have.

And there’s this PDF, which is like a summary of a lot of the things, but I have so many files beyond this with metadata and things that will prove exactly which computer these things were on, like what iCloud accounts these messages were sent from. Like, I have a ton of data that they have not examined.

And so I’m just baffled that they would only look at one piece of evidence.

They told me—I asked, “When was the computer taken to be looked at?” And they told me one month ago. But David had been aware of these allegations for two months, and Live Dead had actually sent him the PDF that I made that you just showed two months ago, which means he had time, obviously, to tamper with the computer, with the only piece of evidence that they tested.

And so I’m just like, why won’t you guys take all these files? And that was a big point of conversation.

So we left the conversation with them saying, “We will ask our lawyers if we can receive the rest of your files,” because they got really concerned suddenly about the legality of taking it, even though they had already taken a bunch of the files. So I’m kind of confused about that.

They said they would talk to the lawyers. And then—and I’ll just pull up the messages here.

So that meeting, I think, was July 21st-ish—actually July 20th.

So July 24th, I texted Chad, “Any news from your attorney?”

He said, “We’re still waiting. Hopefully we’ll hear Monday.”

So I said, “Are you officially keeping the investigation open? Are you waiting to hear back from your attorney on how I can transfer my files to your investigator?”

He said, “We are just waiting to hear what we are to do.”

And I said, “So are you waiting to hear if you should keep the investigation open or not? I’m just clarifying.”

He said, “Just waiting.”

So I said, “So are you still thinking you will close it without examining all the evidence?” Just trying to get clear on where we stand. Kind of an important question.

And he did not reply.

The following Monday, I called him. He didn’t answer because he was at an event, but he texted me and said, “We have new directives, and we’ll be taking those steps. I have no idea how long this will take.”

So I said, “Can you give me any information as to what those steps are? It’s extremely hard to imagine how examining all the evidence would not be the very first step if the goal was to uncover the truth. I understand it takes time,” blah, blah, blah.

You know, just trying to figure out—I’m like, can you understand how this looks and feels? Because a week ago, you said you were going to close the investigation, and you’re still not even answering that question.

And then he just did not respond.

And then I emailed him the report from Avansic, proving all this stuff is real and authentic, in August. He did not reply.

My lawyer emailed him in August asking him to look at our evidence. He did not reply.

And for two months, basically, he just did not say a word to me about what they were doing, what was going on, if the investigation was even still open.

I was hearing from other people that it seemed like it was open, but they would not tell me anything.

Julie Roys: Wow.

So somebody asked a question, and this is something I asked you too, but has any of this been brought to the attention of the Indiana State Police or the local police right there?

What you’re describing is, in certain states—most states—illegal. You cannot purchase sexual services in most parts of this country.

So have you thought of taking it to police?

Jo Fipps: Yeah, we’ve definitely considered that.

So originally, when I was trying to expose this, I was trying to do this anonymously to kind of keep my family safe, basically, and out of it.

So I did file an anonymous police report in the spring. I have some contacts with other contacts in law enforcement. We’ve been talking.

It is difficult to get the police—like, police just don’t necessarily have the time and resources to chase down people for paying for consensual sex, even though it is a crime, especially when those things have happened in the past.

So one of these instances was in Texas. It is an automatic felony in Texas. I could call the Texas police tomorrow and say, “Hey, three years ago, someone paid a woman for sex.” I doubt they are going to have the time or resources to go get—you know, it’s just like they have bigger fish to fry.

So we have attempted to do that. We do have some connections.

But it’s just—yeah, that’s kind of the problem with this, is that police typically, what I’ve been told from people who know more than me, is that typically law enforcement care more about the actual prostitutes than the Johns because they can stop a lot more instances of this if they go after the girls.

But also, just when you have things that have happened in the past versus, like, a sting operation to catch someone in the act, it’s just a lot harder to get police resources devoted to something like that.

Julie Roys: The thing that’s stunning to me is, has no one from the denomination said, “We need to do an independent investigation”?

They’re talking all of this internal investigation. And internal investigations are usually—I mean, they’re just not worthwhile because, again, there’s all sorts of conflicts of interest. There are personal relationships involved. There’s politics involved. There’s protect the institution, protect the church. “Oh my gosh, I know the family.”

I mean, all these things.

And that’s why you, in these situations, should get an independent investigator.

And by the way, I’m always amazed at how few people understand what an independent investigation is.

It is not, “We hire a law firm to investigate.”

I mean, you can hire a law firm, but unless you make public the terms of engagement with that law firm, and unless you promise to show what the scope of the investigation is, who’s doing the investigating, to also say a commitment to, when we find out the results of the investigation, we’re going to make that public—because otherwise we’re going to get a sanitized version of what the organization wants to tell you.

And law firms have a fiduciary responsibility to their clients.

So you need to do—I mean, a true independent investigation is hiring an organization and making the entire process transparent.

Has there been any talk? I mean, it sounds like right now they’re not even willing to do much of an internal investigation, let alone an independent investigation.

But has there been talk by anyone? And certainly not from the church board there. I mean, these guys, “We believe David,” and, you know, let’s just close our eyes, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I mean, it’s just kind of ridiculous. These guys are sticking their heads in the sand.

But yeah, any talk of that?

Jo Fipps: So the only thing that has been done are these examinations of David’s computer, which I did learn recently—the church board let some members of the church know that the original examination of David’s computer was actually arranged for and paid for by David himself.

I mean, I’m sure the church paid for it, but David is the one who hired somebody and sent his computer in to be looked at.

And then he got a report and gave that to the district.

So he basically investigated himself for two months, which is a little interesting as a route to take.

And that’s what they were going to close the investigation on, was a report that he got himself.

And since my meeting, the district has—I have heard, not from the district because they won’t talk to me, but from other people—I’ve been told that the district has hired their own forensic firm to look at David’s computer.

But for two months, I’ve been trying to get them to actually look at my files. And so that’s why I came to you, because they were just refusing to do that.

And yeah, because—I mean, the three guys I mentioned, one of whom, by the way, is a longtime friend of David’s and should have recused himself on day one. Or Chad should have been wise enough to say, “Robbie, you’re not going to be a part of this because you’re friends with him.”

So one of his close friends and two other guys have been investigating. And they have had someone else examining his computer.

But, you know, as of when I talked to you and came to you for this article, they had still not looked at any of the other evidence.

And so, I mean, that is one part of the investigation that is independent. But David has been turning all his documents and things over to Scott, Chad, and Robbie. And they are the ones who have the responsibility, because of how they’ve done it, to actually look through things.

But they just haven’t really done much, to my understanding.

I mean, I heard that he gave them his phone records, which is great. But he gave them phone records and he printed out all the phone records.

So there’s, like, number one, there’s a very high chance that he could have tampered with those because it’s not like something directly from T-Mobile, his carrier.

But also they’re just like a giant stack of pieces of paper. Like, how do I search for phone numbers? I mean, it’s just useless.

And there are very basic questions they’ve refused to ask.

They do not have all his financial records. They’ve asked about some of the instances in the PDF, but they’ve just taken his word at face value. They haven’t actually asked for proof that he can prove different things.

So one of the instances, the most recent one, happened this past April. He was in Prague, and there’s a picture texted to him from an erotic massage parlor.

You can Google the phone number and it says, “Hey, here’s our front door. Ring the bell when you get here.”

And then he says, “Just ring.”

And this was just this past April.

So he told—this is what I’ve heard that he told the district—“I was in Prague. I was getting massaged, but I was not getting a massage at the place alleged in this screenshot.”

He said, “I was with my wife, so there’s no way I could have done anything.”

But then he said they were going to get massages at their hotel, but they only had one spot available. So his wife got a massage at the hotel, and he went somewhere else by himself to get a massage.

So he literally admitted he has no alibi, no witnesses, and claims that at the exact moment of the screenshot, he was getting a massage, but not at this place.

But they did not ask for any proof of where he went.

And also, how on earth, if I was going to make this up, how would I know that he’s on the other side of the planet getting a massage? Like, that would be impossible for me to know that.

I mean, all these messages, I would have had to spend years fabricating these, and I would have had to have incredibly personal details about his life and his whereabouts at all times, what he was doing, where he was going, the normal way he talks.

I mean, it just would be literally impossible to fabricate any of this stuff.

So it’s just crazy.

And then also something about the PDF as well. With that, a lot of the PDF is me doing my best with the information I had to piece together, “Here’s what I think happened.”

And there’s—even if you go through it, I’m even asking questions sometimes because there’s stuff on his calendar, I don’t even know what it is.

And I’m asking, like, “Hey, he’s texting a girl on this date. Hey, there’s this event. Is this an event out of state? Like, I don’t know what it is. Where was he?”

I was asking the question so that someone I submitted that PDF to, who would know the answer, could say, “Oh yeah, this event was in New York,” or wherever.

So with this massage in Prague, the timestamp in the text message is 3:30 a.m. And because I’m not a computer genius, I didn’t know: Does iMessage—is the timestamp the local time of where the phone was when it was happening? Because I’m here in the U.S. This was in Prague.

So I’m assuming that if he’s getting an erotic massage in Prague, he’s going—he’s sneaking out of the hotel at 3:30 in the morning. Like, that’s what makes sense to me.

So that’s what I put in the PDF, is that he was getting this massage at 3:30 a.m.

But it was not. That was my time. And so the massage was actually whatever time that was in Prague.

And so I think the copy that you have—I don’t remember—I may have fixed that. But the copy that I sent out to all these organizations, they can prove it, is that I was even wrong about that.

Like, why would I make that mistake? It’s because I was guessing on the information I had.

And if I was actually framing him, I would not have put the wrong time in there.

Julie Roys: Well, yeah. It’s just—the whole thing is crazy.

We also double-checked. I mean, we corroborated the document ourselves.

By the way, Ann Marie Shambaugh was the one who reported this story for us. Did an outstanding job.

But I mean, especially when we were under a legal threat, I’m like, you make sure you call those numbers. You make sure that it is.

And sure enough, I mean, she called a number of the different organizations—well, organizations, I mean, massage parlors and escort services and different things—and it checked out.

I mean, we did our own Google searches. We checked it out. There wasn’t anything in there where we’re like, “Oh no, that’s completely wrong. He got it all wrong.”

No, it checked out.

Now, we have not done the kind of forensic research that Avansic did, but you did give us their letter, and we did call the organization. We didn’t just take the letter and say, “Oh look, he got it done.”

We called them and we said, “Is this legit?” And they confirmed, yes, this is legitimate. We put our name behind it.

So, I mean, again, this has been really well documented by you. You have done an outstanding job.

And we touched on some of these different organizations, but the first organization you went to—I just want to make sure we talk about this—was Project Rescue, right?

That was the first organization. Project Rescue.

What? Never even returned—like, never responded? Is that what happened?

Jo Fipps: So, no.

So I went to Project Rescue first. For those who are not familiar, that organization, it’s a nonprofit, and their whole purpose is to save women from sex trafficking.

So I’m thinking, who can I trust more than Project Rescue?

They have an amazing cause. I’ve donated to them in the past.

And so I thought, you know, these people will take this seriously, that one of their directors—and David was, or is, the director of church relations for them. He has an official Project Rescue email. Like, he’s on the payroll.

Julie Roys: Except they took down the website—like, their webpage—after we reached out to them recently. So they took down the webpage that had all of their staff and listed David Wigington as a—what was it? Some sort of—

Jo Fipps: Director of church relations.

Julie Roys: Yeah.

Jo Fipps: Yeah. So we have that saved and archived. Now you can’t even find the page.

But so I reached out to them. I specifically reached out to their attorney, Trinity Jordan, because I had a mutual connection.

So I spoke to him on the phone, gave him the rundown, and I sent him some of the evidence. He believed me. He believed that it was true.

And he took that evidence and shared it with the board.

Trinity—this is like the one way that Trinity helped me—was he actually helped connect me with a lawyer.

So he helped put me in touch with somebody who is now representing me. And so that was super nice.

So I was very appreciative of that because he basically knows how dangerous it’s going to be. He’s like, you need to be represented, et cetera.

So then after that, my lawyer and him were kind of talking.

The impression I was given in April of this year was that the board believed the evidence. They believed these allegations were true, but they were not willing to investigate.

Today—literally today—Trinity said, not to me, but to somebody else, that all of us believe these allegations, all of Project Rescue believes the evidence, we believe Jo, we are in support of what he’s doing, but David’s brother-in-law, Eric Cooper, is our biggest donor, and we’re afraid we’re going to lose his money. So we are not going to investigate.

That was said today, which is an interesting position.

Julie Roys: Now, who did you hear that from? Or you’re protecting your source, I take it?

Jo Fipps: Yeah. I mean, yeah. He told that to somebody, and I’ll protect them, I guess.

But that’s what was said today. I’m pretty sure that conversation was today.

And so, like you mentioned, for five months, Project Rescue has just hoped that the district would investigate.

Because when I talked to them, I had not talked to anybody else.

And then you—or Ann—reached out to them last week for comment, and within 24 hours their staff page was hidden.

Today, I don’t know if you’ve seen this. I haven’t sent—

Julie Roys: They never got back to us.

Jo Fipps: They never got back to you?

Julie Roys: They never got back to us.

Jo Fipps: They did release something on the website. I just found out about this. There’s a statement on the website today.

I will send you this link.

And here’s what it says. I’ll text it to you real quick, I guess, just so you have it if you want to—

Julie Roys: Yeah, okay.

Jo Fipps: Pull it in here or something.

All right, so there’s the link.

It says, “Project Rescue received allegations about David Wigington from an anonymous source.”

That is true. I was anonymous when I reached out.

“We directed this person bringing those allegations to the Indiana District Council, who would have jurisdiction over ministerial credentials.”

I don’t think they told me to do that, but I could be misremembering that.

It says, “David’s role with Project Rescue has exclusively been raising funds in the U.S. He is not involved with our ministry and operations on the field.”

That’s an interesting claim to me because he has gone on—I don’t even know how many—dozens of international trips for Project Rescue, like vision trips and all sorts of stuff.

Because he’s always talking at church about, “Oh, I went to this country and talked to these people, and here’s what’s going on.”

So unless I am mistaken—and if I am, someone please let me know, because I’m not trying to lie or anything—I am very confident that he has traveled internationally for Project Rescue.

He was listed as their director of church relations seven days ago, and he’s paid for that role.

He also—part of his role is helping plan fundraising events in the U.S., like they mentioned, and he fronts thousands and thousands of dollars for these events and for various costs. And then he gets reimbursed for it and all this different stuff.

So he has a pretty big role. He’s not just a guy raising money and then donating on the website or something. He has a very large role with Project Rescue.

This statement goes on to say, “Pastor David was asked to resign during the investigation and is no longer helping us in any capacity.”

I don’t know when he was asked to resign, considering he was still on the website a week ago, and the investigation started four months ago.

And then it says what they do, and it says, “We take any report very seriously,” which I hope that they would.

It’s just interesting to me that—I mean, they are careful in here to say that there’s an investigation, but they don’t say who’s doing it.

So that’s kind of interesting. I don’t know if they want people to think that they’re investigating, but they’re not, to my knowledge.

No one from Project Rescue, like the board or staff, has reached out to me directly. I’ve not spoken to a single employee or director or board member of Project Rescue in five months, which I think is pretty interesting.

And yeah, I think—I mean, I understand maybe the desire to let the district investigate, but at what point, as an organization fighting sex trafficking, do you say this has gone on for too long? We can no longer wait on them to investigate.

I mean, you’re going to let this guy continue working for you for months, and you believe that he’s hiring prostitutes on your own trips?

The instance in Texas, he was at a Project Rescue conference. Like, this is happening on Project Rescue business, and they believe that he’s doing this, and they’re just continuing to not do anything.

Like, not take him off the website five months ago or suspend him or release a statement or anything until the day a reporter calls.

That—I don’t know. I don’t know that I would define that as taking this seriously, personally.

Julie Roys: Well, and it’s just so disappointing. But I can’t say, from my experience reporting in this space for going on eight years now, I mean, it’s not unusual. It’s playbook.

And that’s what’s just so sad. I mean, even an organization committed to fighting sex trafficking.

But my understanding is David goes back, like, to his college days with a director.

Jo Fipps: Yeah, I think she was his professor or something, and they connected, and then they’ve been involved for decades.

Julie Roys: So, I mean, these are close relationships. But there’s got to be a point at which our commitment to holiness and to righteousness and to just not being thoroughly corrupt, right, that that comes first. And that our devotion to God—

Like, I get loyalty to people, but when loyalty to people trumps loyalty to God, I mean, then what are you doing? What are you doing?

I mean, and that’s the thing. Toxic systems, abusive systems, they’re based on loyalty to man, not loyalty to God. And sadly, that seems to be what’s going on here.

Again, maybe there’s more that we don’t know about, but from what you’re saying, it certainly doesn’t look good.

And tell me about The Stone Table too, because that’s another organization. Tell me what that organization is and what his role has been.

Jo Fipps: Yeah, definitely.

The Stone Table is a whole other can of worms.

Before I go off to that, real quick, I’m pretty sure that the big Project Rescue offering last year was for this coffee shop in the red-light district of Belgium.

And David was in Belgium getting stories in July. And this was a Project Rescue project. The Stone Table actually was helping do an offering for it, so it is actually connected. It’s a good segue.

But I mean, barely 14, 15 months ago, he was in the field doing work for Project Rescue. He most likely has been since then. But off the top of my head, he was in Belgium last July.

So I don’t know if they’re just lying on the website when it says he’s not involved with our operations on the field. I don’t know how you—I don’t know what field they’re talking about.

But yeah.

So just a little bit about how some of this stuff works, because it’s all very confusing. There’s a lot of organizations involved.

The Stone Table is an Indiana-based nonprofit that helps to fundraise money for missions. They do a lot of matching funds, and they do help raise money. And I don’t know all the details, ins and outs of it.

But David’s best friend from childhood and brother-in-law, Eric Cooper, is the president of The Stone Table.

And so a lot of times these offerings, they’re like Stone Table offerings, where The Stone Table is saying, “Hey, we’re going to match every dollar that’s given.”

And then David is helping coordinate with like 11 other churches in Indiana to all raise money at the same time around Christmastime to raise millions of dollars for these different projects.

Which is really awesome that that stuff is happening. Just obviously, there are some not-great things also happening.

But so The Stone Table—due to the fact that it’s run by David’s brother-in-law, I did not originally report these allegations to them when I sent the stuff to everybody else in April and May.

In July, I did meet with Eric at his office. And at this point, I was still anonymous. So this was me outing myself, basically, because nobody knew who I was at this point besides the district officials who I talked to in person back in May.

But I met with Eric primarily out of concern for his family and some family events they had coming up.

But I basically went through—I let him know that I was the person bringing these allegations.

And I’ve known Eric for, I don’t know, maybe 10 years or seven to 10 years. I’ve done work for them, actually, like video work and stuff, freelance. And Eric has donated to my missions work and stuff in the past.

So, I mean, we’re not best friends or anything, but I’ve known him for a while. I’m not a stranger to him.

So I met with him, told him how I found the evidence, told him the whole story, and I wanted to share the evidence with him. And I offered to.

And he told me he did not want to see it. He told me that he knew enough people who had seen it and the district was investigating, so he did not want to look at it.

Which was very disappointing for me to hear.

And yeah, and so I—and that was me, I mean, really putting myself on the line. And so I knew at that point my cover is blown. I’m no longer anonymous.

Which was fine, but yeah.

And so I tried to tell them about it.

So recently, a few weeks ago, in early September, around September 6th, I believe, just after weeks and weeks of not hearing anything from the district, everybody else just saying, “The district’s investigating. We don’t need to look at it,” church staff saying that, everybody else—you know, I’m just continuing to get fed up with this.

Because I don’t know that anything’s happening. I’ve still not sent any of my evidence to the district to be examined. I don’t know what’s going on with that.

So I sent an email out to all of The Stone Table board members and staff, except for David’s family members, trying to leave them out of it.

But I sent it to several people on the board and staff, letting them know, “I don’t know if you guys have heard of this, but here’s these allegations. I told Eric in July. He refused to look at the evidence.”

And to my knowledge, I was the one informing most of them about these allegations. That’s how it seemed to me.

None of them talked to me directly. No one from any of these organizations has talked to me directly besides Eric, who I met with when he didn’t even know why I was meeting with him.

But just from what I heard through the grapevine, it seemed like I was breaking this news to them.

And on September 6th—which is crazy because, I mean, Eric knew about the allegations in May when they first came out. Like, David told him that some random mystery person is making stuff up, is what he was claiming.

But another thing that I let them know about, which is very important:

So the computer that David gave me in 2021, that he had not wiped the files off and everything else, I found a text message going through his messages, and I’m just going to read it.

And this text message—so I was getting the computer. I agreed to take the computer, I believe, November 22nd of 2021.

And so, you know, David and Eric—which really means The Stone Table, because David is also a board member and he’s the vice president of strategic fundraising for The Stone Table—they were going to give me a matching fund for around $2,000.

But then instead of that, David gave me the computer.

So I never received any money from them. They gave me this laptop where I found the original photo.

Well, I asked David—I said, on November 22nd at 2:07 p.m., I said, “Hey Pastor, I’ll go ahead and take your computer and keep raising money,” like outside of that, because I was probably assuming that I would eventually sell the computer.

I said, “Should I tell Eric that you two still send you his donation as payment for the computer?”

And he said, “He’s already planning to send it to the church. I’ll have it at the office in a bit.”

So I said, “Okay,” because I was thinking—I didn’t know exactly where all the money was coming from. It was The Stone Table, whatever. So I didn’t know if he wanted money from Eric to kind of compensate or whatever.

But then David texted Eric on November 22nd at 2:54 p.m., so, I don’t know, 15 minutes later:

“Hey, when you get a chance, can you send over whatever you were giving Jo for his computer? He was struggling to raise the funds, so I’m fronting all of it because his computer was physically broken. Like, pieces of the screen were falling off. I can’t remember what you said, either 2,000 or 2,250. You can use a credit card if you want.”

So this is a lie that he told to his best friend.

Julie Roys: So wait. Let’s make sure people are following this.

He—and I’ll make sure I’m following this—The Stone Table was going to give money for you to get this computer, right?

Jo Fipps: Yeah. To buy a new computer.

Julie Roys: Buy a new computer. But instead, David gives you his old computer.

Jo Fipps: Yes.

Julie Roys: And he says to them, “Hey, I fronted Jo the money, so just send the money directly to me.”

Jo Fipps: Yeah.

Julie Roys: So he hasn’t spent any money. He just gave you his old computer.

Jo Fipps: Yeah. And he was never giving me any money at that point because he’s giving the computer instead.

And then he also said pieces of my screen were falling off, which was not true. I don’t know why he said that. My screen was cracked, but it was not falling apart like that.

But regardless, he literally just lied to Eric.

And I don’t—Eric, I don’t know if you’re watching this. If you have not already, please go find this text message. Because if you have it on your phone, Dave lied to you. I don’t know what else to tell you about that.

He was not fronting the money. And I was not struggling to raise the money. He gave me a computer. He just never told you that he was giving me that computer.

So I told The Stone Table—and then Eric says, like, “Okay, told Jo I’d do half, so I think that’s 2,250,” you know, “Do you want it on a credit card or wire transfer?” And then they got the details.

So I told The Stone Table, “Hey, I’m pretty positive this money came from you, and it looks like Dave stole $2,000, like $2,250, from you in 2021.”

The Stone Table, if you don’t know this, you can Google The Stone Table’s 990. It’s a form that shows, because they’re a nonprofit, where their money goes.

They funnel the vast majority of their giving through Cornerstone, David’s church. So last year they sent $4 million through Cornerstone.

David is basically the church’s accountant. He runs all the finances. No one else really looks at anything.

So David alone manages the finances. He’s also managing $4 million that’s passing through his church.

And I have evidence proving that he stole $2,000 from them five years ago.

Now, that’s not a very large amount compared to $4 million, but to me that would raise some serious alarm bells of, could he have ever done anything else like this?

I personally don’t have evidence he’s done other things like this, but certainly he would have had the ability to.

So I basically told The Stone Table a few weeks ago, “You need to audit all of your finances.”

Because this guy not only is, like, morally bankrupt with all the stuff that he’s doing with hiring sex workers and stuff, but he stole two grand from you four or five years ago. He lied to his best friend for no reason, because Eric probably would have sent the money anyways.

But he lied about it. And so I don’t know where that money went.

Julie Roys: Well, and you have some other evidence. I mean, again, it’s not conclusive, but it is suspicious.

And one of them is that you were able to find out a handle or something that David uses where he sells camera equipment on a site. And you added up—you said $200,000 in one year he sold in camera equipment?

Jo Fipps: $200,000 over the course of 20 years. This goes back to 2005.

Julie Roys: Twenty years. But $200,000.

Jo Fipps: Which is still—that’s a lot of money.

Yeah. If you’re watching this and want to find the evidence, David is about to delete it. I’ve saved all the posts, but I would imagine by the end of this call, they will all be off the internet.

But yeah, I’ve found evidence that he has sold over $200,000 worth of camera gear over the past 20 years, which is not a crime, to sell camera gear.

It’s certainly interesting that every year, on average, he’s selling about $10,000 worth of equipment.

Almost all the equipment he sold has been brand new or barely used, according to his description of it.

So it’s stuff that he just always has reasons why he, you know, “I bought it for a trip and then I don’t need it anymore,” or, “I bought it, thought I wanted to use it, but didn’t like it, so now I’m selling it.”

And this is a large volume of stuff to just have buyer’s remorse over and not just return.

Julie Roys: And he’s not like a hobbyist? Like, he’s not a photographer on the side or something?

Jo Fipps: So he does—he is a photographer. Yes, he likes doing photography, and he does photography on all these trips where he takes for The Stone Table, for Project Rescue. He’s always going on safaris or whatever else and doing photography.

But what’s interesting is that it seems like some of these were purchased for those trips or events and then sold right after.

So a question I have for The Stone Table or Project Rescue is, do you know if he’s ever bought camera equipment with your money for one of your trips?

Because if so, I’m pretty confident he could have sold it for personal profit.

I don’t know the answers to those questions. These are just questions I’m asking because it’s certainly a strange thing.

He could buy it and then decide, well, yeah, I don’t want to use this. I want to get this other equipment. It’s very possible.

That’s just a lot of times to do that, and he would most likely be losing money every time.

But it is very possible that that’s on the up and up. It’s just something that’s odd.

And if I were an organization that he has stolen $2,000 from and that you trust him with millions of dollars a year, personally, I would just want to double-check, audit my finances, and make sure nothing suspicious has gone on.

Especially because, again, for Project Rescue, he also fronts a lot of the costs for these events.

So I don’t know if he’s submitting receipts. I would hope he is. But if he’s just kind of invoicing you or doing anything like that without actually submitting receipts, I would personally be asking for receipts and verifying: Where exactly did all this money go? What exactly has he bought?

He’s also an avid eBay seller.

And I don’t want to get too far into the speculation of this kind of stuff. But again, it’s just questions that I think organizations that have this amount of money going through him should be asking these questions, personally.

Because he’s also selling large amounts of golf equipment after these golf fundraisers for Project Rescue, and I believe he is the one ordering all the gifts for people.

So just a question, like, is he ever over-ordering things and then selling the surplus? I don’t know. Just purely a question I have.

If I were Project Rescue—on the website, it says you take this pretty seriously—personally, I would investigate that.

I don’t have the means to investigate all that necessarily, but they’re just weird, suspicious things that, knowing what else I know about his character, I would want to ask those questions.

Julie Roys: Sure.

Well, there’s a number of people—we did show some folks that weren’t supporting what you’re doing—but this one says, “Yes, this is obscenity, filthy. It is being exposed, and Satan is furious. Jo, we are praying for you tonight. People under this leadership are clearly in danger spiritually, for certain, and potentially physically.”

And that is the truth. I mean, when you have wolves in sheep’s clothing, or in this case potentially shepherd’s clothing, the sheep are endangered.

And that’s where—I mean, when I see the way that these elders responded on Sunday, there’s so much care and concern for David Wigington and his wife. And I do feel sorry for his wife.

But no mention of caring for the sheep. No mention of the potential harm that could come to them.

The whole entire show, which is what it seemed, was geared toward protecting David Wigington.

It is protecting the powerful and friends. That is not your job. If you’re a shepherd, protect the sheep.

Jo Fipps: Yeah. The shepherd doesn’t need protecting.

Julie Roys: I mean, if he’s doing—and then, you know, I see some of these statements that, “Why would somebody dig this up?” and “Why would—”

And I’m like, first of all, you didn’t do this, Jo.

Jo Fipps: Yeah.

Julie Roys: You didn’t do this. This is a self-inflicted wound. This is David Wigington’s behavior. And there’s nobody that needs to pay for it except David Wigington.

And so, I mean, I just want to say—and I know we’ve been talking for over an hour, and I don’t want to take it too much longer—but I just want to say to you, because I know a little more of the backstory too, of how much you’ve stuck your neck out on the line.

And what are you getting for this, Jo?

Jo Fipps: I lost my church. A bunch of people hate me.

Julie Roys: Yeah.

Jo Fipps: Been super stressed out for five months.

Julie Roys: Yeah.

And you have paid the price. And, you know, I know that right now it feels like a pretty thankless job. And often it is.

But I’ll say at the same time, there’s a reward in heaven. And your character, which has been shown through this, and your love for the church and your love for her purity—God bless you.

I mean, I do so much reporting, and I will just say, I hear all the time people that can’t go on the record because it might cost them something.

And to see your courage, to be willing to take the hits, to report the truth because you care for the sheep.

You know, I know one of your emails to us said something about, you know, he’s out there marrying people. He’s out there ministering still. And what damage might he cause?

And are the women in your church safe?

I mean, again, your concern is the concern of a shepherd.

And so I just want to thank you for what you’ve done.

And I know this story is not over. We will continue to cover it.

I’m eager to see what does happen with that investigation. But honestly, I don’t think the district should be investigating somebody that they clearly don’t seem to have the courage to investigate.

And so it really should be an independent investigation. They’ve already shown that they’re not capable of doing it.

Jo Fipps: Yeah. And the church that has claimed to just “trust the district, trust the district,” they’re already announcing that the allegations are false.

Also, we learned that on June 3rd, I think, David filed paperwork with the state of Indiana to remove the phrase “Assemblies of God” from the legal name of Cornerstone.

Pretty interesting thing to do if you’re trusting the district and innocent.

And his board told him—

Julie Roys: He’s pulling a Burk Parsons, is what he’s doing. I don’t know if you followed that story.

Jo Fipps: I did not.

Julie Roys: Yeah.

Jo Fipps: His board said in May, when they were refusing to see the evidence, that they would leave the Assemblies of God if they need to.

I mean, these are not people who trust the district. These are not people who are—they are trusting the district if the district clears him.

But I mean, if they somehow find him guilty, I guess we’ll see how they respond and what happens.

Julie Roys: And this is where the church—I mean, honestly, friends, if you are burying your head in the sand, if you’re a congregant at this church, it’s on you.

It is on you to determine what the truth is. You can’t let someone else decide.

Jo Fipps: No. No.

Julie Roys: And the church depends on your donations. It cannot run without your donations.

Jo Fipps: Mm-hmm.

Julie Roys: It cannot run without your donations.

And until they start being transparent, and until there’s an independent investigation really looking into this and looking into all of the documentation that you brought forward—I mean, honestly, you look at it, and this is not brain surgery.

Jo Fipps: Yeah.

Julie Roys: I mean, it really isn’t. How much investigating do you need to do? Look at the PDF.

Jo Fipps: Right. Just look at it.

Julie Roys: But I mean, there’s just so much there.

And I would just plead with people: Do not let—I mean, someone who is doing such evil in the name of Christ—get away with it.

So you need—it’s on you to get to the bottom of this.

Jo Fipps: It’s all I want, is for people to look at the evidence.

And all Dave wants is blind loyalty and trust in an investigation that he manipulated for months.

That maybe still lands in the right spot, but regardless, all I’ve been saying for months is begging people to look at the evidence.

Leaders in the church will just delete my emails without even reading them. They all have opinions on what the evidence is, but none of them have looked at it.

Because—I don’t know if they’re cowards. I don’t know if they just don’t—it’s too painful to accept the truth. Like, I don’t know what it is.

They’ve known me for 10 years.

But just look at the evidence. No one needs to believe me. This is not a matter of opinion. This is not a conversation on, “Do we believe Jo or do we believe David?”

This is a matter of fact. He either did do it or he did not do it. There is a truth and a fact that he did or did not do this, and the evidence is what proves if he did or did not do this.

For anyone who claims that this is a matter of opinion, you are just a coward. You need to look at the evidence for yourself.

For anyone who claims that, you know, “We’ll just let somebody else handle it”—like, what if David is innocent and the district says he’s guilty?

It would be insane for you to not look at the evidence for yourself.

Like, if you are close to this man, it would be insane for you to just trust somebody else to decide: Has the person that you know and love lied to you for years and had a double life?

Like, that’s just crazy to me.

You do not need to take anyone’s word for it. The evidence is there. Hire an investigator. Trust the people I’ve already hired.

Like, it’s just—this is a matter of fact. And this is not something that needs to be debated. It’s just: look at the facts.

Julie Roys: Well, and I’d like to land this on Paul and the Bereans.

Because when Paul preached to the Bereans, they didn’t take—I mean, here’s the Apostle Paul. If anybody had a right to pull rank, it’d be the Apostle Paul.

Jo Fipps: Yeah.

Julie Roys: Right?

And to say, “Hey, you went home, and what did you do? You searched the Scriptures to see if what I, the Apostle Paul, said was true.”

But that’s not his—that is not at all his perspective, because he knew he was on the side of the truth, and he wanted them to discover the truth and discover God for themselves.

He commended the Bereans for searching the Scriptures to see if what he said was true.

And that’s what Jo’s doing. He’s saying, search the evidence to see.

We serve a God that is truth. So the truth is always—God is always on the side of the truth, and truth is always on the side of God. I mean, God is truth.

So yeah, Jo, thank you so much for coming on tonight.

Thank you for sharing the evidence. Thank you for going through what’s been a grueling, months-long process, and it’s not over.

But we’ll be praying for you. And folks, I pray you’ll be praying for Jo as well.

And I just, again, want to thank you for being a part of this live broadcast.

Jo Fipps: Thank you.

Julie Roys: Well, folks, again, thank you for joining us tonight.

And I do pray that you will read our article again if you haven’t. We have published both a follow-up story today, including the statement by the elders.

We also had that initial story, and you can see the PDF. We linked it right in there, the one that Jo gave us. You can see the letter from Avansic, and you can investigate for yourself to see if what he’s saying is true and to see if what your pastor is saying is true and what the elders are saying is true.

So friends, God gave us brains. Let’s use them. Okay?

All right. God bless, and thanks again for joining me.

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