Prosecution: Password Josh Duggar Used for Child Porn Previously Used for Duggar Family Instagram

Josh Duggar is currently on trial for allegedly possessing and receiving child sexual abuse material

After testifying for several hours on Thursday afternoon, James Fottrell took the stand again on Friday, marking day four of Josh Duggar's child sexual abuse material trial.

Duggar, 33, has been accused of downloading files depicting child sexual abuse on May 14, 15 and 16 of 2019 on the desktop computer at his then-workplace Wholesale Motorcars. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

While his defense has suggested other people with access to the office computer were really responsible and Duggar was railroaded, the prosecution is trying to prove that he is the only one who could have committed the alleged crimes.

Fottrell, director of the Department of Justice's High Technology Investigative Unit, was called by the prosecution to detail his personal forensic investigation of the three of Duggar's devices that investigators seized: a personal MacBook, an iPhone and the HP desktop in his office.

During his testimony on Friday, he presented Duggar's saved passwords from his Chrome account, that show various versions of "intel1988" — the password the prosecution has previously said was used to protect the partitioned part of the office desktop that the child porn was downloaded on.

Prosecutors have also noted that "Intel1988" includes Duggar's birth year, 1988.

Josh Duggar and his wife Anna leave the John Paul Hammerschmidt Federal Building, Fayetteville, Arkansas. 02 December 2021. Former TLC reality star Josh Duggar is standing trial on child pornography charges.
Josh Duggar and his wife Anna leaving court on Thursday. News Licensing / MEGA

Fottrell testified that that same password or variations of it (including "inteljjd" and "intel1988!") were found either on the saved passwords list or in his computer notes, some dating back to 2014.

According to records Fottrell found on Duggar's MacBook, "intel1988" was also used for the Duggar family Instagram account for a period of time.

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Elsewhere in his testimony, Fottrell pointed out text messages and geolocated images that he said place Duggar's cell phone at or near his work computer around the time that the Linux partition was being downloaded and that the child porn was being accessed.

The windows of time ranged from just two minutes to over an hour. In one example, Fottrell said Duggar's phone was used to take a photo of a scale at or near his car lot on May 13 — about an hour after the Linux partition was installed on the desktop.

The partition served as "a separate computer on a computer, if you will," another prosecution witness said on Thursday.

Fottrell testified to another example from May 15, when someone used Duggar's phone to text "I'm at my car lot sic now" about 20 minutes before sexual abuse material began to be downloaded on the office desktop.

And in a third example, Fottrell said, Duggar's phone took a photo of a sticky note at his car lot — apparently from a desk there — two minutes after evidence indicated a video with child porn was viewed on the office HP.

Josh Duggar Trial day 1
A sketch of Josh Duggar at his federal trial in Fayetteville, Arkansas. John Kushmaul

Once the prosecution finished questioning Fottrell, one of Duggar's defense attorney's, Justin Gelfand, began. In his line of questioning, he emphasized that Fottrell was called by prosecutors and works for the government.

When Gelfand asked about the exhaustiveness of his forensic analysis, Fottrell replied, "We're doing the best we can."

"With every case, there's always more analysis you could do … It's certainly not perfect," he continued, adding that he did think the appropriate analysis was done in Duggar's case.

Gelfand also asked why Fottrell was only examining copies of Duggar's devices, rather than other devices from other people that might have been available to law enforcement. The witness noted that he wasn't involved in deciding what to seize in this case but said that generally, "We're trying to have sensitivity."

"We don't want to seize the paint off the walls," he said. "We're trying to find where the critical evidence is."

josh duggar
Josh Duggar. Danny Johnston/AP/Shutterstock

In his testimony the day prior, Fottrell told the jury how he had gone deeper into the hard drive and found evidence or remnants of dozens — if not more than 100 — images of child sexual abuse material, as well as several videos, on the partitioned part of the hard drive on Duggar's computer.

For example, he said, his analysis showed the computer had thumbnail versions of the photos while he was able to also recover some deleted files and, through further examination, found evidence of downloaded and/or streamed videos like "pedomom" and "Daisy's Destruction" as well as viewed lewd images of an 8-to-12-year-old girl.

Fottrell said "Daisy's Destruction" was notorious: It includes an infant being tortured and was among the "most offensive" he had seen in his career. (At the request of the defense, the judge ordered the jury to disregard that characterization because it was a subjective opinion, not a fact.)

The trial, which began on Tuesday, is expected to last a total of five to six days.

If convicted of the charges against him, Duggar faces up to 20 years of imprisonment and up to $250,000 in fines on each of the two counts for a total possible sentence of 40 years, according to an April press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Western District of Arkansas.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text "STRENGTH" to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 connected to a certified crisis counselor.

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