Morgan Ballis – Still Not Fit

Recently, an open “letter” purportedly for fundraising purposes written by Desi Ballis, Morgan Ballis’ wife, was forwarded to me. The letter makes a variety of allegations and claims which are simply not true.

Before I get into the false allegations, I want to share something shocking that has come to light about Morgan Ballis. I am on a text thread with a group of engaged citizens where I saw a letter from Aaron Hughston’s lawyer to Morgan Ballis’ attorney and a police report detailing a horrific incident in which Morgan Ballis was involved while in high school. According to the letter and police report, Ballis allegedly brought a junior high school girl who lived in Ballis’ neighborhood to the home of one of his friends. There were four high school boys ages 15–16 present – and one junior high school girl. According to the police report, the boys proceeded to pester, cajole, and pressure the girl into having sexual relations with them. They called her a “pussy” and according to the girl, would not stop. She stated she finally relented and gave them oral sex so they would stop badgering her. They videotaped the encounters and showed the video to other students prompting some of those kids to tell their parents that there had been a gang rape. According to the report, Ballis told the girl that the tape did not come out – but that was obviously a lie as the other students claim he showed it at parties.

According to my contacts who have friends who support Ballis who have asked him about the incident, Ballis claims TODAY, as a 38-year-old adult, that the sexual encounters that he and his buddies videotaped were consensual.

So, I ask you the reader, if a group of 15- and 16-year-old high school boys brought your junior high school daughter to a gathering then called her names and pressured her into having sexual relations with them, would you call that consensual? Are you OK that Ballis is allegedly to this day claiming to his supporters that the incident involved him and only one other guy, not him and three others, and that he continues to portray his actions and the event as consensual?

Teenagers are often tried in court as adults and Ballis was almost 16 at the time, but he wants us to dismiss this as just the antics of an adolescent? No man I love and respect would ever behave this way at any age and Ballis and his friends must have known perfectly well at age 15 or 16 that such behavior was reprehensible.

It beggars belief that the Advocates are supporting Ballis given this background.

What happened to “Believe her” and “Me too”? And how does a junior high school student – a child – consent anyway?

Back to Desi’s email in which she claims her husband filed criminal defamation charges against his opponent, Aaron Hughston. This is simply false because private citizens can’t file criminal charges, only prosecutors can. I won’t dissect the other provably false claims about the lawsuit as I want to set the record straight about me.

In her “letter,” Desi wrote, “Aaron Hughston is working in close tandem with Leslie Manookian, Eric Parker, Brian Almon (Idaho Freedom Foundation), Sarah Lurie and Heather Lauer. They are claiming that Morgan has political motives beyond Sheriff and is trying to draw attention at the state level.” You can read Desi’s email here.

I want to be very clear that I am not on Hughston’s team and I am not “working in close tandem” with him or the others named. Moreover, I have never made a single claim about Mr. Ballis’ political aspirations as I have no idea what they are and have never asked him about them.

On the contrary, I am an independent, deeply concerned, long term valley resident who met with Morgan Ballis on April 30, 2024 with several friends as we had heard much about him and wanted to learn more about him. I went to the meeting with the hope that I would come away liking him and wanting to support him, but his actions assured that would not happen.

On May 6^th, I attended a debate between Ballis and current Blaine County Sheriff Steve Harkins at the Community Campus. During that debate, Ballis made claims that contradicted most of what he had told my friends and me just six days earlier prompting me to ask him during Q & A, “Mr. Ballis, who are you?” I subsequently wrote an email detailing how Ballis had lied to my face. You can read that email here. Subsequent to that email, I received many reports from residents who work with Ballis claiming that he is lazy, unreliable, and that they would never vote for him.

After my email went out, I was forwarded an email dated May 13 by Jennifer Noland containing dubious information about Sheriff Harkins’ track record so I met with Harkins to get his perspective and to clarify the data Noland had shared. I then met with Noland and at the end of our meeting informed her that her data was wrong. In a follow up email, I asked her to correct the record but she never responded. Any ethical person who cares about doing the right thing would have corrected the record when she learned that she had spread false information, but Noland did nothing. It is worth noting that Noland and her husband are financial backers of Ballis and have a bone to pick with Sheriff Harkins because his officers arrested one of their sons for underage drinking after a sequence of four parties around the valley hosted by high schoolers.

Back to Ballis, in my opinion, liars are not decent, upstanding members of our community, liars are people who can be manipulated and blackmailed because they are compromised, liars are not trustworthy and should not fill public office, let alone the sheriff’s office. Moreover, the fact that Ballis is lying today demonstrates he has not changed his ways and that his troubled youth is not behind him.

To be clear it was Ballis who disseminated an unverified, anonymous letter filled with lies to smear his primary opponent, Sheriff Harkins, before the primary in May, (see text pasted under 2. at this link), but in her letter, Desi shares a campaign statement in her email calling for ethical conduct, truth, and positive leadership. And she was not even being ironic! It was Ballis and his campaign who smeared Harkins and are now upset that Ballis has been called out for his lies and his checkered background.

The campaign statement also says that Hughston, and by implication I, have involved Ballis’ wife and children, but the fact is that I have painstakingly redacted ALL my reports to protect his family and all his contacts.

The sad truth is that I do have information that would hurt her but have not released it as yet as I did not want to bring her into it.

I have never swung a baseball bat at anyone, I’ve never brought a much younger person to a party then coerced them to have sex with my older friends and me then, as an adult, claimed it was consensual, I’ve never broken into someone’s car and stolen their wallet, I don’t conceal aspects of my military record, and my spouse has never been in contact with domestic violence units at the local police, but there are police reports containing exactly these allegations and much more about Ballis.

It boggles my mind that this is the best Blaine County can do.

IMO no one with this kind of background is fit to hold the highest office in our county. IMO, had Ballis really changed his stripes, he would have been honest with my friends and me. IMO no decent, moral upstanding person would be disseminating unverified lies about his political opponents like Ballis did to Steve Harkins and like he is doing to Aaron Hughston (see Desi letter). I reached out to Aaron Hughston’s campaign and spoke with Sarah Lurie, his campaign manager who said Desi’s claims about Hughston, his wife, and his daughter are categorically false.

To those who say Ballis is a changed man, then I ask why is he lying to people about his beliefs and his background? Why is he claiming the sexual incident involved only himself and one other male? Why does it seem that he is concealing his military record and embellishing his military awards under oath while acting as an expert witness in a lawsuit last year? This is all just more evidence that Ballis is not honest TODAY. This is not just about what happened when he was a teen, this is his conduct as an adult.

Desi, have you ever considered that your husband may not be telling you the truth?