I think I have some answers to the questions I brought up last week regarding the apparent takeover of Church Militant.

Last week, as you recall, my first article for Where Peter Is was published, about some odd shenanigans at Church Militant’s X (formerly Twitter) page. I described a video where Joe Gallagher — a former employee of Church Militant — claimed that a new organization by the name of Truth Army Productions (of which he was CEO) had taken over Church Militant’s web domain and social media pages and would be running the scandal rag in a more “positive” direction. I looked at Truth Army’s website and found it was full of nothing but conspiracy theories that were nutty even by Church Militant’s standards. The site pushed conspiracies from crass COVID denialism to an antisemitic “documentary” that was so poorly done it would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so offensive.

When I woke up the next morning after watching the announcement video, I found that it had been deleted from Church Militant’s Facebook page and set to private on YouTube. On social media, Joe Gallagher — who had just been publicly rejoicing about his new venture the day before — was pointedly refusing to answer questions from bemused commentators about what had happened.

Since then, there has been no official clarification about what’s going on. Church Militant hasn’t posted anything on its website or social media for over a week. Gallagher hasn’t released a new statement addressing the situation with Church Militant, he’s just uploaded a few more awful videos for Truth Army. Gallagher canceled a planned appearance on former Church Militant employee Christine Harrington’s podcast on March 8 at the last minute without explanation. Both in the beginning and towards the end of the video, Harrington announced that she would be “suspending all coverage on St Michael’s media and Church Militant,” and would only continue covering Michael Voris and the defamation lawsuit against him. Until today, there were no developments in this saga, only a series of conspiratorial and cryptic tweets on Truth Army’s X page, but this was typical.

Last night, I came across a possible reason for all the sudden secrecy.

I was sent a copy of a lawsuit which appears to have been published to Scribd since March 9.

According to Justia and UniCourt, this lawsuit was filed on March 8 (the same day my original article was published) in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. According to the lawsuit, Patmos Hosting, Incorporated — a software developer and cloud-hosting service — is suing Truth Army and Joe Gallagher for a whopping three million dollars.

A third defendant named in the lawsuit is Geoffrey B. Sando, who is described as “a member of the Church Militant board.” Former Church Militant employee Kristine Christlieb described Sando in a Substack post as “one of more than twenty executive producers for the sleeper hit Sound of Freedom.”

Christlieb also describes Sando as “Gallagher’s financial backer,” and — noting that a nurse called Teresa Sando is interviewed in the Fog documentary featured on the Truth Army website — the Sandos appear to be the mysterious “Catholic family” described by Joe Gallagher as bankrolling the Church Militant takeover. Time will tell if this is the case.

The lawsuit says that, Patmos Hosting is suing Truth Army, Gallagher, and Sando for “tortious interference with a contract.”

This is Christlieb’s summary of the lawsuit:

The suit alleges Truth Army, Joe Gallagher and Geoffrey B. Sando instigated a breach of contract, preventing Church Militant from making its nearly $100,000 monthly payment for hosting services and software development.

In September 2022, Church Militant signed a four-year contract with Patmos Hosting, Inc., agreeing to a $94,000 monthly payment that increased incrementally over the life the contract.

According to the Harrisonville, Missouri, company, their services “formed the foundation supporting the Church Militant video library and paywall.”

I am not a data hosting corporation so I couldn’t tell you if this is the expected going price. Church Militant made its money to pay this fee through subscribers who paid a monthly donation to see bonus content beyond a paywall.

Christlieb continues:

Patmos has had a 10-year business relationship with Church Militant. The suit notes CM had always paid on time until early February 2024 when it revealed to Patmos CEO John Johnson it “was in financial trouble.”

On February 13, the suit claims the board informed Johnson: “Church Militant would be dissolving under Michigan law effective March 15, 2024.”

Johnson offered to help find a third party purchaser of the remaining assets (studio equipment and the video library), and, as another alternative, he offered to take title to the assets in exchange for settling on the contract valued at $3 million.

On February 16, Johnson alleges his counsel talked with Church Militant’s counsel about these options, but CM’s counsel revealed Truth Army was poised to sign a third-party purchaser letter of intent.

On February 27, according to the suit, the details shifted. Now Truth Army, led by Joe Gallagher, was signing a management agreement.

In a March 4 meeting between Johnson and Gallagher, Johnson claims Gallagher, the new manager, scuttled a 7-month rebranding project. Johnson also was still insisting on payment for February services and now, March as well, or the site would be shut down.

Gallagher said his business partner, Geoff Sando would take care of the payment. Somehow that didn’t happen.

On March 5, Gallagher made a failed attempt to forward Church Militant traffic to Truth Army’s site. In a video posted on Church Militant’s YouTube channel, Gallagher announced Truth Army was now managing Church Militant’s assets.

On March 5^th, according to the lawsuit, Gallagher and Sando started disabling Church Militant’s website and posting content telling Church Militant’s supporters to support Truth Army instead. The supporters weren’t told where their monthly subscription money was going and they were even robbed of the ability to log into Church Militant to unsubscribe. Patmos also alleges that a Church Militant employee named Mike Sherry was told not to pay Patmos’s invoices.

In the lawsuit, Patmos alleges that this was all done deliberately, to avoid giving Patmos the money he was owed. They are seeking at least three million, plus interest.

And that’s all she wrote.

I can’t verify anything the lawsuit claims except the paragraph about the short-lived video. I also read many of the comments on the video at three in the morning when I couldn’t sleep, just before the video was pulled.

Based on its production values, it’s hard to imagine that the managers of a shoddy website like Truth Army could afford $3 thousand in damages, let alone $3 million, but then again somebody at Church Militant was signing monthly checks for $94 thousand, so what do I know?

Who’s in the wrong here? I don’t know that either. Truth Army, Church Militant, and any corporation that hosts them sound like a nightmare to work with. I don’t know if any laws were broken or if any damages are owed, but it seems odd that someone would sue for $3 million only a week after payment was due.

But I am weary that so much time, energy, and money is being spent so terribly, in the name of the Catholic faith.

It’s not wrong to make money by writing and producing content about the Catholic faith. I make money writing about the Catholic faith myself, although far less than Church Militant apparently did. And, yes, I’ve also written plenty about bad Catholics who do terrible things, when I think that the public has an interest in finding out about it. That’s what I’m doing right now.

But it’s certainly wrong to hurt people on purpose, just for the money, which Church Militant did for years.

Church Militant must have been raking in a lot of money if they could afford to pay $94,000 a month just to keep the website running. I can’t imagine having $94,000 a month. And they used that money to produce scandalous articles and videos, often committing calumny and detraction. I am heartbroken at the thought of all the good that could have been done instead, with all of those donations. I am angry yet again on behalf of everyone whose lives were harmed by Church Militant in the name of “saving souls.” All of these resources could have gone to something that actually glorified God and attracted souls to Christ.

I’m also marveling at how many of the people Michael Voris managed to gather around himself to run Church Militant were shady and self-serving misanthropes who don’t really care about souls or about Christ.

Truth Army looks, if anything, worse. Besides the horrendous accusations of blood libel against our Jewish brothers and sisters, they’re spreading claptrap about vaccines that could also get people killed. Now, it seems, they want to co-opt Church Militant’s donors to help them do it.

Sadly, people will listen to their false messages. I wish the Catholic internet media audience was savvier about who they trust.

And I wish Catholic media were more trustworthy about what they do with the trust placed in them.

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Image: Church Militant, YouTube screenshot.