This One Tiny Detail Is Holding Everything Up for Josh Duggar’s Early Release Appeal

Josh Duggar’s latest legal push isn’t gaining traction just yet, and it all comes down to a technical detail that could make or break his case.

Josh Duggar made a virtual appearance in a federal courthouse on April 15 as part of his latest attempt to appeal his child sex crime conviction. He was convicted of receiving and possessing material depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct in 2021 and is currently four years into his 151-month sentence at the FCI Seagoville, located just 10 miles south of Dallas.

Duggar provided the court with eight arguments as to why he should be granted a new trial or have his conviction vacated in court on Wednesday.

Those arguments include his previous attorneys’ failure to question an individual who had access to the computer where the illegal images were discovered, a Department of Justice expert who Duggar accuses of lying under oath during the trial and another DOJ expert whom Duggar alleges presented “prejudicial information.”

Duggar also argues that the release of a police report filed after he allegedly molested four of his sisters made the trial unfair. The two-hour hearing ultimately focused little on the substance of Duggar’s appeal, though, and more on when and where he filed that appeal.

Prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Arkansas filed a motion in August 2025 after Duggar’s appeal was received by the federal court clerk’s office that questioned the date that the appeal was mailed.

Duggar and his lawyer Beau Brindley, who also recently represented singer R. Kelly as he tried to appeal his own federal sex crime conviction, both say that Duggar mailed his appeal on June 24, 2025, from FCI Seagoville. That was the last day Duggar could file his appeal because it was one year from when the Supreme Court denied his writ of certiorari, in what was then his third attempt at an appeal.

A mail log from the FCI Seagoville obtained by PEOPLE lists just two letters as having been mailed out June 24, 2025 — and neither was from Duggar. The judge overseeing the proceedings said in court that he will now wait to see if the appeal was filed by the deadline before he starts to consider the merits of Duggar’s appeal.

A jury convicted Duggar of receiving and possessing material depicting minors under the age of 12 engaging in sexually explicit conduct in in 2021, and he was sentenced by a judge the following year. During his trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Josh had “repeatedly downloaded and viewed images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of children, including images of prepubescent children and depictions of sadistic abuse,” according to the Department of Justice

It was also revealed just a few years prior in 2015 that Josh had molested four of his sisters when they were children. He apologized for his previous actions that same year and never faced charges in connection with those claims. Josh’s sisters Jessa Seewald and Jill Dillard later spoke publicly about the molestation in both a sit-down interview with Megyn Kelly and later in their memoirs. In her memoir, Jill wrote that her brother was sitting in the same room and looking at them during that interview with Kelly.

Duggar’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.