Saturday’s anti-mosque rally in Colorado Springs ended early so folks could attend a candidate town hall event featuring U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank (R-CO) and Rep. Scott Bottoms (R-CO Springs). Bottoms, a pastor for the Church at Briargate, has a long history of making incendiary, sensational claims that resonate with folks concerned about the demonic elements of public school curriculum, the globalist plot to make everyone eat insects, and sharia law. During last weekend’s event, Bottoms claimed he had inside knowledge of active pedophile rings within Colorado’s government.
“Pedophilia runs through our House, our Senate, and our governor’s office,” he told the credulous audience at the Parkway Tavern. “I’ve been working with the FBI for three years now, FBI outside the state of Colorado, because I do not trust CBI, state police or FBI in the State of Colorado, and I have very legitimate reasons why I know that, and I believe that. So I’ve been working with FBI in two other states because we are going to drop the boom the moment that I’m governor. We’ve actually been talking about maybe doing it before, but the moment I’m governor, we’re going to shut down the pedophile rings that are in the House, in the Senate, and in the governor’s office. We know where these people are, we know who the people are, and it’s going to happen.”
The FBI, as a matter of policy, will neither confirm nor deny active investigations, so there is no way of independently verifying Bottoms’ sensational claims, though he did appear on Ryan Schuiling Live on Monday to walk back some of his claims.
“I have some evidence, and here’s what it is — And it was tenuous, very very weak light evidence, right,” he admitted. “I began the process of trying to figure out — and I’m not trying to throw people under the bus here, but this has to be part of the conversation — I have gone to so many groups that work within human trafficking that work within this pedophilic stuff that have claimed for years and years, ‘Oh, we’re gonna we’re gonna get rid of this stuff.’ Where we fight against this, This is where our major influence is. And so I call it and say, ‘Hey, I need some help here.’ And I haven’t given all the evidence, but here’s a little bit of a teaser of evidence, and I know what I’m talking about, and I cannot get one. This is for three years. I cannot get one group to help me with evidence that they realize is pretty good. Now I have had a couple of groups say, ‘Well, if you’ll give us $100,000 we’ll help you.”
One common criticism of anti-trafficking groups, which often have ties to evangelical Christian ministries, is their misappropriation of funds and midrepresentation of operations. In 2023, Vice reported that a former Operation Underground Railroad employees interviewed by criminal investigators said the organization misused donor funds and lied to the public about the nature and effectiveness of its work, while the group raised tens of millions of dollars annually and amassed assets of at least $80 million. Colorado Springs-based Exodus Road has been criticized for its use of volunteers who are allegedly encouraged to engage in sexualized behavior with women in bars and brothels as part of of going “undercover,” while taking in $2.1 million in grants and contributions in 2019, and paying salaries of about $148,000 for Matt Parker, the CEO, and about $130,000 for his wife Laura, the president.
Victor Marx — Bottoms’ main competition for the fighting demons, saving children demographic — runs All Things Possible Ministries, a multi-million dollar nonprofit which claims to “fight traffickers and pedophiles.” Marx’s opponents have already launched a website full of opposition research at victormarx4co.com.
Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer (R-Weld County) discussed Bottoms’ claims on Ryan Schuiling Live this morning.
“Either he’s made this story up or he’s been sitting on his hands for three years while the little kids are being trafficked and raped, apparently,” she said. “And pedophile rings in the Senate and in the House. You know a couple of things here — Again, he’s either making this story up or he’s not following through. The guy’s a pastor, he’s a mandatory reporter. One — So why didn’t he mandatory report it? His district attorney is a Republican. He could have gone straight there. They have investigative powers. He could have started there, but he has to report. He’s a pastor, mandatory reporter, and so he’s just been sitting on his hands, letting this go for how long. And he is a state representative. He has an ethical responsibility to take this to the floor and demand that an investigation is done, and he didn’t do that either. If he thinks there’s stuff going on in the House, or in the Senate, or in the governor’s office and he’s got any kind of proof, he should have taken that to his leadership and it should have been investigated. Instead, he’s just sitting around. I think it’s disgusting that he’s not doing something. I think personally that he’s not telling the truth.”
With the recent release of the Epstein files, the prospect of a massive human trafficking operation running in the highest echelons of government is not as outlandish an idea as it might have been. The Denver Post recently reported on Colorado connections found in the vast trove of documents — which included emails about Bill Gates contracting an STD, led Peter Mandelson, a former ambassador to the U.S., to resign from Britain’s House of Lords, and featured former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, among others — and last year columnist Logan Davis reported on Rep. Diana DeGette’s appearance in the files, but no mention of the vast network of pedophiles in the Colorado legislature that only Bottoms seems to be aware of.
