PRETEND

In 1996, Sarah DeJonghe was a 20-year-old Navy Seabee stationed in Okinawa, Japan. Two guys in uniform approached her on base and invited her to church. She said no.

They came back anyway.

Four months later, Sarah was out of the Navy and on her way to a Bible seminary in Washington State. She didn't see it coming. Neither did the dozens of other military members who found themselves drawn into the New Testament Christian Churches of America, a church that has spent decades planting itself outside US military bases around the world, marketing itself as a home away from home for single, lonely soldiers.

Former members say it's a cult.

Want to keep going? Part Two is available right now on PRETEND+ on Apple Podcasts and on Patreon. You'll get every episode of this series ad-free and a week early, plus bonus episodes and full access to the PRETEND archive.

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/pretend/id6443456985
Patreon: www.patreon.com/cw/pretendradio

Resources mentioned in this episode:

NTCC bylaws (publicly available): https://myntcc.org/bylaws/


Stay Away From NTCC (former member YouTube channel run by Tracy Pelfrey) - https://www.youtube.com/@StayAwayFromNTCC

Bruce Smith's reporting at The Mountain News

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A Colorado businessman with a criminal record, no credit, and a gift for charm somehow convinced dozens of women to finance his cars, his home, and his lifestyle. When they finally compared notes, they didn't get mad. They got organized. This is the story of Bill Sullivan, and the self-appointed militia of scorned women who banded together to take him down: Operation Cockblock.

Before you go:

Stick around for a sneak peek at Chain of Command, PRETEND's new investigative series about a secretive church that brands itself a "ministry to the military" and has been operating near U.S. military bases around the world.

🎧 Listen now on PRETEND+ on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/pretend/id6443456985

💙 Or on Patreon:
https://patreon.com/pretendradio?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink

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Somebody went through hundreds of Reddit comments asking what the greatest podcast episode of all time is, then actually listened to all of them. That somebody is Ivy, the creator behind @watchandlisten.ivy on TikTok, and she has been going viral ever since.

In this episode we go through the ones that kept coming up:

Reply All: "The Case of the Missing Hit" https://open.spotify.com/episode/0CaOGo6xSN51B2aLAQa1kU

Heavyweight: "Gregor" https://open.spotify.com/episode/6LKrLVEAY3tsqHPURec6ke

Mystery Show: "Belt Buckle" https://open.spotify.com/episode/7niwu8ksl85o2GP2IUEJdA

Radiolab: "Colors" https://open.spotify.com/episode/7ugEsqx79eit9kFVw5xN7a

You're Wrong About: "Andes Flight 571" https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Tqgu60WVXQWYMqiwWy5F7

Love and Radio: "The Living Room" https://open.spotify.com/episode/1HQSZAsQ78AanIb68NChHC

Follow Ivy: @watchandlisten.ivy https://www.tiktok.com/@watchandlisten.ivy
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On January 6th, 2021, Pam Hemphill followed the Proud Boys to the Capitol, got trampled by the mob, was carried out by a police officer named Joe, and recorded every minute of it. The internet called her the MAGA Granny. She did 60 days in federal prison. And then, slowly, she woke up.

When Trump issued sweeping pardons for more than 1,500 January 6th defendants, Pam did something almost no one else did. She said no. She filed a formal letter of rejection, returned to the Capitol to apologize to officers in person, received death threats, lost a 12-year relationship, and kept talking anyway.

In a series about people who got pardons they didn’t deserve, Pam Hemphill is the one who deserved consideration and walked away from it anyway.

You’ve heard about January 6th. You think you know the story. You don’t know it like this.

Quick Links

•  FBI Affidavit (Case 1:21-cr-00555-RCL): Read the original charging document https://jan6attack.com/DoJ/hemphill-pamela/1469486.pdf

•  Pam Hemphill’s Wikipedia Page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Hemphill

•  Pam’s January 6th Testimony (PBS, January 6, 2026): Watch on PBS NewsHour

•  Trump’s Truth Social Post (via HuffPost): Read the coverage

•  Pam’s Pardon Rejection (NPR): Listen and read on NPR

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My cousin spent 23 years in an Illinois prison for a crime she says she didn't know she was committing. She was 33 when a judge handed down a 60-year sentence. She would have been 93 before she saw the outside again.

This episode is personal.

In "Only God Pardons," we follow my cousin Iris (not her real name) through the Illinois clemency system: what it takes to apply, what the odds actually look like, and what it means to finally get out, only to discover that freedom comes with its own kind of sentence.

Along the way, we hear from Margaret Byrne, a Chicago attorney who has spent 45 years fighting for people inside Illinois prisons who shouldn't be there, including the women she represented through the Illinois Clemency Project for Battered Women. And we talk to Jeff Grant, attorney, minister, and co-founder of the White Collar Support Group, who argues that the pardon system doesn't go nearly far enough and who is pushing Congress to add federal expungement as a tool alongside clemency.

We also look at what's happening at the federal level, where a booming paid-pardon industry has taken root around the White House. According to federal lobbying disclosures, clients paid firms more than five million dollars in 2025 just to get their clemency cases in front of the president, eight times what was spent seeking pardons from the Biden administration. And then there's Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor convicted of corruption, commuted by Trump in 2020 and fully pardoned in his second term, a man who turned the governor's office into a shakedown operation, pardoned by a president who turned clemency into currency for whoever could afford the cover charge.

Meanwhile, my cousin filed her petition the right way. Through the right channels. And waited.

In this episode:

Margaret Byrne, founder of the Illinois Clemency Project for Battered Women and veteran clemency attorney

Jeff Grant, attorney, minister, and co-founder of the White Collar Support Group and the Federal Expungement Initiative

Learn more:

White Collar Support Group: whitecollaradvice.org

Federal Expungement Initiative: contact Jeff Grant through the White Collar Support Group

Illinois Prisoner Review Board: illinois.gov/agencies/prisoner-review-board

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