If You’re Explaining, You’re Losing
Chad Christensen responded to this site with a Facebook post. Here it is — verbatim, with analysis.
There is an old saying in law enforcement and in courtrooms: if you’re explaining, you’re losing. Any working cop, prosecutor, or defense attorney knows it. When someone with a documented record pivots to a lengthy public monologue about what a good person they are — without addressing a single specific documented fact — that is not a rebuttal. That is a tell.
Chad Christensen spent years in Idaho State Probation and Parole before being terminated for conduct. He ran for office presenting himself as a law enforcement professional. He knows the axiom. He ignored it anyway. What followed was a 1,000-word Facebook post to a neighborhood group that did not refute a single court document, deposition page, or public filing on this site. It did, however, provide an unusually clear window into how he processes accountability.
The post is reproduced below in full. The analysis follows. Read both.
His Facebook Response, In Full
Posted to the “Life In Idaho Falls! (SE Idaho)” Facebook group. Screenshot below, full text transcribed beneath it.
This is my response to today’s personal attack on me. Frankly, I don’t care if some or many people don’t like me. My wife can attest to this. I am confident in who I am. I know who I am in the eyes of God and I know my wife loves me because I am honest with her, treat her well and she loves me. Sure, I have sinned in my life. Which one of you who reads this hasn’t? I am not the same man I was 15 or 20 years ago. I truly love my Savior and my Heavenly Father. I try my best to have integrity and do what I say I am going to do and to be honest and forthcoming with people. I try to treat people with respect. Yes, I still struggle with my impatience with liberals. I think about that all the time. I don’t mean that in a mocking way. I truly want to be better about it. This attack on me had all kinds of lies, half-truths and manipulations in it. However, I don’t care to go through it all and explain it. The man these people are trying to portray me as, is not me.
My wife wrote this in response to that attack:
“The desperation somebody would go to to actually make a website that tells lies and half truths. I am truly baffled when I think I’ve seen it all. I would call these people cowards because they don’t have the courage to actually tell who they are.
So let me tell you what I know about Chad in the four years that I have been with him, 3 married. Real, actual and honest experiences. Not lies and half truths.
Chad loves this country probably more than anybody I know. He believes in the constitution. He wants what’s right for our country and for the people in this state. He’s not afraid of confrontation when it comes to standing up for what’s right. He’s not a coward like the person who created this website. If you are in a position of leadership, he’s not afraid of calling you out if you are doing something that is not in line with freedom and the constitution. He takes a lot of backlash for being that kind of person, but when it comes time for you to need him by your side, he will stand in the trenches with you.
He is quick to apologize when he is in the wrong and has done that publicly. He owns up to mistakes he has made in the past. He is God-fearing and loves Jesus Christ with all his heart.
Chad is a man who stands by his word. If he says he’s going to do something, he will do it.
He honors our marriage and has treated me like the queen of his castle. He has stepped into the hard position of taking on five stepchildren. He has loved and supported them without intruding too much and making them feel like he wanted to replace their father who died several years ago. He loves me unconditionally and is not afraid to let it be known. He’s gentle, he’s kind, he’s quick to offer endearing comments to me. We have a happy, joyful, loving marriage.
He is service oriented, and would do anything for anybody who needed his help. He is a hard worker and intends to work hard if elected again.
This, is the Chad that I know and am proud to be married to.
Keyboard warriors that will sit behind their keyboards and type lies and disgusting things, and even go as far as to create a website, need to find something more worthwhile to do with their time. Because I can assure you, there are far better ways to finding happiness in life.
Signed, His Happy Wife”
Last night, my good friend Representative Bruce Skaug sent me this. I did listen to it and appreciated it. Little did I know how important it would be to prepare me for today. I appreciate his friendship and kindness so much. I am so thankful that he listened to God’s promptings. He is a good man and I miss serving with him in the Idaho House.
I know people will mock this post and laugh. That’s ok. However, I just urge these people to look at their own souls instead of mocking someone else. Find how Christ can improve your life.
I am very imperfect, but I do try to be a better man everyday. These types of attacks come because I do my best to stand for God-given rights for people. Do some of you have the courage to have your personal life completely scrutinized and even lied about? I didn’t serve in the Idaho House of Representatives for self gain. I served to stand for God-given rights and freedom for my constituents because it is in my core, my soul. It is who God made me to be and I won’t ever stop because of any man-made attack.
I am so proud of my wife for having the courage to stand up for me, our relationship, and this endeavor to protect the freedoms God has given us. I truly love her and she has been an amazing blessing in my life.
A 1,000-Word Post That Disproves Nothing
He opens by saying the site contained “all kinds of lies, half-truths and manipulations.” He then immediately says he does not “care to go through it all and explain it.”
Read that again. He announced a response to a list of documented claims, then declined to address a single one.
Every document cited on this site is a matter of public record. The deposition transcript is a court filing. The termination history is sworn testimony. The lawsuit docket is publicly indexed. A man who genuinely had specific corrections to make would make them — name the lie, cite the record, show the error. He did none of that. What he offered instead was a character reference from his wife and a spiritual anecdote about a friend who sent him a substack link.
That is not a rebuttal. It is a performance.
The Logical Fallacies, Identified
A post this length, deployed in response to documented court records, contains a textbook collection of rhetorical deflection techniques. Each is labeled here by name.
Tu Quoque
“Which one of you who reads this hasn’t” sinned? The question of whether you have also done things wrong is entirely irrelevant to whether his documented record is accurate. This is a classic deflection — redirect attention from the specific accusation to a general equivalence that proves nothing and addresses nothing.
Appeal to Character (Testimonial)
He delegates most of his defense to his wife’s letter. His wife’s opinion of him as a husband is not relevant to whether he was terminated from IDOC, whether he helped orchestrate a recording scheme, or whether his sworn deposition testimony is accurate. A character witness speaks to character. The record speaks to conduct. These are different questions.
Moving the Goalposts
The site does not claim he is a bad husband. It does not claim he has never been kind to anyone. It documents a public record: court cases, depositions, employment history, a dismissed lawsuit. His response addresses none of those facts — it addresses a different, easier question: “Is my wife happy?” The goal posts moved from the record to the marriage.
Appeal to Authority (Divine)
“I know who I am in the eyes of God.” God’s assessment of Chad Christensen is not a document this site has cited, and it is not one that can be cross-examined, subpoenaed, or entered into evidence. Invoking divine approval as a rebuttal to court filings is not a legal or logical argument. It is emotional insulation.
Ad Hominem (Reversed)
His wife calls the site creator a “coward” for not identifying themselves. The site creator is named on the About page — Gregory Graf, the man Christensen participated in targeting with a secret recording scheme. This is not an anonymous website. The cowardice framing collapses on contact with the About page.
Unfalsifiable Claims
“I am not the same man I was 15 or 20 years ago.” This is structurally unfalsifiable. There is no evidence that could disprove it, which means it cannot disprove anything either. It also sidesteps the timeline problem: the lawsuit he filed and lost ran from 2021 to 2023. The deposition was taken in August 2023. Those are not 15-year-old events. The IDOC Facebook post demanding terminations was December 2024.
Loaded Language
“Personal attack.” “Keyboard warriors.” “Cowards.” “Lies and disgusting things.” Each of these phrases carries emotional charge and is deployed without a single supporting example. The site cited specific court cases by case number and linked to primary sources. Calling it a “personal attack” without naming one inaccuracy is an attempt to reframe documented facts as malicious invention.
Gaslighting
“The man these people are trying to portray me as, is not me.” This implies the portrait is fabricated. But the portrait was drawn using his own sworn words, his own public posts, and publicly filed court documents. Insisting the portrait is false, while refusing to identify which brushstroke is wrong, is the definitional structure of gaslighting: deny the reality without engaging it.
What LDS Repentance Requires
Chad Christensen has invoked his LDS faith throughout this response and throughout his political career. He posts temple photos. He references his Savior. He says he “truly loves” God. His wife says he is “God-fearing and loves Jesus Christ with all his heart.”
The LDS Church has a well-defined repentance process. It is not vague. It is not “accept that you’ve sinned and move on.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that genuine repentance involves specific, sequential steps. Here they are — with an honest accounting of which ones Christensen’s post demonstrates.
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1
Recognize and Acknowledge the Sin
The first step is naming what you did wrong — specifically, not generally. “I have sinned in my life” is not the same as acknowledging the specific harms documented in this record: participating in a coordinated effort to cost a man his job, filing a lawsuit described by his own ally as “a long shot at best,” or the conduct that led to his IDOC termination. Generalized sin-acknowledgment is not LDS repentance. It is ambiguity cosplaying as humility.
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2
Feel Godly Sorrow — Not Worldly Sorrow
LDS doctrine distinguishes between godly sorrow (genuine remorse for having caused harm) and worldly sorrow (being upset that you got caught, or that people now think poorly of you). His post expresses frustration that a website exists. It expresses no sorrow for any specific person harmed. The distinction matters: “I’m upset that people are saying bad things about me” is worldly sorrow. “I am sorry for what I did to Gregory Graf and his family” would be godly sorrow. The first appears in his post. The second does not.
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3
Confess
LDS repentance requires confession — to the Bishop for serious transgressions, and to those you have wronged. There is no public record of any such confession. The person most directly harmed by the documented conduct in this record has never been contacted by Christensen to acknowledge, apologize, or confess to anything. The post contains no confession to any specific act. It contains a generalized statement that he has “sinned” — the religious equivalent of a non-denial denial.
Not evidenced in post -
4
Make Restitution — Restore What Was Taken
This is the step that requires action, not words. LDS repentance is not complete without restitution: restoring what was taken or harmed, to the extent possible. The recording scheme cost Gregory Graf his job. The defamation lawsuit subjected him to years of litigation. Restitution would look like an apology to Graf directly, or some acknowledgment of harm caused. Christensen has made no attempt at restitution. He has made no contact. He has offered nothing. His wife’s letter, notably, calls the website creator a “coward” rather than a person deserving of an apology.
Skipped entirely -
5
Forsake — Abandon the Behavior
The final step is forsaking the sin: demonstrating through changed behavior that the pattern has ended. This is where the Facebook comments section becomes relevant. His replies to people who challenged him under this very post were described by people in the comments as aggressive, dismissive, and combative. IDOC terminated him years ago for being too aggressive. The Facebook comment thread suggests the pattern remains. You cannot claim repentance for a behavior you are actively exhibiting in the thread below your repentance post.
Contradicted by the comments
He skipped steps 3, 4, and 5 of his own faith’s repentance process and went directly to “God knows my heart and my wife loves me.” That is not LDS repentance. That is the appearance of repentance without the substance of it. The LDS Church would call this “cheap grace.” Voters should call it what it is: a man who wants the moral authority of a penitent without having done the work.
What a Genuine Response Would Have Included
The entire post, including his wife’s letter, does not contain a single one of the following:
- × The name of a single specific claim on this site that is factually incorrect
- × A correction to any court document, deposition page, or public filing cited
- × An apology to Gregory Graf, or any acknowledgment that harm was caused
- × Any offer of restitution, amends, or correction
- × Any contact with this site, its publisher, or its legal representative
- × Any acknowledgment of the specific documented harms his conduct caused to a named private individual
He had the ability to send a message. He chose a Facebook group instead. He had the ability to name one specific error. He chose to describe the entire site as lies without identifying one. He had the ability to contact the person he helped target. He has never done so.
The LDS repentance process he publicly professes requires all of this. He has done none of it. What he posted is not repentance. It is reputation management dressed in scripture.
How the Facebook Comments Went
The post drew hundreds of comments in the “Life In Idaho Falls! (SE Idaho)” group. The community’s reaction was not what Christensen appeared to anticipate. A large share of commenters — including people who identified as religious conservatives — called out the post directly. Common threads in the critical comments:
Multiple commenters noted that a man who genuinely had nothing to hide would address the specific claims, not write a spiritual autobiography.
Several commenters observed that anyone who needs to repeatedly tell you they are a man of God may be trying to convince themselves as much as their audience. Virtue signaling — the performance of virtue as a substitute for its practice — was a phrase that appeared more than once.
The length and religious tone of the post struck many readers as disproportionate and rambling — the kind of response that generates its own questions about why someone feels the need to say so much while saying so little.
Christensen replied to several commenters. His replies followed a familiar pattern: dismissive, combative, quick to characterize challengers as political enemies or agenda-driven bad actors. This is the same pattern that IDOC documented when they terminated him for being too aggressive. It is the same pattern visible throughout his social media record on His Own Words. The self-described “imperfect man trying to be better” was, in the comment thread below his redemption post, still doing what he has always done.
Idaho Department of Correction terminated Chad Christensen for conduct described as too aggressive toward a person in his custody. That was years ago. His comment thread behavior under this post — the dismissiveness, the quick pivot to attack, the refusal to engage substantively with specific questions — suggests the finding was accurate and the behavior has not changed. IDOC called it before this site existed. The comment thread confirmed it in real time. He is asking voters to give him power over people again.
The Network Behind This Candidacy
The response post treats this site as the work of a lone attacker with a personal grievance. That framing misses — perhaps deliberately — the full documented context of how this record came to be public. The Idaho Freedom Foundation network that recruited Christensen, funded the legal defense of the recording scheme, and published the smear campaign targeting Graf is the same network backing his 2026 return.
Gregory Graf, who built this site, wrote about the full network context at Political Potatoes. That piece documents the IFF machine, the individuals involved, and what the pattern of behavior across this network looks like from the perspective of a private citizen who lived through it.
Christensen’s post calls this a “personal attack.” It is a public record. Those are different things. The distinction matters, and the Political Potatoes piece explains why.
What His Response Tells You
Chad Christensen posted over a thousand words in response to this site. In those words, he identified zero factual errors. He contacted zero people to apologize. He offered zero restitution. He named the site “lies and half-truths” and then declined to identify one. He invoked his faith in a post whose comment thread demonstrated the same aggressive pattern his former employer documented when they fired him.
His wife’s letter says “he is quick to apologize when he is in the wrong and has done that publicly.” Gregory Graf has never received an apology. Not privately. Not publicly. Not once.
The old saying holds: if you’re explaining, you’re losing. A man who had a genuine rebuttal would have made it. What Christensen offered instead was a character reference wrapped in scripture, delivered to a Facebook neighborhood group, with no specific corrections and no accountability. The record on this site is unchanged. The court documents are unchanged. The deposition transcript is unchanged.
His response confirms rather than rebuts the pattern this site documents: when confronted with specific documented facts, he pivots to general claims of goodness, invokes God, and attacks the people asking questions. He has done this throughout his public career. He did it here.
Read the record. Start here.