A “Clever Hoax” or a Narrative Trick? Examining the Judds’ Latest Episode of The Crazy Train

Brian “Phontaine” Judd and his wife, Hannah, have released the latest installment in their YouTube series, The Crazy Train, titled Chapter 25: A Clever Hoax. In the episode, the Judds suggest they may have been targeted by a fabricated letter designed to intimidate them from attending church meetings. But the “hoax” theory unravels almost immediately when you compare the episode’s narrative to the Judds’ own public posts describing what happened.

For those who haven’t followed along, The Crazy Train is a long-running YouTube series in which the Judds document a years-long conflict they claim involves church leaders, law enforcement, and others they believe have wronged them. Along the way, the series has targeted several individuals, including me, with accusations and conclusions that, in my view, bear little resemblance to the facts. The Judds present the series as a documentary exposing corruption and misconduct. In practice, however, it plays more like a reality-TV style narrative, complete with dramatic reveals, ominous music cues, and carefully edited scenes designed to heighten tension and emotional stakes.

The Plot Hole at the Center of the Episode

The central premise of Chapter 25 is that a letter banning the Judds from attending church may have been a fraudulent intimidation tactic, what the episode describes as a “clever hoax.”

But Brian’s own Facebook post describing what happened tells a very different story.

According to his account, he and Hannah called the Utah law firm Kirton McConkie, which has represented The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for decades, to ask whether the letter was legitimate. In their telling, the firm’s involvement seems to come as a surprise. I’m not sure why. I’ve been aware of the church’s relationship with Kirton McConkie since the early 1990s.

The receptionist immediately recognized the type of letter they were describing, Brian says, and told them the letter was legitimate, adding that the firm sends letters like that “all the time.”

A second receptionist reportedly said the letter was “most likely legit.”

In other words, the only verification described in Brian’s own post points toward the letter being authentic, not a hoax.

Yet the episode still frames the situation as if the authenticity of the letter remains a mystery. That contradiction sits at the center of the episode’s narrative. If the law firm recognized the letter and indicated it was legitimate, the premise of a “clever hoax” becomes difficult to maintain.

Instead of resolving that contradiction, the episode appears to pivot toward a different argument: that even if the letter is real, it shouldn’t exist.

That is a very different claim from the one suggested by the episode’s title.

What the Letter Actually Is

The letter shown by the Judds closely resembles a standard legal trespass or cease-and-desist notice.

Organizations issue such notices all the time. Businesses, universities, nonprofits, and churches regularly send them to individuals they believe are harassing employees, disrupting meetings, or repeatedly contacting leaders.

The purpose of such letters is simple: to formally notify someone that they may not enter certain property or contact certain individuals. Once a person has received that notice, returning to the property can constitute trespassing.

Importantly, issuing a trespass notice does not require someone to be excommunicated or formally disciplined within a religious organization. Property access and religious membership are separate matters.

The existence of a legal letter restricting access to property is not unusual, even if the recipients find it upsetting.

Documentary or Reality TV?

Another issue with the episode is the way the story is told.

Brian Judd is not simply a YouTuber telling his story. He is a trained filmmaker. He graduated from Brigham Young University’s film program and later worked professionally as a reality television editor. The first couple of episodes of the series document this.

Reality-TV editors are trained to build tension, suspense, and emotional investment through editing techniques. And many of those techniques appear throughout The Crazy Train. For example:

Suspense framing. Ordinary events are presented as ominous mysteries. A person holding a phone in church becomes suspicious. A letter delivery becomes a shadowy plot.

Emotional cross-cutting. Scenes of conflict and accusation are interspersed with family celebrations, birthday parties, and heartwarming moments with children. This technique is commonly used in reality television to create emotional sympathy for the central characters.

The “reveal” structure. Episodes introduce a mystery, investigate it dramatically, and then replace the answer with another mystery. This keeps the story moving forward even when the underlying facts remain unclear.

These techniques are common tools in film and television storytelling. But when they are used to build drama around incomplete or selectively presented facts, they can easily lead viewers toward conclusions that the evidence itself does not support.

Logical and Rhetorical Problems

The episode also relies on several reasoning patterns that deserve scrutiny.

Suspicion presented as evidence. Events are framed as suspicious without demonstrating that they are connected.

Assumed motives. The episode frequently attributes motives to others without direct evidence of those motives.

Expanding conspiracies. Over time, the list of alleged adversaries grows larger, expanding from local church leaders to police officers, judges, and others.

Absence of opposing voices. The series presents the Judds’ interpretation of events but rarely includes responses from the people being accused.

None of these issues automatically prove the Judds are wrong. But they do make it harder to treat the series as a reliable documentary account and raise legitimate questions about the credibility of the conclusions it presents.

The Holocaust Comparison

One moment in the episode stands out for another reason.

During a visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., the Judds reflect on how the Holocaust began with people being labeled as undesirable and marginalized, suggesting that historical atrocities can begin with smaller acts of exclusion.

Holocaust scholars and Jewish organizations have repeatedly warned against casual comparisons between ordinary conflicts and the Holocaust.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum explains that Holocaust analogies are dangerous because they distort the historical reality of genocide and reduce the Holocaust to a rhetorical device in modern disputes. As the museum warns, using such comparisons can turn the Holocaust into “verbal shorthand for good vs. evil,” which degrades public understanding of what actually happened.

Jewish advocacy organizations have issued similar warnings. The American Jewish Committee notes that Holocaust trivialization often occurs when people make inappropriate comparisons between the Holocaust and unrelated contemporary situations, which can distort public understanding of the historical reality of the Nazi genocide.

Their educational resource on the subject explains that Holocaust trivialization frequently involves drawing parallels that ignore the historical reality that six million Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

Invoking the Holocaust in a personal dispute with church leadership risks minimizing the historical scale and uniqueness of that atrocity. And frankly, the chutzpah required to place oneself even implicitly in the narrative arc of Holocaust victims is hard to ignore.

The Holocaust was not a metaphor for interpersonal conflict. It was a state-organized genocide that murdered six million Jews and millions of other victims across Europe. Comparing that history, even indirectly, to disagreements within a religious community is not only historically inaccurate, it trivializes one of the darkest chapters of human history.

It also makes the analogy particularly strange here. The conflict the Judds describe involves members of their own religious community. The Holocaust was the systematic persecution of a minority population by a totalitarian state, not a dispute among members of the same congregation.

Why I’m Skeptical

I should be transparent about something else.

In the series, the Judds devoted an entire episode to analyzing my own actions and motivations. Their conclusions about me were so far removed from reality that I briefly wondered whether we were even experiencing the same timeline. The images and video clips that they selected certainly didn’t help. I’ll admit it, I was a much younger and considerably fatter version of myself back then, so I suppose there was at least a superficial resemblance. But beyond that, the person they were describing had very little in common with the actual me.

If their analysis of a situation I know firsthand can be that inaccurate, it naturally raises questions about the reliability of their conclusions in situations where I wasn’t involved.

This doesn’t automatically mean every claim they make is wrong. But it does make skepticism a pretty reasonable default setting.

When you spend your younger years in farm country, as I did, you develop a pretty reliable ability to recognize the scent of what comes out of the south end of a northbound Bos taurus. Mine snoot doth detect the unmistakable bouquet! Doth thine?

Watch with Your Eyes Open

People who watch The Crazy Train should pay attention not just to the claims being made, but to how the story is being constructed.

Look for the narrative mechanisms:

• the dramatic reveals,
• the unanswered mysteries,
• the emotional cross-cutting between conflict and family life,
• the expanding circle of alleged wrongdoing.

These are powerful storytelling tools. But storytelling tools are not evidence.

Which brings us back to the episode’s central question.

Was this really a “clever hoax?” Or is it something else entirely? A carefully edited narrative that keeps the mystery alive even when the facts point in a much simpler direction, perhaps?

Readers can watch The Crazy Train and decide for themselves. Masochistic readers may even choose to watch the entire thing.