Daystar’s Joni Lamb dies at 65, leaving behind scandal, cover-ups, and COVID lies
From shielding an accused abuser to pushing anti-vaccine propaganda, the Daystar co-founder leaves behind a trail of destruction
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On Thursday, Joni Lamb, the co-founder of Daystar Television Network, a Christian ministry, died at the age of 65 due to unnamed “serious health matters” that involved a back injury. But before her disastrous legacy is quickly forgotten, let’s remember the chaos she unleashed upon the country as well as her own family.
In November of 2024, her son Jonathan (and his wife Suzy) announced that someone in the family-run ministry, whom they called “Pete,” had sexually abused their little girl. The ministry’s leaders, including Joni, had gone to great lengths to cover it up, they said.
Despite those concerns, Joni and Marcus Lamb (her husband and Daystar’s co-founder) refused to take any action against the relative. They were more interested, it seemed, in protecting their ministry from bad publicity than kicking out one of their own.
They told Jonathan and Suzy not to talk to police and that the incident wasn’t that big of a deal. And in true conservative Christian fashion, Joni blamed the little girl for what happened to her:
Suzy added that when she strongly objected, saying that didn’t explain why Pete was in the room with her naked daughter, Joni blamed the couple’s daughter, saying she was the one who took her clothes off. At this, Suzy said she began screaming at her mother-in-law, but Joni was adamant and reiterated her claim several times over the next 24 hours.
It didn’t stop there. After that blowup, Jonathan and Suzy had their children sleep near them in the beach house they were all staying at during a ministry retreat, instead of in a separate room on a different floor. Joni didn’t handle that well either:
… Joni confronted her, saying, “‘Look at what you’re doing to this family! What about (Pete’s wife and Pete)? What about their feelings?” Suzy said.
Why won’t you think about feelings of the man who allegedly molested your daughter?!
Joni followed that up by announcing to the family that God spoke to her and told her that “Pete” was innocent. In other words, everyone else needed to shut the hell up.
Whatever the truth was, a year ago, a Texas police department closed their own investigation into the alleged abuse citing “insufficient evidence.”
Jonathan also revealed that he was demoted from his job earlier that year for refusing to sign a non-disclosure agreement. He was later fired for not addressing “the deficiencies in [his] judgment and performance”… whatever those were. (Joni’s judgment, of course, was never in question.)
All of that was shocking in part because, as recently as 2021, Jonathan believed he would be taking over the ministry after his father died. But after those events occurred, his father announced a succession plan that handed control of the ministry to Joni instead of their eldest son.
In 2023, when Joni got re-married (two years after her husband’s death), Jonathan said she had used $100,000 of the ministry’s money to go on a honeymoon.
Interestingly enough, when Joni was on her deathbed this week, the family didn’t even call Jonathan and Suzy to give them a chance to say goodbye. #FamilyValues.
And that was only the internal drama with this ministry. They also harmed people outside their family tree.
Consider the COVID misinformation they all spread. Daystar Television was one of the worst anti-vaccination media outlets during the pandemic. As Right Wing Watch pointed out, there were over 80 episodes’ worth of misinformation about the virus and vaccine at one point on Daystar’s website. Marcus himself told his viewing audience that they had alternatives to vaccines: “We can pray, we can get ivermectin and budesonide and hydroxychloroquine.” (Those were obviously not proven remedies.)
Lamb, along with the American Family Association, then sued the Biden administration claiming that vaccine mandates were a “sin against God’s Holy Word.” Despite being large companies whose employees would be subject to either vaccinations or weekly testing, the Christian groups claimed the mandate would “wound the consciences of their employees and potentially cause them to sin.” That lawsuit was filed shortly before Marcus Lamb was diagnosed with the COVID that would later take his life. He died of a virus that his ministry routinely downplayed and whose cure he rejected.
Daystar TV also applied for a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan to pay employees who couldn’t work because of the pandemic, and the company received nearly $4 million of taxpayer money. That in itself wasn’t necessarily a problem since religious groups were allowed to receive PPP money to cover salaries for their staffers.
But Inside Edition‘s Lisa Guerrero found out that Lamb, shortly after getting that money, purchased a multi-million dollar private jet
That segment showed how Lamb used his plane to go on family vacations—hardly ministry purposes—though Lamb told Inside Edition they were working vacations even if he was seen golfing on those trips, and even if his family posted pictures of their trips on social media.
It was only after Guerrero’s inquiries that the church paid back the entire $3.9 million it received from the government, with interest.
It wasn’t just COVID shenanigans either. Joni Lamb had it out for The Gays. She said in 2012 that “thousands” of people had “come out of homosexuality” (which is not how it works), that being gay was “ungodly,” and that God would not bless people who were “operating within the realm of homosexuality.”
In 2012, she also insisted America was a “Christian society,” which meant religious neutrality by the government could be ignored.
In 2020, she defended Donald Trump as a Christian because she insisted that “there's no way that he would go through what he's gone through to fight for these things that are important to us had he not had some type of encounter with the Lord.”
That’s what this family is known for. They used Christianity to enrich themselves and knew that fighting culture war battles—and pretending to be persecuted—was an easy path to wealth. They never gave a damn who got hurt in the process. And in Joni’s case, she wasn’t about to let family drama get in the way of her power either.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
Family values megachurch matriarch dies, cutting off her own child because he had the temerity to do the right thing about child abuse because it threatened her revenue stream? That tracks. Same megachurch matriarch partly responsible for many thousands of preventable deaths, while taking taxpayer cash intended to help prevent those deaths? That tracks. Using the rubes' money to have a luxury vacation with her new husband before her first husband's corpse has decayed to dust? That tracks.
I bet we could all write the obituary without knowing anything other than the megachurch connection: "Megachurch leader dies amid scandals involving sexual abuse and financial shenanigans, disowns childrenfor speaking up. Google the name for scandal details."
"And nothing of value was lost."