Evangelical group apologizes for anti-Trump ads pitting him against the Rev. Billy Graham

The political action committee (PAC) Evangelicals for America has officially apologized for and taken down political ads attacking President Donald Trump, following a copyright complaint by the family of the late Rev. Billy Graham.

Religion News Service (RNS) reported Monday that the Billy Graham Evangelical Association (BGEA) filed a copyright infringement claim against Evangelicals for America (formerly Evangelicals for Harris) over ads used in the 2024 presidential campaign that featured Rev. Graham's likeness. The ads in question were meant as a way to persuade Christians to support then-Vice President Kamala Harris by contrasting Graham's words with Trump's.

"Rev. Graham aimed to win a hearing for the Gospel with all people, whether they were Americans who identified as Democrats, Republicans, or something else, or simply people from another country who had no context for American politics," the PAC stated on social media last week.

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The PAC spent $1 million promoting the ads, which played clips from a 1988 sermon Graham delivered alongside clips of Trump calling himself "the chosen one" and bragging about kissing and groping women without their consent. The group — led by the Rev. Jim Ball — claimed that it believed the footage of Graham was freely available to the public under the 1988 Fair Use doctrine of the Copyright Act.

However, the BGEA, which is led by Graham's son, Franklin, had claimed after the ads aired last year that the footage of Graham was used out of context and that the late conservative televangelist would have disapproved of his sermons being used to attack Trump.

“The liberals are using anything and everything they can to promote candidate Harris. They even developed a political ad trying to use my father @BillyGraham’s image. They are trying to mislead people,” Franklin Graham wrote on his official X account at the time. “Maybe they don’t know that my father appreciated the conservative values and policies of President @realDonaldTrump in 2016, and if he were alive today, my father’s views and opinions would not have changed.”

“Our intent was not to infringe on BGEA’s copyright or to give the impression that Rev. Graham would have taken a side in publicly supporting one political candidate or another in an election, so we apologize to BGEA,” Evangelicals for America stated in response to the copyright claim. "[Billy Graham] never politicized the Gospel of Jesus Christ or the works he created through BGEA."

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Click here to read RNS' report in full.