Colorado voters considering Victor Marx for Colorado governor in 2026 and those considering donating to his nonprofit should know that Marx raised $7.6 million in 2024 for an organization that predominantly hands out stuffed animals to children in war-torn countries.
The Denver Post editorial board did a deep dive into Marx’s non-profit — With God All Things are Possible (ATP Ministries) — and concluded Marx misleads people when talking about the work of his organization, a tactic of omission and insinuation that makes us deeply uncomfortable from a man who wants to run the state of Colorado.
Marx is the president of ATP Ministries, which declared its purpose on its 990 tax form in 2024 as: “to reach people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
The website for ATP Ministries — VictorMarx.com — instead says at the very top of several information pages, including the home page, some variation of “.”
Marx has since said they don’t often free people physically. The only tangible program attributed directly to ATP Ministries on its website is a religious-based mission that has delivered 67,000 stuffed animals to children in three countries.
The Denver Post’s Seth Klamann interviewed a man doing high-risk international aid work who vouched for some of Marx’s work abroad, saying Marx helped fund his agency’s efforts to bring aid to Kurds in Iraq during fighting with the Islamic State. The source told Klamann that Marx personally joined in a few high-risk missions. We don’t dispute that Marx has traveled to places in the midst of war and provided limited aid, but we do think his social media accounts, his websites, and his YouTube page grossly overstate the work his ministry has done since 2003.
We found that Marx’s nonprofit declared on tax forms that it does not have any staff or facilities abroad, including none in Iraq, Syria, Israel or southeast Asia. The tax forms reported spending $315,000 in Cambodia, $242,700 in Iraq, $134,466 in Israel and $18,000 in Haiti.
Marx’s nonprofit declares two broad categories of spending, which we assume have to do with its Lamb and Lion program, giving stuffed animals to kids and perhaps other aid that Marx discusses on camera, like food, water and sanitary products, but that is not discussed or disclosed on its website:
• $2.5 million for “High Risk Mission ministry to at-risk people in turbulent parts of the world who need God’s rescue and help.”
• $2.1 million for “Trauma Support outreach for at-risk people to learn the existence of God’s help for them. Trauma Support Resources to assist at-risk people with training and tangible items about God’s assistance available to help them.”
Other than that, we know Marx took a relatively modest annual salary and other compensation of $104,944 and that his wife, Eileen Marx, was paid $83,069. Gabriella Marx, his daughter, was paid $50,551, and his son John Michael Marx was paid $18,777.
The organization spent $404,390 on advertising and promotion, and another $1.4 million on campaign and outreach and $951,109 on travel. It declared spending $77,667 on a “special book and movie.”
On the tax forms where the IRS requires nonprofits to disclose conflicts of interest, ATP Ministries reported spending $60,000 for “contract services” with Victor Marx Group LLC.
Klamann also reported that the ministries purchased Marx’s Colorado Springs home from him for $3 million in 2024.
Marx is running against two other candidates this month for the Republican nomination for governor, and he is the only candidate who did not respond to requests for an interview with The Denver Post Editorial Board. Public scrutiny of Marx has focused on his incredible personal life story — which he details in books and a movie. Marx says he was abused as a child, forced to kill a man by his step-father at a very young age and rose from that trauma to have five children and run a multi-million dollar nonprofit.
Kyle Clark, an anchor with 9News, asked Marx if the person he was forced to kill as a 7-year-old was the only person he had ever killed.
“As a child, yes, without question,” Marx responded after a long pause. “But I’ve been in other situations where possibly people or persons died as a result of me defending myself and other countries. There’s no count on that. There’s no photos.”
He refused to elaborate further, except to say it might have been during combat in self-defense. It is easily one of the oddest exchanges in the history of Colorado politics.
Marx was a weapons instructor at Camp Pendleton in California and did not see combat, so anyone else he killed came outside his time with the Marines.
Marx served 3 years in the U.S. Marine Corps — a number we know definitively because Marx accused podcast host Candace Owens of lying because she said he served only two years. Marx wouldn’t drop it, accusing her of intentionally minimizing his service.
In addition to the interviews with Clark and Owens, Marx sat down for a long interview with Peter Boyles of 710KNUS. Boyles called into question Marx’s credentials in martial arts, learning that Marx got his impressive-sounding credentials — a 7th-degree black belt in Keichu-Do — from a martial arts program his father invented, rather than one of the existing programs in the U.S.
But critically, from these interviews, we learned that Marx’s ministry has historically done very limited work internationally to rescue women and children from sex trafficking.
Marx told Clark they have rescued “more than one but less than a bunch.”
Recently, the ministries began providing training to U.S. law enforcement officers focused on sex trafficking operations, providing a 5-day fully funded retreat for law enforcement for “emotional recovery support” and providing grants to fund “dedicated investigators.”
The website explains the shift in focus by saying: “We’ve saved women and children in 30 nations — but now, the greatest need is in our own backyard.”
Marx told Cark that he wasn’t sure if his ministry had really done work in 30 nations.
He told all three people during the interviews that he would never claim to have rescued women and children, when his website says just that, repeatedly. Marx told Candace Owens they also provided food, water, medical aid and sanitary products to women in camps, something ATP Ministries does not mention online.
Victor Marx’s website also features the Girls’ House of Refuge in Cambodia, which is run by a woman named Holly Dziedzickie. Dziedzickie founded the organization on her own to provide housing and education to children who have been sex trafficked. She also works on their legal cases and says she spends time on the streets and in brothels trying to rescue women and children. It’s unclear how much support Marx provides to the House of Refuge, but in a YouTube video, Dziedzickie says Marx stepped in to provide security for her house after she was attacked. It’s unclear if Dziedzickie is a paid staff member of ATP Ministries, but she is listed on the website.
Historically, much of Marx’s work seems to be providing stuffed animals — a lamb and a lion — to children in war zones. The toys have recorded prayers that play when a paw or hoof is squeezed.
We want donors and voters to understand that about Marx and his work.
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