Duggar used the internet to download explicit material showing the sexual abuse of children.

Josh Duggar, who gained celebrity on the TLC reality show “19 Kids and Counting” as the eldest sibling of a brimming family guided by conservative Christian values, went on trial Tuesday in Arkansas on federal child pornography charges.

Duggar with one count of receiving child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines if convicted.

Duggar’s parents said they were true in a Fox News interview in 2015.

Duggar also announced that he had resigned from his position as the director of the lobbying arm of the conservative Family Research Council, a platform that he used to oppose gay marriage and abortion — and to boost his profile on the political right.

Duggar’s lawyers contended that his conversations with his father, Jim Bob Duggar, and the parents of a girl he was accused of molesting should be excluded from the trial, the television station KNWA reported.

Duggar’s lawyers wrote.

The lawyers contended that “while clergy are mandated reporters of suspected child abuse in Arkansas,” there is an exemption for the knowledge obtained by clergy members through “religious discipline of the relevant denomination or faith” or in the “context of admission.”

“The defendant is asking the court to adopt an interpretation of the clergy-penitent privilege that is so unprecedently overbroad as to render it unenforceable,” prosecutors wrote in a brief on Tuesday