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Cabot Phillips Really Stepped In It Cabot Phillips, a conservative political activist and media personality, currently serving as a writer and editor at The Daily Wire. Recently posted an anti-Mormon tweet because he believes a common conservative notion that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is harmful to society, aligning with his conservative views and political activism. A recent tweet while dunking on a normal LDS girl who claimed all churches have a shady past, the LDS church has the least shady past. She now has 1 million views on her tweet on X because of Cabot Phillips' reply to her: "Before founding Mormonism, Joseph Smith ran a scam business using a magical ‘seer stone’ which he said directed him to buried treasure on people's property." In 1826 he was put on trial for ripping so many people off. In 1827 he just happened to dig up the "golden plates" that became the Book of Mormon. Totally not shady!!!!" (@cabot-philllips, X [formerly Twitter]) Mormon Stories I asked AI to search into this, it couldn't find the tweet, however the AI largely agreed with it. When I asked where the source for its information came from, it was all links from Mormon Stories webpages, with a blend of other primary sources that said no such thing. What I see as happening is, there seems to be a resurgence inspired by The Joseph Smith Papers and Gospel Essays in which critics say the church changed its official tone from a denial that Joseph engaged in any Treasure Hunting, to supposedly admitting Joseph Smith operated a scam business, implying intentional deception and fraud. He used a seer stone (a folk-magic object) to locate buried treasure on other people’s land. The discovery of the “golden plates” in 1827 is insinuated to be just another 'treasure' story. Because that is more or less what Ex-LDS say about every Gospel Topic. As for AI, I'm sure like many non-LDS do, just thinks Mormon Stories is a source for information. Was there a Shift? In the 2010s with the Joseph Smith Papers and Gospel Topics Essays, the Church supposedly shifted to acknowledge Joseph’s treasure-digging and seer stone use in a more open, contextualized way. But I don't see any past denials of treasure hunting nor mining, just not "money-digging", always distinguishing "treasure seeking" from "money digging." B.H. Roberts (early 1900s, LDS General Authority) in Comprehensive History of the Church (1902–1932), Roberts described "money-digging" stories but framed them as hostile exaggerations of his manual labor. Joseph "hired out to Mr. Stowell … to dig for the silver mine … for something like a month … they vainly sought to find the 'hidden treasure.'" Joseph Fielding Smith (Apostle, 1950s–60s) in Doctrines of Salvation acknowledged Joseph's participation in treasure-seeking, Joseph F. Smith emphasized that it was a cultural phenomenon and not indicative of fraud. “Joseph Smith never was a money-digger. The whole story is a fabrication.” “Informed people do not dispute the fact that Joseph Smith searched for buried treasure. The disagreement is about what it means.” The only "shift" as I read it, is the church officially calling out most arguments against all treasure hunting, as the Presentist Fallacy it is: Judging 1820s folk practices by 2020s standards of scams or devilry, instead of understanding them in their own cultural and religious context. In the early 1800s, many respectable American people (not just Joseph) engaged in treasure-seeking. To dismiss it as “scamming” ignores the wider cultural acceptance and reduces it to a modern insult. Critics proceed to exaggerate the evidence (Hasty Generalization) and misrepresent the church's admissions (Strawman). They also twist ambiguous facts into hostile certainty. There isn't hard evidence he scammed folk. Joseph in 1822 finds a Seer Stone as a Youth Historical sources (both friendly and hostile) agree Joseph found a brown seer stone while digging a well around 1822. It’s clear he experimented with it; looking for things, trying to find objects underground, and sometimes telling neighbors what he "saw." And before the Book of Mormon, he developed a positive reputation of success. The important note: this was as a teen - long before he organized the Church. Early American folk practices weren’t unusual in rural New York. Joseph Knight Sr. (an early, faithful believer) wrote in his reminiscences: “Young Joseph … looked in the stone and told them there was a treasure.” (Dean Jessee, Early Mormon Documents, vol. 4, p. 15) Joseph’s Mother, Lucy Mack Smith's memoir, she acknowledged Joseph’s reputation for looking into a stone and that the neighbors sought him for it. She framed it positively: he was known for “having the gift of seeing” - not as a fraud, but as someone with a spiritual gift. (Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and His Progenitors for Many Generations (1853)). Joseph’s 1826 Court Hearing as a Glass-Looker Surviving bills and notes from Justice Albert Neely’s 1826 Bainbridge, NY examination calls Joseph Smith a "glass-looker" under his name, thought not his crime but rather to distinguish between all other Joseph Smiths. “Glass-looking” itself wasn’t a chargeable crime under New York law in the 1820s. What could be a chargeable offense was the much broader “disorderly person” statute in New York’s Laws of 1813, which allowed local justices to prosecute anyone who: pretended to tell fortunes or otherwise made money by deception. He was never sent to trial, as we see there were no credible witnesses against him, but the documents show Joseph was at least publicly known as a glass-looker. Glass-looking: A clairvoyant looking into a stone or glass, or other medium to try to see hidden things - often underground objects, lost items, or distant events. (Wesley Walters, “Joseph Smith’s Bainbridge, N.Y., Court Trial” (1971), reproduces the actual bills and notes.) Joseph was Not a "Money Digger" Lucy Mack Smith (Joseph’s mother, in Biographical Sketches) said "Joseph … endeavored to divert [Stowell] from his vain pursuit … laboring for about a month. It was from this … that the very prevalent story arose of Joseph’s being a money-digger." In Joseph Smith History, Joseph said that him being a "money digger" was a "rumor" started he was hired to dig for a Silver Mine. He was accused of being a "money digger" as a “charge brought against him” by critics, but he denied being what that implied: a fraudulent swindler. There’s a big difference between occasionally participating in digging for a mine (a normal cultural activity) and being a professional “money digger” or scam artist. In early 19th-century New England, a "money digger" was generally understood as someone who: Claimed to locate buried treasure (often Spanish gold or pirate loot). Using any modernly non-conventional or supernatural means (peep stone, divining rods, astrology, etc.) to do so. They usually accepted payment or promised a share of the treasure if found, in exchange for their services. This practice was widely mocked and stigmatized. By the 1820s, a “money digger” was as a derogatory label, similar to calling a psychic a fortune teller. How it applied to Joseph Smith Joseph had a Seer Stone he found in a well as a child, and by his 20s had a positive reputation for occasionally helping people find things with his gift. An Ensign article states Stowell arrived in the Susquehanna area “carrying a purported treasure map” with a digging crew. A Church History Department interview transcript (Legacy radio) says Stowell “had a map of some kind” pointing to a Spanish silver mine. The silver-mine idea and location was already on Stowell’s radar, via a map, before Joseph got involved. He hoped Joseph would join. Promising nothing, Joseph just wanted to be paid as a digger, while Josiah may have hoped by just having him around would give him an edge. The title of “money digger” was applied by critics to paint him as a fraud or charlatan, triggered by the events surrounding the 1826 Court Hearing. Semantics Matter - Key Nuance There is no source I've seen, that Joseph regularly took money just 'find' treasure, how do we know he wasn't just helping out of curiosity or folk faith, without payment, then he wasn’t technically a "money digger" in the economic sense - he’d just been part of a folk religious/mining activity that was common in his community. Mining isn't money digging. Joseph could truthfully say he wasn’t a “money digger” if by that, he meant “I wasn’t a fraud who lived off of deceiving people,” even if he once helped a man search for a silver mine. He became absolved of any wrongdoing by both the law and even Josiah himself, against accusations of Josiah's nephews. 1830 Palmyra Reflector (Newspaper) It seems the neighbors only started sharing the 'negative' rumors in 1829 after Joseph found the golden plates. In 1830, the Reflector began publishing mocking reports about Joseph as a “money digger”. Abner Cole (using the pen name Obadiah Dogberry) disliked Joseph and in the newspaper parodied the Book of Mormon before it had officially released. Example: “This work [Book of Mormon]… is said to be a history of the first settlers of America, written by one of their prophets… translated from the golden plates by Joseph Smith, Jr., who has been known as a money-digger." 1834 Eber D. Howe’s Mormonism Unvailed Eber D. Howe was a newspaper editor in Painesville, Ohio. In 1831–32, right after the Church’s move to Kirtland, Ohio, apostates and outsiders in Ohio and New York were compiling negative accounts from New York neighbors about Joseph Smith. Howe collected these reports and in 1834 published Mormonism Unvailed, the first major anti-Mormon book. Mormonism Unvailed leaned heavily on affidavits gathered by Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, a disaffected Mormon. These affidavits came from Joseph’s Palmyra and Manchester neighbors; Chase, Stafford, and Stowell families (of course not Josiah Stowell). They claimed Joseph was a “money digger” and “lazy", alleged that Joseph deceived people into believing he could find buried riches. I've seen nothing yet about being paid for just looking for treasure. Howe was also the origin point of the debunked "Spaulding Manuscript theory" that the Book of Mormon was plagiarized from a lost unpublished romance by Solomon Spaulding. The dominate anti-Mormon argument for decades, though it has since collapsed (once the actual Spaulding manuscript resurfaced and bore no resemblance to the Book of Mormon). It was Mormonism Unvailed that cemented the "money-digger" narrative in public discourse. Joseph himself pushed back: in his 1838 history he called such stories "folly and lies" used to discredit him. The critic kept the “money digger” stigma alive for decades. 2007 John Foxe and Wikipedia Editing Wars As early as July 2007, John Foxe was a pseudonymous editor on Wikipedia was actively editing multiple LDS-related pages, including the First Vision article, pushing for sections on "treasure-seeking" to be included as the lead paragraph, even when other editors argued it was undue detail. Foxe created secondary accounts, like Hi540, later exposed as sock puppet accounts used in the editing wars. The masquerade led to a two-week Wikipedia suspension. In the 2000s, Wikipedia became the first stop for casual research. Because Wikipedia ranks so high on Google, their framing disproportionately influenced journalists, students, and even lazy "scholars". The "money digger" gets "locked in" as neutral fact. 2010-2020 Ex-Mo Media Era Platforms like Mormon Stories, CES Letter, and ex-Mo Reddit all take the “money digger” framework and lean hard into ridicule - and strangely they become a source, creating another loop: Where mainstream journalists and editors like Cabot Phillips are Googling Joseph Smith, find ex-Mo takes, then amplify it in their own articles and X feeds. What make Cabot Phillips tweet striking is that even someone outside from Mormonism parrots this Ex-Mormon ridicule narrative as if it’s settled fact. That shows how effective the ex-Mo content machine has been. Cabot probably didn’t dig into the early sources, he likely picked it up secondhand through the ex-Mo ecosystem that dominates search and social media. Ex-Mo echo chambers, each retelling added more certainty. What began as “Smith was accused of glass-looking” slowly became “Smith was convicted of the fraud of glass-looking” (though no conviction exists). Each loop hardened the language and erased nuance. First it was Anti-Mormon books making exaggerated claims and quoting from and sourcing other Anti-Mormon books. Ex-Mormon forums, and YouTube amplified these recycled claims. Since digital platforms reward volume and repetition, these old, exaggerated claims got repeated thousands of times - giving the impression of being overwhelming facts. Oh, The Irony Ex-Mormon Critics often accuse the Church of lying to control the narrative but in reality the anti-LDS narrative has thrived through uncritical repetition rather than fresh evidence. Only when scholars, including the Joseph Smith Papers team, emphasize the need to go back to original documents because so much of the narrative was built on secondhand and thirdhand claims. The critics uses the documents the church published to claim the Church was hiding documents about Joseph Smith’s past because they’re too embarrassing or proves Joseph was a fraud. The Church funded, compiled, edited, and published the Joseph Smith Papers Project, making documents like the 1826 hearing record publicly available. That’s the opposite of a cover-up: If the Church wanted to bury them, they easily could have. Yet the documents still don’t support the critics’ most pointed claims. The hearing transcript doesn’t prove fraud or scam. It shows a subset of neighbors arguing, a second-hand testimony, and a justice letting Joseph walk without a conviction. Critics contently misstate it as a trial (it wasn’t), saying Joseph was convicted (he wasn’t), and claiming he profited by scamming (no evidence). The documents failed to condemn Joseph, yet ex-Mormon influencers accuse Joseph of fraud with no proof anyway and blame the Church for "lying" if they do not agree with their interpretation, and the Church "controls the narrative" through censorship. When it's them who clearly controls the wider non-LDS public narrative that dominates public perception. They rely on lying exaggerations that the actual documents don’t support. If anyone is controlling a narrative by omission and distortion, it’s the critics, not the Church. The only reason we even know about these documents is because the LDS Church made them public. That undermines the very conspiracy claim that the Church lies and hides evidence. And the documents themselves don’t prove the fraud claim, so the critics are left propping up their narrative with recycled accusations.