Recently a story started making the rounds on the internet stating that Elder Scott was leaving the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

“According to family and legal sources, Scott began legal proceeding four months ago against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to secure his release from the Quorum of the Twelve because of ‘faith matters’ and is expected to be released within the next few months,” reported the Guardian Post (Not to be confused with the Guardian or the Washington Post.)

This sounds like a pretty major news story for the Mormon Community. Huge in fact.

However, it’s completely made up..

Even John Dehlin’s “direct sources,” who seem to give credence to almost every rumor, have “told” him that this story isn’t true.

Let’s poke some holes into this story anyway. That sounds fun to me.

First and foremost, the Church has been pretty open about Elder Scott’s Health issues.

“Elder Richard G. Scott, 86, is resting at home recovering from his recent hospitalization for internal bleeding,” wrote the Mormon Newsroom. “An ulcer in the stomach was found and the bleeding was controlled without major surgery. Elder Scott, known for his gentle manner and devoted service, has experienced a fading memory incident to age, and is not fully able to participate in meetings of the Quorum of the Twelve at this time. Doctors consider his condition as stable.”

You can find multiple updates of both Elder Scott’s health as well as the health of several other church leaders on the Mormon Newsroom.

Second, the source itself is quite questionable.

The source of this “story” is the Guardian Post, which seems to be trying to piggy-back off of the UK’s famous “The Guardian,” in order to pass itself off as a legitimate news source.

Upon further inspection, it’s just a blog run by WordPress. It’s not even an actual news site.

One pretty clear example of this fake-news site being… well… fake, can be seen in other “stories” which they “wrote.”

By “wrote,” I mean plagiarized.

Here is a link to a story you can find on The Guardian Post’s website entitled “Are the Duggars Redefining Their Scandal?”

And here is a link to the Yahoo story that they ripped off… WORD FOR WORD.

It’s also worth noting that it’s a “.net” website. Which doesn’t necessarily discredit the site but the .com version of the website doesn’t show up when you look for it.

This is because someone owns that “.com” URL and is sitting on it waiting for a buyer. According to WhoIs, the “.com” URL is worth $2588.00.

The fact that it looks like this blogger went for the cheaper “.net” URL instead of springing for the expensive “.com” URL seriously calls into question the resources, and therefore ability of this person to actually unearth such a huge story.

Third, even the exMormon community doesn’t buy into this story.

Here’s is a bit from the subreddit r/EXMORMON.

“Me [sic] fellow ex-Mormons, let’s not fall into the same traps we did when we were Mormon,” wrote Reddior YoungModern. “Faith discrediting rumours are no better than faith-promoting rumours. Please don’t make a fool of yourself in front of your friends and family by posting this gossip to your Facebook.”

Lastly, if you look up the URL the GuardianPost.net on WhoIs you’ll find that the website was only registered a month ago.

All of this means the website has zero reputation, zero resources and zero journalistic integrity. It plagiarizes stories written by other people and seems to fabricate entire events.

If anyone can produce the legal documents for this supposed lawsuit (which should be public record) between Elder Scott and the Church OR can produce links to legitimate news publications reporting on this story, I will write another post with that information.

Until then, I have to assume that this is about as real as the Kinderhook Plates.