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June 10, 1844 - Joseph and Hyrum Smith (both secretly practicing polygamy) tell Nauvoo City Council that the 1843 revelation pertains to ancient polygamy, not to modern times. Under the authority of Mayor Joseph Smith and the Nauvoo City Council, police, members of the Nauvoo Legion under orders of “Lieutenant-General” Joseph Smith and a “possey consisting of some hundred” destroy the press, office and papers of The NAUVOO EXPOSITOR as “a public nuisance.” Afterward the crowd gathers in front of Joseph Smith’s house where he, “gave them a short address told them they had done right. That they had executed my orders required of me by the city council that I would never submit to have another libellous publication in [print] established in this city.”

What the Tanners fail to mention here is that the city charter of Nauvoo gave the Nauvoo City Council the legal right to shut down the Expositor for "creating a public nuisance." What the Tanners also do not mention is that the Expositor was set up for the express purpose of provoking such a response from the City Council. This provocation would then give them the excuse to arrest Joseph Smith and later to destroy Nauvoo and drive it's inhabitants out.

When they arrested Smith, however, they did not charge him with destroying the press, knowing full well Nauvoo had the legal right to do so. They charged him with "treason against the state." Previously, they had arrested Smith on other false charges, with the intent to have him extradited back to Missouri where Gov. Bogg's extermination order would have meant certain death for him, only to have Smith's lawyers get him released on a writ of habeas corpus.

The "treason" charge, entirely bogus given that you can't commit treason against a state, was the only thing they could arrest Smith under where habeas corpus didn't apply. This gave them time to hold him and eventually murder him.

So, for "in-depth" historians, the Tanners tend to leave out a lot of stuff. While what they talk about is, for the most part, truthful, omitting relevant facts is every bit as dishonest as an outright falsification.