Hofmann Forgeries (Church History Topics)

Hofmann Forgeries is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints's own topic essay, published through the Church Historian's Press in 2019, giving the institution's account of the Mark Hofmann forgery case, including the forged salamander letter, the 1985 bombings Hofmann committed to conceal his fraud, and his 1987 guilty plea. Its strength is that it is the affected institution's own public reckoning with an episode in which the church itself was deceived and, before the forgeries were exposed, had acquired and in some cases suppressed forged documents, making the essay notable simply for existing as an official acknowledgment. Its limit is that a custodian institution writing about its own past deception has an interest in how the episode is framed, so a claim about the church's specific internal handling of the forged documents before exposure is better checked against the independent journalistic and legal record of the case as well.