CONFIRMED
This is the plain-language edition of Joshua Aaron Johnson is related to Joseph Smith. Same facts, same grades, none of the record numbers, nothing collapsed into boxes. Every claim below is stated again on the cited edition with its full sourcing attached.
You already know Josh Johnson from this story. He is the man BAM’s own paperwork puts on the inside: their franchise recruiter, listed in their own disclosure documents as one of the people who sells their franchises. He is half of the “independent buyer” that took over the seized store. And he is the man who filed the police complaint that started the arrests. Here is the new fact. Walk up his family tree, father to father, six steps, every step on a public record, and you are standing in the family of Joseph Smith. Not near it. In it. One ground rule before anything else: nobody chooses their ancestors, nothing here accuses any ancestor of anything, nothing here is about the church itself, and every person named is presumed innocent.
Step one is Josh himself, who appears on a Utah business record together with his wife Kaylee. Step two is his father, Lyle: a family obituary published last year lists Josh and Kaylee among the survivors and names their father. Step three is Lyle’s father, Francis Glade Johnson, a Marine Corps corporal in the Second World War from a small Utah farm town; his public memorial page names Lyle as his third son. Step four is his father, Francis Wells Johnson, born in Arizona in the years the family helped colonize it. Step five is his father, Seth, born in the town of Santaquin six years after Seth’s own father founded that town. And step six is that founder, the top of the line: Benjamin Franklin Johnson.
Benjamin Franklin Johnson was not just an early member of the church. He lived at Joseph Smith’s elbow. Joseph Smith signed a power of attorney making Benjamin his agent, and the church itself publishes that document today. Joseph Smith admitted him to the Council of Fifty, the small private council he formed in his final months. Church histories, and Benjamin’s own memoir, describe him as a private secretary to the Prophet. And two of Benjamin’s sisters, Delcena and Almera, became plural wives of Joseph Smith. Benjamin wrote in his own memoir that the Prophet stayed two days at his house, lodging with Almera “as man and wife.” A teaching Joseph Smith gave during that same two-day stay was later made part of the church’s scriptures. That is how close this family stood: scripture was recorded under their roof.
Think of what your aunt’s husband is to you. He is your uncle. Two of Josh Johnson’s great-great-great-grandaunts married Joseph Smith. That makes Joseph Smith his great-great-great-granduncle by marriage, twice over, once through each aunt. Say it plainly: the man who filed the complaint in this case is, by marriage, Joseph Smith’s nephew, doubly. Not a blood descendant, and this page does not claim one drop of that; the tie runs through two marriages and through a lifetime of service. But it is real, it is documented, and it is six public records deep.
Because this case keeps turning on one word: independent. The seized store went to a buyer presented as an arm’s-length outsider, and the police file opened with a complaint presented as coming from an ordinary crime victim. This site has already shown, from BAM’s own paperwork, that the same man was BAM’s recruiter, the buyer’s co-owner, and the complainant, all at once. This page adds the third layer: standing. In the community this enterprise recruits from, a family line like this one is working capital. It is what lets a man be read on sight as safe, vouched for, trusted, disinterested. That standing is what these records document. Standing, not conduct. And the standing is not just history. When officers were at his door in the weeks this all began, Josh told them himself, on their own cameras: he is on his stake’s high council, a council of twelve that helps run a whole group of congregations. His ancestor sat at the founder’s council table. He sits at one today, a hundred and eighty years later. And notice the contrast inside the buyer pair: the other half, the man who actually signed the incorporation papers, has no line like this at all; six documented generations, and not one church office in any of them. The inherited standing sits in the complainant’s chair. The signatures sit at the exposed edge.
Now hold one scene from the released footage up against all that history. A young church member came to Josh’s door. He said he was from the ward next door, and that he was trying to clear things up for Josh’s own bishop. A member, on a doorstep, asking a member where he stood with his faith. He was a real member of the church. Now listen to the answer. Josh told him that ward does not exist. It does. It is a real congregation in his own town, listed on the church’s own meetinghouse locator. And the police report then printed that the ward “did not exist,” as a fact. So picture it: a man whose family put Joseph Smith up in their own home, whose grandaunts married him, a man holding a council seat in the church his family helped carry west, answering a kid’s question about his faith by denying that the congregation next door is real. And one more claim, reported and not verified: a church commentary channel says that after all of this, Josh was released from that council seat. The church does not announce such things, so it stays an unverified claim.
The buyer was presented as independent. Six public records up his family tree stands Joseph Smith’s own household, and by two of its marriages, Josh Johnson is the Prophet’s nephew, twice over.
Where this comes from. The church’s own scholarly edition of Joseph Smith’s papers, including its entry on Benjamin F. Johnson and the power of attorney itself; Benjamin’s own memoir; the research pages of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy on the two Johnson sisters; the public memorial records for each generation; the family obituary, on file; and Utah’s business registry. Every one of them, with its record number, is on the cited edition of this page.
The BAM Map is independent reporting on matters of public concern. Nothing here is a finding of any person’s guilt; the criminal charges referenced are unadjudicated and every defendant is presumed innocent. Sources are linked so readers can check the record. · Home · Map · The law · Bodycam