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In 2020 two men conspired to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Barry Croft, Jr. and Adam Fox were charged with conspiracy to kidnap.
Croft, 46, is from Bear, Delaware. Fox, 39, was living in the basement of a vacuum shop in the Grand Rapids area.
Those men are now on trial this month.
Fox and Croft are on trial for a second time after a jury in April couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict but acquitted two other men.
Throughout the criminal trial, the government has portrayed Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr as leaders of a wild plan to snatch Whitmer from her vacation home in Elk Rapids.
Prosecutors claim Fox, Croft and their allies were furious about COVID-19 restrictions and generally disgusted by the government, prosecutors say and wanted to send a message.
But defense attorneys for Fox and Croft say they were a bumbling, foul-mouthed, marijuana-smoking pair exercising free speech who were incapable of leading anything as extraordinary as an abduction of a public official.
In opening remarks earlier this month, attorney Joshua Blanchard said Croft was ‘frankly high on marijuana all the time,’ and some witnesses described him as a ‘stoner pirate kind of whack nut.’
Prosecutors presented evidence showing Fox said online he wanted to ‘hog-tie’ Whitmer and take her out to Lake Michigan by boat, while Croft wrote on social media about hanging governors for treason.
They said there was a plan, with the two creating a mock-up of the governor’s summer home and even surveilling the house.
Two undercover agents and an informant testified for hours, explaining how the men trained in Wisconsin and Michigan and visited Elk Rapids to see Whitmer’s home.
Whitmer, a Democrat, has blamed then-President Donald Trump for stoking mistrust, fomenting anger over coronavirus restrictions, and refusing to condemn hate groups and “extremists” like those charged in the plot.
She said Sunday that she hasn’t been following the retrial, but that she remains concerned about ‘violent rhetoric in this country.’
‘This is a dangerous trend that is happening. We cannot let it become normalized and I do hope that anyone that´s out there plotting to hurt their fellow Americans is held accountable,’ Whitmer said at the Michigan Democratic Party’s convention in Lansing.
Trump in response recently called the kidnapping plan a ‘fake deal.’
Attorneys may agree with Trump, as they plan to blame the FBI in their closing remarks Monday.
Yet another incident in which the FBI is accused of questionable activities.
The defense attorneys say FBI agents and informants fed their outrage and pulled them into their web.
‘It has FBI fingerprints all over it,’ defense attorney Christopher Gibbons said.
The remarks come after another man who was originally charged in the plot, Brandon Caserta, asserted: ‘If the government wasn’t involved in this situation, it would have never gotten to where it is now.
‘People say things that are offensive and, you know, may sound violent but there’s a difference between actually physically doing violence or just being around a group of people and talking c***,’ he told Click on Detroit.
Caserta was found not guilty of the plot during a trial last year.
The defense attorneys have apparently been planning this argument since the beginning, saying the two are ‘big talkers’ who sometimes said outrageous things when they were high.
The jury has since heard secretly recorded conversations and read the men’s violent social media posts, some written before the FBI got involved.
Other witnesses included Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, who pleaded guilty and insisted the group was not entrapped.
Franks testified that they trained with Fox, Croft, and “others” in a remote area, practicing inside a “shoot house” to simulate a kidnapping.
The men had described how the group,” traveled to Elk Rapids at night to see Whitmer’s vacation home, and a bridge that could be clown up to distract police during an attack,” US News reported.
Prosecutors say the group wanted to trigger a national revolt.
Defense lawyers, however, argue that agents entrapped their clients and created the scheme.
Part of Garbin’s testimony connected the thoughts of one of the men to another incident in the current question.
Garbin testified, “Adam Fox had mentioned storming the Capitol building and arresting elected officials and holding them on trial for their crimes and treason. (A) particular elected official would be Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Hang her on public TV for the world to see.”
Ahead of the closing arguments this week, U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker told jurors the two men could be found guilty of conspiracy if jurors believe ‘there was a mutual understanding’ to commit a kidnapping, even if one wasn’t carried out.
But entrapment could apply if the jury believes agents and informants persuaded Fox and Croft to commit a crime that they weren’t willing to do before engaging them, the judge said.
Source: The Republic Brief