Two men found guilty in plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
Two men have received a guilty verdict for their involvement in the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D).
On Tuesday, August 23, a jury found Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr., guilty of "conspiring to obtain a weapon of mass destruction, namely a bomb to blow up a bridge and stymie police if the kidnapping could be pulled off at Whitmer’s vacation home."
According to HuffPost, the guilty verdict was a victory for the U.S. government. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler shared his argument about the case with the jury. “You can’t just strap on an AR-15 and body armor and go snatch the governor,” Kessler told jurors.
“But that wasn’t the defendants’ ultimate goal,” Kessler said. “They wanted to set off a second American civil war, a second American Revolution, something that they call the boogaloo. And they wanted to do it for a long time before they settled on Gov. Whitmer.”
The jury's decision in reference to Fox and Croft came as the jury also delivered a conviction for two other men who also conspired to kidnap the Democratic governor.
Shortly after reports surfaced about the kidnapping plot, Fox, Croft and the other suspects are said to have been accompanied by government operatives as they "traveled to northern Michigan to see Whitmer’s vacation home at night and a bridge that could be destroyed."
However, the suspects' defense attorneys attempted to turn the tables on the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). “This isn’t Russia. This isn’t how our country works,” Croft attorney Joshua Blanchard told jurors. “You don’t get to suspect that someone might commit a crime because you don’t like things that they say, that you don’t like their ideologies.”
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