The jury also found Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. guilty of conspiracy to obtain a weapon of mass destruction, specifically a bomb to blow up a bridge and obstruct the police if the kidnapping could take place at Whitmer’s cottage. Croft, 46, a trucker from Bear, Del., was also convicted of another explosive charge. The jury deliberated for about eight hours over two days. It was the second trial for the couple after a jury in April was unable to reach a unanimous verdict. Two other men were acquitted and two others pleaded guilty and testified to prosecutors. Whitmer in a statement thanked police and prosecutors for their work on the case, but added, “we also need to take a hard look at the state of our politics.” “The plots against public officials and the threats against the FBI are a troubling extension of the radicalized domestic terrorism spreading across our nation, threatening the very foundations of our democracy,” he said. The result was a major victory for the US Department of Justice after the shocking mixed result last spring. “You can’t just put on an AR-15 and body armor and go grab the governor,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler told jurors in closing arguments Monday. “But that was not the ultimate goal of the defendants,” Kessler said. “They wanted to start a second American Civil War, a second American Revolution, which they call boogaloo. And they wanted to do it for a long time before they settled on Governor Whitmer.” The investigation began when Army veteran Dan Chappell joined a Michigan paramilitary group and became concerned when he heard talk of killing police. He agreed to become an FBI informant and spent the summer of 2020 approaching Fox and others, secretly recording conversations and participating in “shoot house” drills in Wisconsin and Michigan. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appears during a news conference in Lansing, Mich., earlier this year. (Paul Sancya/The Associated Press) The FBI turned it into a major domestic terrorism case with two more informants and two undercover agents on the team. Fox, Croft and others, accompanied by government agents, traveled to northern Michigan to view Whitmer’s cottage at night and a bridge that could be destroyed.
Entrapment defense fails
Defense attorneys tried to put the FBI on trial, repeatedly emphasizing through witness testimony and during closing arguments that federal players were present at every critical event and had ensnared the men. Fox and Croft, they said, were “big talkers” who liked to smoke marijuana and were guilty of nothing more than exercising their right to say bad things about Whitmer and the government. “It’s not Russia. That’s not how our country works,” Croft’s lawyer, Joshua Blanchard, told jurors. “You can’t suspect that someone might commit a crime because you don’t like what they say, that you don’t like their ideologies.” Fox’s attorney Christopher Gibbons said the FBI is not supposed to be creating “domestic terrorists.” He described Fox as poor and living in the basement of a Grand Rapids-area vacuum store that was a meeting place with Chappell and an agent. I ran for office because I love my fellow Michiganders and my country with all my heart. Always will. I will not let extremists get in the way of the work we do. ⁰⁰They will never shatter my unshakable faith in the goodness and decency of our people. pic.twitter.com/LTRTF8carm —@GovWhitmer Whitmer, a Democrat, accused then-President Donald Trump of fueling distrust and anger over coronavirus restrictions and his refusal to condemn hate groups and far-right extremists like those accused in the plot. Over the weekend, he said he had not attended the second trial but remained concerned about the “violent rhetoric in this country.” Trump recently called the kidnapping plan a “bogus deal.” Several other men face an upcoming trial on charges filed by the state as a result of the Whitmer conspiracy, including providing material support for acts of terrorism, gang membership and felony weapons charges.
