Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. they were also found guilty of conspiracy to obtain a weapon of mass destruction, specifically a bomb to blow up a bridge and obstruct the police if the kidnapper could retreat to Whitmer’s cottage. Croft, 46, a trucker from Bear, Delaware, was also convicted of another explosive charge. The jury deliberated for about eight hours over two days. This combination of images is provided by the Kent County, Mich., Jail. shows Barry Croft Jr., left, and Adam Fox. Jury selection began Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, in the second trial of the two men accused of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 because of their disgust with restrictions early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Prosecutors are retrying Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. after a jury in April failed to reach a verdict. Two co-defendants were acquitted and two others pleaded guilty earlier. (Kent County Sheriff’s Office via AP) / AP “Today’s verdicts prove that violence and threats have no place in our politics, and those who seek to divide us will be held accountable. They will not succeed,” Whitmer said in a statement after the verdict. “But we also need to take a hard look at the state of our politics. Plots against public officials and threats against the FBI are a troubling extension of the radicalized domestic terrorism spreading across our nation, threatening the very foundations of our democracy.” It was the second trial for the pair after a jury in April was unable to reach a unanimous verdict after five days. Two other men were acquitted and two others pleaded guilty and testified to prosecutors. 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. “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. The FBI turned it into a major domestic terrorism case with two more informants and two undercover agents on the team. Evidence showed the team had many problems, particularly the COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Whitmer early in the pandemic. 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. 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. 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.”
