Free Republic

The U.S. government claims it foiled the Wolverine Watchmen militia’s conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer thanks to Army veteran Dan Chappel, an FBI informant who purportedly prompted the bureau’s investigation when he notified law enforcement about the Watchmen’s violent online rhetoric in March 2020. However, Headline USA has learned that another key FBI informant involved in the Whitmer kidnap sting operation, Stephen Robeson, was embedded in the midwestern militia movement since at least 2019. Moreover, Robeson apparently had a relationship with one of the alleged plotters dating back to January 2020—months before Chappel purportedly discovered the Watchmen and...

Americans still want to believe that the country’s most powerful law enforcement agency handles its authority with care rather than recklessly ruining lives to advance a political agenda. It doesn’t. ============================================================================ In the spring of 2020, or so the government’s story goes, an Iraq War veteran named Dan Chappel was scouring social media to find like-minded libertarians devoted to the Second Amendment when algorithms prompted him to a Facebook group called the Wolverine Watchmen, an online “militia group” formed just a few months earlier. Chappel reportedly became alarmed at violent “anti-law enforcement” rhetoric posted by some members of the Watchmen,...