Free Republic

@julie_kelly2 Judge: “This is what law enforcement is supposed to do. I don’t see anything on the entrapment front. In my mind, law enforcement deserves a pat on the back.” He claimed the FBI informants “pulled the plug early” and commended the agency for its “careful monitoring.” 🙄 This same judge has aided DOJ in this bogus case from the start, denying defense motions to present damning evidence at trial and refusing to compel testimony from FBI informants, agents for defense. His conduct in retrial was a disgrace

... At least a dozen FBI informants working with FBI handlers and undercover agents out of numerous FBI field offices engineered the hoax in 2020. Dan Chappel, a contract truck driver for the Postal Service, was hired as the key informant in March 2020; he primarily led the effort to stitch the random group of outliers together. The FBI compensated Chappel roughly $60,000 in cash and personal items, a sum Chappel admitted at trial had exceeded his annual salary. Chappel particularly fixated on Fox, who lived alone at the time in the dilapidated cellar of a vacuum repair shop without...

The defense team for the “radical extremists” who are being accused of participating in a plot to kidnap Michigan’s unpopular Governor Gretchen Whitmer are calling on the judge to throw out the case against their clients. The 20-page motion, filed Christmas night by all five defense lawyers, asks U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker to dismiss the conspiracy charge. The move would effectively dismantle the government’s case and remaining charges, which are intertwined and based on the conspiracy charge, the lawyers wrote. “Essentially, the evidence here demonstrates egregious overreaching by the government’s agents, and by the informants those agents handled,” defense...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — A man upset over state-ordered coronavirus restrictions was sentenced to just over six years in prison Wednesday for planning to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a significant break that reflected his quick decision to cooperate and help agents build cases against others. Ty Garbin admitted his role in the alleged scheme weeks after his arrest last fall. He is among six men charged in federal court but the only one to plead guilty so far. It was a key victory for prosecutors as they try to prove an astonishing plot against the rest. Garbin apologized...