Free Republic

DETROIT (AP) — An appeals court is raising major questions about the trial of two key figures in a plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor — and putting federal prosecutors on the defensive as the government tries to preserve the extraordinary guilty verdicts.After hearing arguments in May, the court took the uncommon step of asking for more written briefs on the impact of a trial judge’s decision to bar evidence that might have supported claims of entrapment made by Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr.Fox and Croft are in prison for leading a conspiracy to try to snatch Gov. Gretchen Whitmer...

One of the ringleaders in a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was sentenced to more than 19 years behind bars Wednesday — a day after an accomplice was slapped with a 16-year prison term, federal prosecutors said. Barry Croft Jr., 47, was handed the 19½-year sentence by Michigan federal Judge Robert Jonker four months after his conviction for conspiring to kidnap the Democratic governor from her Elk Rapids vacation cottage in 2020. Croft, a trucker from Delaware, was the fourth and final defendant in the plot to learn his fate. The judge described him as “the idea guy”...

@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...

At the request of the defense, the judge on Friday instructed the jury in the Gov. Gretchen Whitmer kidnap trial about what entrapment means - though his instructions on what it doesn't mean may help the prosecution. At issue: Did the defendants show any reluctance, the judge noted, or were they already willing participants? "The crucial question in entrapment cases is whether the government persuaded a defendant who was not already willing to commit the crime to go ahead and commit it," U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker told jurors, who are set to begin deliberations next week in the retrial...

Link only due to copywrite restriction. No paywall at MSN.

A federal judge handling the re-trial of two men charged in connection to an alleged kidnapping plot of Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer decided Tuesday that information about the first trial, the acquittals of two other men and text messages with an FBI informant cannot be included as part of the evidence presented before the jury during the second trial slated to begin next month.

Totten’s recusal memo would shed light on what Whitmer and her office knew and when they knew it—which is why the Justice Department appears desperate to keep it under wraps. A federal judge on Thursday ordered a new trial for two men accused of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. In April, a Grand Rapids jury acquitted two other men charged in the scheme after defense attorneys successfully argued their clients had been entrapped by the FBI. The jury could not reach a unanimous verdict for Adam Fox, the alleged ringleader, and Barry Croft, Jr.; the Justice...

The alleged masterminds of an extremist plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and start a civil war ahead of the 2020 presidential election will be re-tried after a jury failed to reach a verdict in their cases earlier this year. A federal judge set a trial date in August for Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. Thursday after declining their lawyer’s request to clear them of conspiracy and weapons charges. “We don’t know what the jury was thinking. … There’s enough here to say that a rational jury could still go against Mr. Fox, go against Mr. Croft, even...

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Two men accused of plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have asked a judge to acquit them after jurors earlier this month could not reach unanimous verdicts, resulting in mistrials. Barry Croft Jr., 46, of Bear, Delaware, and Adam Fox, 38, of Wyoming, have filed motions for acquittal. Two others, Daniel Harris, 24, of Lake Orion, and Brandon Caserta, 34, of Canton, were acquitted April 8 by a jury in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids. Attorneys for Croft and Fox asked Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker to acquit the two. During the trial, the...

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...

Damning evidence exists of Attorney General Dana Nessel's hostility toward traditional marriage.ANN ARBOR, Michigan, January 17, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Watching, listening, tracking, and compiling secret dossiers on dissidents until they are finally accused and prosecuted — these are the police-state tactics one might associate with an authoritarian regime in a World War II movie. Yet, these are the very methods the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) has found are being used by Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel acting in concert with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center. On February 19, 2019, the Southern Poverty...