GRAND RAPIDS — In a do-over for the government, a federal jury Tuesday convicted two men charged with plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer out of anger over her handling of the pandemic, ending a dramatic trial that highlighted the growth of violent extremism in America.
The jury deliberated for about eight hours over two days before delivering the guilty verdicts against Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr., who were convicted on all counts and face up to life in prison when they are sentenced.
Fox and Croft were convicted of kidnapping conspiracy and conspiracy to possess weapons of mass destruction. Croft was convicted on an additional weapons charge.
The men were judged by a second, more diverse jury than in the first trial, which ended with no convictions for the government. Two men were acquitted in that trial and the jury deadlocked on charges against Fox and Croft Jr., triggering a mistrial that prompted the government to try again.
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The historic case ends with four men going to prison and two others going free, two years after the FBI arrested all six defendants on federal charges they plotted to kidnap the governor from her vacation home out of anger over her lockdown orders and mask mandates, and blow up a bridge near her home to slow down law enforcement.
Eight people face state charges in the case.
“This verdict brings important accountability for perpetrators of violence against public officials,” said former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Barbara McQuade. “Bringing these plotters to justice will cause others to think twice before engaging in similar conduct in the future.”
McQuade applauded federal prosecutors in Grand Rapids for “having the courage” to retry the case, saying:
“It would have been easy for them to simply move on to the next case to avoid the possible embarrassment of a second mistrial or acquittal,” McQuade said. “But instead, they fulfilled their duty to protect the public.”
Neither Fox nor Croft had any discernible reaction as U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker read the verdicts, both staring forward and occasionally leaning over to speak to their attorneys. Fox’s mother, who attended every day of the retrial, shook her head in court as Jonker read the verdict.
The defense long argued that this was a case of entrapment, that the defendants were merely tough-talking potheads who were venting about their government, and that rogue FBI agents and informants set them up.
The prosecution, however, argued the men did a lot more than talk — they took action to carry out their plan, including casing Whitmer’s vacation home twice, building explosives, holding secret meetings, and practicing breaking-and-entering drills in shoot-houses they built that mimicked her cottage.
In the end, the jury sided with the government, delivering a major victory not only to the prosecutors, but to the FBI as the agency’s reputation came under assault during this trial, with the defense repeatedly blasting agents an informants, calling them liars and manipulators with overreaching powers.
“The defendants in this case believed that their antigovernment views justified violence. Today’s verdict is a clear example that they were wrong in that assessment,” said Special Agent in Charge David Porter, who oversees the FBI office in Grand Rapids.
As lawyers left the room, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan Andrew Birge shook assistant prosecutor Nils Kesslers’ hand. Kessler, the lead prosecutor who had tried the case both times, urged the jury before it went into deliberations to remember one thing: that four men cased Whitmer’s house in the middle of the night with guns, and plan to build a bomb.
Kessler drove this point home repeatedly during closing in what experts believed to be the strongest piece of evidence against the defendants: the surveillance trips, which jurors got to see for themselves eves as video was played of the men driving by Whitmer’s cottage on a rainy night, and audio recordings captured Fox excitedly stating: “That’s it. That’s it.”
The jury spent two weeks listening to testimony from FBI agents, informants, and wiretapped conversations from the defendants themselves, in which they discussed kidnapping “that tyrant bitch” and trying her “for treason.”
Please return to Freep.com for more on this developing story.
Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepreeson.com
