The suspects charged with plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer were stoners who got so high that they talked about attaching Whitmer to a kite and flying her over a lake, about barking in the woods to get her to come out of her house, or playing loud music at night to get her attention, a defense lawyer argued Wednesday.
“The FBI knew this was stoned crazy talk,” defense attorney Joshua Blanchard told the jury, arguing the FBI set up the suspects with an undercover informant who also got high with them.
The FBI had many opportunities to shut down this investigation, and should have done so, Blanchard told jurors. But the government was hell bent on building a case that it knew didn’t exist, he argued, alleging there were many pot-induced conversations that should have prompted the FBI to call off the investigation.
One such conversation, Blanchard said, occurred as the undercover informant taped the men talking about how they could get the governor to come out of her house.
“Maybe we should go hide in the woods and go bark and the governor — she’ll know the animals were against her,” Blanchard said, arguing such comments were absurd, and that the government knew it.
Blanchard is representing Barry Croft, a Delaware truck driver who the government says helped start the kidnapping plan in April 2020 in a conversation with Adam Fox – the accused Michigan ringleader.
“All it’s going to take is one state to burn out and hang its governor and then those dominos will start to fall,” Croft allegedly said.
Fox was in, Roth said.
“They began plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan,” Roth said. “(Fox) said the whole point is ‘we’re sending a message to them that if we can get her, we can get you.’”
According to Blanchard, Croft initially came under investigation by the FBI in 2017, when the FBI noticed that Croft was criticizing the FBI on Facebook. Croft believed the FBI had one of his friends killed, his lawyer said, and was investigated as a result, but nothing came of it.
Then came the 2020 FBI investigation of the Wolverine Watchmen, the militia group at the center of this case. Prosecutors say Croft joined this group and planned to kidnap the governor, though his lawyer says there was no such plan.
This militia was a group of pot smokers who talked a big game, Blanchard said, and the government knew it, arguing the FBI is supposed to protect people, “not catch people who say stupid stuff when they are high.”
Blanchard alleges the government targeted his client specifically for criticizing Whitmer on Facebook.
“The FBI is supposed to protect us. They’re expected to have thick skin. They don’t punish people saying things mean things about them,” Blanchard argued to the jury, repeatedly stressing: “There was no plan. There was no agreement. And there was no kidnapping.”
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The defense argues this case is all about entrapment, and explained to the jury how it plans to prove that the FBI ran the whole show, used rogue undercover informants and agents to egg on the defendants and entice them to say and do things they wouldn’t have otherwise.
As one defense lawyer said: “The FBI directed it all.”
The government’s case has been fraught with allegations about misbehaving FBI agents and undercover informants, including two who got booted from the case over their alleged misdeeds.
Blanchard argued that one undercover informant in particular should have been kicked off the case early on for disobeying the FBI’s directives, for smoking pot with the group, for “selecting things that he thought sounded bad,” like the crazy pot talk.
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But the government rebuked the defense’s entrapment claims, arguing no one was trapped into doing or saying anything.
“They chose this plan. They chose this crime — because they wanted it,” countered Assistant Prosecutor Jonathan Roth, who argued several Wolverine Watchmen left the group because they were upset with the group.
In contesting the entrapment claims, Roth told jurors that giving someone a ride to an event is not entrapment, nor is it if a defendant is willing to commit the crime. He also noted that Croft has a tattoo that shows his commitment to a “second civil war,” and argued that no one forced him to do anything.
In this case, Roth said, defendants were “willing and eager — if not already preparing” to commit crimes.
Roth also urged the jury to listen closely to the words of two key witnesses: the co-defendants who took deals early on, admitted their guilt and plan to testify against the others.
They chose to join the plan, Roth said, and admitted no one forced them to do anything
Testimony continues.
Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com
