FBI says plotters aimed to kidnap Michigan governor
Storming the state Capitol. Instigating a civil war. Abducting a sitting governor before the presidential election.
Those were among the planned plots described by federal and state officials in Michigan on Thursday as they announced terrorism, conspiracy and weapons charges against 13 men. At least six of them, officials said, had hatched a detailed plan to kidnap Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has become a focal point of anti-government views and anger over coronavirus control measures.
The group that planned the kidnapping met repeatedly over the summer for firearms training and combat drills and practiced building explosives, the FBI said; members also gathered several times to discuss the mission, including in the basement of a shop that was accessible only through a “trap door” under a rug.
The men spied on Whitmer’s vacation home
in August and September, even looking under a highway bridge for places they could place and detonate a bomb to distract authorities, the FBI said. They indicated they wanted to take Whitmer hostage before the Nov. 3 election, and one man said they should take her to a “secure location” in Wisconsin for a “trial,” FBI special agent Richard Trask II said in the criminal complaint.
Trask said one of those arrested had bought a Taser for the mission last week and that the men had been planning to buy explosives Wednesday. Court records indicated at least five of the men had been arrested Wednesday in Ypsilanti, Mich.; it was not immediately clear if the sixth man had been taken into custody.
“I knew this job would be hard,” Whitmer said Thursday, in reaction to news of the arrests. “But I’ll be honest, I never could have imagined anything like this.”
The FBI said a leader in the kidnapping plot had reached out to members of an unnamed antigovernment group for help, and the state charged an additional seven men, all from Michigan, with providing material support for terrorist activities, being members of a gang and using firearms while committing felonies.
The seven men were said to be affiliated with an extremist group, known as the Wolverine Watchmen, and the state’s attorney general accused them of collecting addresses of police officers in order to target them, threatening to start a civil war “leading to societal collapse” and planning to kidnap the governor and other government officials.
The seven were charged with state crimes that carry penalties of two to 20 years in prison.
Whitmer and Dana Nessel, the Michigan attorney general, tied the extremist plot to comments from President Donald Trump and his refusal, at times, to condemn white supremacists and violent right-wing groups.
“Just last week, the president of the United States stood before the American people and refused to condemn white supremacists and hate groups like these two Michigan militia groups,” Whitmer said.
There is no indication in the court documents that any of the men were inspired by the president, but Whitmer said extremists had “heard the president’s words not as a rebuke but as a rallying cry — as a call to action.”
The six men were charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping, which can carry a life sentence. Their names were listed in court documents as Adam Fox, Kaleb Franks, Brandon Caserta, Ty Garbin, Daniel Harris and Barry Croft.
A judge appointed lawyers for several of the men and set a preliminary hearing for Tuesday morning. None of the appointed lawyers immediately returned an email seeking comment.
Authorities said Fox and Croft had decided to “unite others” to “take violent action” against state governments they thought were violating the Constitution and that Fox was the one to initiate contact with the Michigan-based anti-government group. The FBI said he had talked of storming the Michigan statehouse with 200 men and trying Whitmer for treason.
Nessel, in an interview, was critical of public officials who she said appeared to condone antigovernment violence.
“We’re asking elected leaders to tone down these very dangerous messages to those who would commit such violence,” she said. “I think today’s criminal charges are just the tip of the iceberg.”
In May, a man was charged with threatening to kill Whitmer and Nessel. And protests at the Capitol in Lansing featured some signs with swastikas, Confederate flags and demonstrators who advocated for violence against Whitmer, including one man who carried a doll with brown hair hanging from a noose. Many in the crowd carried semi-automatic weapons, leading some Democrats in the Legislature to call for a ban on guns in the Capitol.
Republicans in the Legislature sued Whitmer in May over the executive orders she issued shutting down most of the state because of the coronavirus. And last week, opponents of her lockdown filed petitions with more than 500,000 signatures to repeal a 1945 law that gives governors authority to declare emergencies during times of a public health crisis. The Michigan Supreme Court ruled last week that the law, which Whitmer had cited, was unconstitutional.
The FBI said it had monitored the kidnapping plot throughout the summer as the target narrowed to the governor’s personal vacation home. The group discussed the governor in vulgar terms and called her a “tyrant.”
“Have one person go to her house. Knock on the door, and when she answers it just cap her,” one of the men said in an encrypted group chat, according to the FBI.
The group spoke of a “baker” and a “cake,” the FBI said, which its agents interpreted as code words referring to explosive devices.
“I just wanna make the world glow, dude,” the affidavit quoted Fox as saying in a profanity-laced tirade. “We’re gonna topple it all, dude.”