Violence for ‘tyrants’ urged in Gov. Whitmer kidnap trial

Jurors on Tuesday saw chilling social media posts by two people charged in a plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor, including references to hanging public officials and attacking authorities, even if it might end in death.

“The government has stolen enough from me,” Brandon Caserta said on Facebook in late March 2020, a few weeks after COVID-19 hit the state and around the same time that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer began a series of economic restrictions to fight the spread.

“They’ve claimed ownership over my body and my property,” he said. “Now they take away my place to live and source of income because of this?”

In the months that followed, Caserta and others trained to snatch Whitmer from her vacation home, according to evidence, before the FBI arrested the antigovernment extremists in October 2020.

Digital maps of the Elk Rapids area were saved on the phone of Adam Fox, 38, an alleged leader of the scheme, agent Chelsea Williams told jurors Tuesday.

Federal prosecutors are poised to finish their case Wednesday, which will be the 13th day of trial in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They’re trying to show in the final stretch that four men charged with conspiring to kidnap Whitmer were firmly committed to a plan without influence by informants or undercover FBI agents.

Barry Croft Jr., a 46-year-old trucker from Bear, Delaware, regularly vented on Facebook about government and public officials in 2020 when governors were issuing stay-home orders, requiring masks and making other rules during the early leg of the pandemic.

“Which governor is going to end up dragged off and hung for treason first?” Croft wrote on Memorial Day 2020. “It’s really a spin-the-bottle match at this point and I’m sure a few mayors are in the running!!! God bless the constitutional republic!!!”