Jury is told 2 men wanted to kidnap Whitmer, start revolt

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Two anti-government extremists sought to spark a “second American revolution” by kidnapping Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday, as the government tried for a second time to get convictions in an alleged plot to shock the country into chaos before the 2020 election.

Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. are on trial again, four months after a jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict while acquitting two other men.

The jury heard competing themes during opening statements. Prosecutors will present angry, profanity-filled conversations, text messages and social media posts to show that a band of homegrown rebels was serious about snatching the Democratic governor.

The steps included gun drills in a handmade “shoot house,” two rides to see Whitmer’s northern Michigan home and a stop at a nearby bridge where an explosive might be placed, Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher O’Connor said.

Defense attorneys, however, attacked the tactics of undercover FBI agents and informants who had infiltrated the group and built the investigation. They argued that government operatives were embedded at every critical turn, even supplying a pen and paper for Fox to make a crude map of Elk Rapids.

“No conspiracy, no crime,” Christopher Gibbons told jurors, adding that Fox was poor, lonely, practically homeless and incapable of leading anything.

“It’s not a crime to not like your governor or your president or anybody else who sits in elective office. … It’s not a crime to be a big talker, an empty talker, no matter how ugly or offensive the subject matter is to you personally or anyone else,” Gibbons said.