Man in Gov. Whitmer kidnap plot says group was armed and ready

A second insider in a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told jurors that the group was prepared to use a grenade launcher and machine gun to fight security officers at her vacation home.

Kaleb Franks, who pleaded guilty in February, on Thursday backed up many points offered a day earlier by Ty Garbin, another man who admitted a role in a wild scheme to abduct Whitmer and somehow take her by boat out to Lake Michigan. Franks is expected back on the witness stand Friday for crossexamination by defense lawyers.

Franks, 27, said an alleged leader, Adam Fox, believed Whitmer's Covid-19 restrictions were "tyrannical" and that the U.S. Constitution gave the men a right to strike back. He said no one was forced to stick with the plan and many people had dropped away by late summer 2020.

"I was going to be an operator," Franks replied when asked by a prosecutor to describe his role in a kidnapping. "I would be one of the people on the front line, so to speak, using my gun."

He said Fox talked about snatching the governor "every time I saw him."

Fox, Barry Croft Jr., Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta are on trial in federal court in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Along with Franks and Garbin, the four were arrested in October 2020, a month before the national election.

Garbin, 26, testified Wednesday that Whitmer's kidnapping could serve as the "ignition" for a U.S. civil war involving antigovernment groups and possibly prevent the election of Joe Biden.

Authorities said the men were armed extremists who, after weeks of training, were trying to come up with $4,000 for an explosive. They practiced that summer by dashing in and out of crude structures built to resemble a house or office.

Traveling at night, they scouted Whitmer's second home in Elk Rapids in September 2020 and inspected a bridge that could be blown up to frustrate any police response, according to trial testimony and conversations that were secretly recorded.

Croft "discussed attacking her security detail," Franks told the jury. "He said he would use the grenade launcher that he had, and he was discussing mounting a machine gun on top of the truck."