Co-leader of Whitmer kidnapping plot gets 16 years in prison

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — The co-leader of a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was sentenced Wednesday to 16 years in prison for conspiring to kidnap the Democrat and blow up a bridge to facilitate an escape.

Adam Fox returned to federal court on Tuesday, four months after he and Barry Croft Jr. were convicted of conspiracy in a second trial in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

They were accused of spearheading a savage plot to stoke anti-government extremists ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Their arrest, along with the capture of 12 others, was a stunning coda to a tumultuous year racial conflict and political unrest in the United States.

The government had pushed for a life sentence, saying Croft offered bomb-making skills and ideology while Fox was the “driving force urging their recruits to take up arms, kidnap the governor and kill those who stood in their way”.

But Judge Robert J. Jonker said while Fox’s sentence was necessary as punishment and as a deterrent against future similar acts, the government’s request for life in prison is “not necessary to achieve those purposes.” .

“It’s too much. Something less than life does the work in this case,” Jonker said, later adding that 16 years in prison “is still a very long time in my mind.”

In addition to the 16-year prison sentence, Fox will have to serve five years of probation.

Fox and Croft were convicted in a second trial in August, months after another jury in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was unable to return a verdict but acquitted two other men. Croft, a trucker from Bear, Delaware, will be sentenced on Wednesday.

Fox and Croft in 2020 met like-minded provocateurs at a summit in Ohio, trained with weapons in Michigan and Wisconsin, and took a tour to “set their eyes” on the home of Whitmer’s vacation with night vision goggles, according to evidence.

“People need to stop with misplaced anger and place anger where it should go, and that’s against our tyrannical government,” Fox said that spring, boiling over COVID-19 restrictions and perceived threats to possession of firearms.

Whitmer was not physically injured. The FBI, which was secretly embedded in the group, broke things off in the fall.

“They didn’t really have a plan for what to do with the governor if they actually grabbed her. Paradoxically, it made them more dangerous, not less,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler said in a court filing ahead of the hearing.

In 2020, Fox, 39, lived in the basement of a Grand Rapids-area vacuum cleaner, a place of clandestine meetings with members of a paramilitary group and an undercover FBI agent. His lawyer said he was depressed, anxious and smoked marijuana daily.

Christopher Gibbons said a life sentence would be extreme.

Fox was routinely exposed to “inflammatory rhetoric” by FBI informants, particularly Army veteran Dan Chappel, who “manipulated not only Fox’s sense of ‘patriotism,’ but also his need for friendship. , male acceptance and approval,” Gibbons said in a court filing.

He said prosecutors exaggerated Fox’s abilities, saying he was poor and lacked the ability to obtain a bomb and carry out the plan.

Two men who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and testified against Fox and Croft have received substantial breaks: Ty Garbin is already free after serving a 2½-year prison sentence, while Kaleb Franks was given a four-year sentence .

In state court, three men were recently sentenced to lengthy sentences for helping Fox in the early summer of 2020. Five others are awaiting trial in County Antrim, where Whitmer’s holiday home is located .

When the plot was extinguished, Whitmer, a Democrat, blamed then-President Donald Trump, saying he had “comforted those who sow fear, hatred and division.” In August, 19 months after leaving office, Trump said the kidnapping plan was a “bogus deal.”

Ed White in Detroit contributed to this story. Joey Cappelletti is a member of The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places reporters in local newsrooms to report on underreported issues.