Two men charged with conspiring to kidnap Michigan's governor wanted to grab Gretchen Whitmer and hang her, prosecutors said during a stark closing argument Monday as the government tried for a second time to get convictions in an alleged plot to trigger a revolution in 2020.
The jury got the case around noon after a morning of final remarks, including a fiery challenge by defense lawyers who accused the FBI of manufacturing a scheme against Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. Prosecutors, however, called that a phony narrative.
It was Kessler's effort to get the jury to look past a constant defense argument that the men were entrapped by the government every step of the way. The jury heard secretly recorded conversations and read violent social media posts. Two undercover agents and an informant testified for hours, explaining how the men trained in a “shoot house” in Wisconsin and Michigan and visited Elk Rapids to see Whitmer's home and a nearby bridge that could be blown up.
“You remember talking about his inspirations for his constitutional republic? Not George Washington. Not Abraham Lincoln. Timothy McVeigh, the people at Waco, Ruby Ridge - that's what his inspiration was,” Kessler said, referring to the Oklahoma City bomber and the sites of deadly standoffs in Texas and Idaho, respectively, that involved the government.
Gibbons said there was “fantastical talk” by Fox and others - about storming Mackinac Island, getting helicopters and boats and maybe escaping through the St. Lawrence Seaway. Croft's attorney, Joshua Blanchard, offered a similar assessment in a scathing attack on the FBI's techniques. He reminded the jury that two more informants with recording devices were in the group but were never called as government witnesses, including a woman who shared a hotel room with Croft and travelled with him from the East Coast.
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