Adam Fox, the convicted ringleader of the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, received 16 years in prison.
The federal government wanted Fox to get a life sentence.
U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker in Grand Rapids decided “Fox’s crimes did not warrant a life behind bars.”
Christopher Gibbons, Fox’s lawyer, argued:
Gibbons maintained Fox was a follower, not a leader, and looked up to FBI informants and undercover agents who cased Whitmer’s vacation home alongside Fox, and accompanied him and others during training sessions.”(T)he Government … employs exaggerated language to create the false narrative of a terrifying paramilitary leader,” Gibbons argued in court documents. “Adam Fox is described as creating an army with a cadre of operators. … These histrionic descriptions of Adam Fox do not rationally address his actual conduct and they do not accurately reflect either his actual intentions or his actual capabilities.”Adam Fox was an unemployed vacuum repairman who was venting his frustrations on social media but abiding by the laws of the State of Michigan,” Gibbons argued. ” Adam Fox is not the leader of a multistate ‘army’ of domestic terrorists.”
Those involved in the kidnapping plot have long asserted the FBI set them up.
The entrapment accusation came out in July 2021 by BuzzFeed, of all places. The outlet reviewed the evidence and found out that at least 12 of the FBI confidential informants had a larger role in the plot:
An examination of the case by BuzzFeed News also reveals that some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported. Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.A longtime government informant from Wisconsin, for example, helped organize a series of meetings around the country where many of the alleged plotters first met one another and the earliest notions of a plan took root, some of those people say. The Wisconsin informant even paid for some hotel rooms and food as an incentive to get people to come.The Iraq War vet, for his part, became so deeply enmeshed in a Michigan militant group that he rose to become its second-in-command, encouraging members to collaborate with other potential suspects and paying for their transportation to meetings. He prodded the alleged mastermind of the kidnapping plot to advance his plan, then baited the trap that led to the arrest.
The defendants said, “their talk never rose beyond the level of fantasy and they never intended to harm anyone.” They accuse the government of targeting them due to their political views:
Although they have not denied participating in training events, attending meetings, and communicating with other defendants, they claim that no actual conspiracy to kidnap the governor ever existed.Instead, they say, they were targeted because of their political views. Some describe the case as a premeditated campaign by the government to undermine the Patriot movement, an ideology based on fealty to the Second Amendment and the conviction that the government has violated the Constitution and is therefore illegitimate. They argue that the recordings and text messages that the government calls proof of a criminal conspiracy are in fact constitutionally protected speech — expressions of frustration at what they see as the government’s betrayal of its citizens.
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