“You don't have to agree with Barry’s politics. 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 traveled with him from the East Coast. “Somebody really cool is showing him attention, who wants to be his friend,” Gibbons said of Chappel.Ĭroft's attorney, Joshua Blanchard, offered a similar assessment in a scathing attack on the FBI's tactics. He said Fox was “isolated, broke, homeless,” living in the basement of a vacuum store in the Grand Rapids area. Gibbons said there was “fantastical talk” by Fox and others - about storming Mackinac Island, getting helicopters and boats and maybe escaping through the St. “The FBI isn’t supposed to create a conspiracy so the FBI can stand up and claim a disruption.” “In America, the FBI is not supposed to create domestic terrorists so that the FBI can arrest them,” Fox attorney Christopher Gibbons told the jury.
They say FBI agents and informants fed their outrage and pulled them into their web.
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.ĭefense lawyers, however, have portrayed the men as “big talkers,” a bumbling, foul-mouthed, marijuana-smoking pair exercising free speech and incapable of leading anything as extraordinary as an abduction of a public official. “You remember (Fox) talking about his inspirations for his constitutional republic? Not George Washington.
There's no dispute that Fox, Croft and their allies were furious about COVID-19 restrictions and generally disgusted by government. Other critical witnesses: Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, who pleaded guilty, and informant Dan Chappel, an Army veteran who said he went to the FBI after joining a Michigan paramilitary group and hearing plans to kill police. 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. The jury heard secretly recorded conversations and read violent social media posts. The ultimate goal: a second American Revolution, “something called the boogaloo,” Kessler said.įox, 39, and Croft, 46, are on trial for a second time, after a different jury in April couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict but acquitted two other men. He wanted to have his own trial and execute her.” “By the end of June, he was telling people Michigan's government is a target of opportunity, and God knows the governor needs to be hung. “Any governor would do," the prosecutor said. “'Which governor is going to be dragged off and hung for treason first?'” Kessler said, quoting Croft's own words. 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. After a nine-day trial, Kessler repeatedly urged jurors to also focus on what Fox and Croft were saying months before the FBI placed undercover agents and informants inside the group that summer.
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