Two far-right activists were accused of plotting to kidnap Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. They were acquitted after a month-long trial.
Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta were appearing in federal court in Grand Rapids. After five days of deliberation, the two activists left free this Friday, April 8.
The jury in this state in the northern United States also failed to rule on the guilt of two other defendants, Adam Fox and Barry Croft.
Judge Robert Jonker thus declared the trial void for the latter.
A carefully prepared abduction
The four men were part of a group violently opposed to the measures adopted by the governor to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the prosecution, the group accused him of being a “tyrant”.
The militiamen had contacted a local group, the “Wolverine Watchmen”, to train in order to kidnap her and try her for “treachery”.
Thirteen members of the Wolverine Watchmen domestic terrorist group were charged with plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer at her vacation home in reaction to what they viewed as her “uncontrolled power,” prosecutors said. https://t.co/Wztkqh76Sh pic.twitter.com/i4WbaFbbxC
— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) October 9, 2020
They had gone twice for scouting at his second home in the Great Lakes and wanted to blow up a bridge in the area to slow down the police.
Arrested in October 2020, they had highlighted the growing threat of radical right militias, shortly before the assault on the headquarters of the American Congress in Washington in January 2021.
Among the rest of the group, two activists pleaded guilty. One has already been sentenced to six years in prison. Eight others, accused of complicity, will be tried in Michigan state court.
Adam Fox, Daniel Harris, Brandon Caserta and Barry Croft pleaded not guilty. They claim to have been trapped by undercover federal police agents and informants who, according to them, pushed them to act, train, arm themselves.
Adam Fox was a “marginal”, without a home or money, who “wanted to be cool”, pleaded his lawyer Christopher Gibbons, assuring that he had only advanced “senseless ideas” during drunken and smoky evenings.
The prosecutor, Jonathan Roth, affirmed on the contrary that the group was directed towards the action and the desire of second civil war .