Several FBI agents, who infiltrated and spied on the suspects accused of plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, provided a first-hand account of the group's activities during testimony in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids on Thursday.
Adam Fox and Barry Croft are on trial, accused of plotting to kidnap Whitmer from her vacation home in 2020. The two men wanted to build an army and start a war, according to prosecutors.
For the first time, jurors heard about the FBI informant who is accused of going rogue helping the suspects while also gathering secret recordings played at trial.
The FBI opened an investigation into Fox, Croft and others who were discussing a violent overthrow of the government on social media in early 2020, FBI Special Agent Todd Reineck testified Thursday morning.
FBI agents secretly surveilled Croft in April 2020, months before the kidnapping plan was hatched, FBI Special Agent Christopher Long testified Thursday morning.
FBI confidential informants Steve Robeson and Jenny Plunk, a Tennessee militia member, secretly recorded Croft and Fox talking about building explosives and violently overthrowing the government during a meeting of national militia groups in Dublin, Ohio on June 6. 2020, Long testified.
"The agents went to Ohio because Croft was planning something really big and we didn't know what it was," Long said.
Prosecutors said Fox and Croft met for the first time at the Dublin, Ohio meeting.
Blanchard repeatedly has argued the FBI did everything they could to keep Croft in the kidnapping plot.
"Plunk and Robeson were used to work on Barry and do everything they can to bring him into the fold," Blanchard said in Wednesday's opening statements.
"The government structured it, they planned it, and orchestrated the whole thing and were so going to through and finally able to show the jury how the government had it arranged," Croft's attorney Joshua Blanchard said outside court Thursday.
Defense attorneys subpoenaed Robeson to testify, arguing prosecutors selectively used hundreds of hours of his recordings at trial. Robeson is expected to invoke his fifth amendment rights against self incrimination if called to testify.
"He has all sorts of issues. I don't think we're going to hear from Robeson, we just get these snippets from him," Blanchard said.
In court filings, prosecutors have called Robeson a double agent and accused him of helping the kidnapping plotters, including tipping off Croft to his impending arrest in October 2020.
Long said Robeson and Plunk traveled with Fox and Croft to a July 2020 Cambria, Wisconsin field training exercise. Croft unsuccessfully tried to detonate explosives using pennies and BBs as shrapnel, according to Long's testimony.
Prosecutors presented evidence Wednesday, including hundreds of videos and social media posts that revealed how Fox and Croft wanted to kidnap several people they called "government tyrants," including Gretchen Whitmer.
Fox recruited other antigovernment extremists to carry out the plan with Croft, prosecutors said.
"They are playing up their background and their animosity that they had toward the governor before they ever got involved and that wasn't clear in the first case," Matthew Schneider, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said.
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Defense attorneys for the two men called the men "big talkers" with "no real plan."
Fox's attorney Christopher Gibbons said the FBI manipulated his client, a poor, unemployed, homeless man
"It's federal fabrication," said Gibbons in his opening statement Wednesday, referring to the FBI's undercover infiltration.
Croft's attorney Joshua Blanchard called into question the FBI's selective use of thousands of hours of secret recordings, text messages and social media posts.
"They left out a lot of details. and when you tell the whole truth, you got to tell the whole truth," Blanchard said outside of federal court Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors said the two men on trial for plotting to kidnap governor Gretchen Whitmer were looking to take hostages and start a second civil war.
Fox, a Grand Rapids man living in a vacuum shop basement, accepted a call of action from Croft, a Delaware trucker, to “hang a governor” in spring 2020. Both men are charged in the kidnapping conspiracy.
"They were all in," Assistant U.S. attorney Christopher O'Connor called in his opening statement in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids Wednesday morning.
Prosecutors said the plot ringleaders Fox and Croft trained in shoot houses, built explosives and tried obtain more explosives from an undercover agent before the FBI stepped in and arrested the suspects in October 2020.
Gibbons said agents on the case pushed the suspects to meet, conduct field-training exercises and online chat groups. "There was no plan, no conspiracy, no crime."
Croft traveled to Ohio and Michigan to help recruit men to "kick off the revolution by taking out a governor, " prosecutors said. Both men communicated with other extremists and who were angry with Whitmer and other public officials, according to the FBI.
“It wasn’t just talk,” O’Connor told jurors in his opening statement.
The trial began four months after jurors acquitted Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta. They, along with Fox and Croft were two of the six suspects arrested by the FBI in October 2020.
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Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks earlier pleaded guilty and will testify again against Fox and Croft.
Garbin told jurors at the first trial that the goal was to cause national chaos with a kidnapping close to the election between Joe Biden and then-President Donald Trump.
Fox's defense attorney Christopher Gibbons and Croft's attorney Joshua Blanchard said they mall call several witness at trial, including Caserta and Harris.
Fox and Croft face charges of conspiracy to kidnap and conspiracy to build weapons of mass destruction. Both counts carry a maximum life sentence.
The public may listen to the trial by phone beginning at 8:30 a.m. by calling 877-402-9753 and using the access code 8731455, followed by the # symbol.