After months of prosecution, federal prosecutors were unable to convict four men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The four men were among a dozen arrested in late 2020, accused of hatching a plot to kidnap Whitmer. Two were found not guilty and two were not convicted after a hung jury.
In a federal court system that is geared to produce a 99% conviction rate, the fact that prosecutors were unable to gain a conviction is incredible. It’s a pretty damning condemnation of the government’s case, and pretty much confirms what most of us already expected, that the plot was hatched by FBI agents or informants looking for patsies to sucker into joining them.
The case was plagued by problems from the start, most notably that not everyone arrested was charged. And that’s because many of the men were government informants. In fact, it’s arguable that the majority of alleged “kidnappers” were on the government’s payroll from the start.
Then were the numerous problems with the FBI agents involved in the case getting caught up in their own legal troubles, hampering the government’s ability to credibly state that the FBI investigation into the plot was on the up and up. And all of that resulted in zero convictions.
Prosecutors may still decide to retry on the hung counts, perhaps hoping that they can find a jury more sympathetic to the government’s case. But with such a poor track record already, it’s hard to imagine that something like that could happen.
This case demonstrated that, like so many cases before it, the FBI is in the habit of concocting plots and finding loose cannons or gullible people it can convince to take the bait. Then it hopes to wrap up the loose ends before anything gets out of hand and take the credit for busting so-called “domestic terrorists.”
But just because the government lost here doesn’t mean the FBI is going to stop trying to hatch plots like this. So if you ever come across someone trying to convince you to do something illegal, he may very well be a fed. And with this loss in Michigan, don’t be surprised to see the feds redouble their efforts to try to entrap well-meaning patriots in order to make conservatives look bad.