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hey, no big deal, fbi busts attempt to kidnap michigan gov and overthrow the government


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10 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

“Whoever” is correct. It’s the subject of the dependent clause not object of the preposition 

 

WRT this verdict I would hate to sit on one of these juries. Obviously these are shitty people. They wanted to do horrific crimes, but would they have been able to do these particular crimes without encouragement from the fbi? If fbi just passively watches them and then tries to intervene last minute and fails you have a tragedy. Better to blow up the plot and lose at trial than the alternative imo. Maybe they get the ringleaders in the next trial. 
 

all these guys should have agents up their asses the rest of their lives though

I take a dim view of entrapment but there is a distinct qualitative difference in entrapping some guy who never sold drugs into trying to sell drugs for money, and “entrapping” people into a plot to kidnap a governor for no compensation other than the satisfaction of political violence. 

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6 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I take a dim view of entrapment but there is a distinct qualitative difference in entrapping some guy who never sold drugs into trying to sell drugs for money, and “entrapping” people into a plot to kidnap a governor for no compensation other than the satisfaction of political violence. 

I think it depends. If the person/group  is actively shopping for the things needed to carry out a plot that they have already gotten into the detailed planning stages of, and the government agent facilitates a fake buy then I agree. If the government agent is in at the point where it’s a bunch of dumb fucks sitting around bitching about the government and one of them says hey we should kidnap the governor, and the government agent offers to help make it happen, that is clearly entrapment. It sounds to me like this was somewhere in between those two clear cut scenarios.

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9 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

“Whoever” is correct. It’s the subject of the dependent clause not object of the preposition 

Damnit. You’re right. I was wrong. I’m normally pretty good when it comes to grammar but I got sloppy there. Thanks for the correction.

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38 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

I think it depends. If the person/group  is actively shopping for the things needed to carry out a plot that they have already gotten into the detailed planning stages of, and the government agent facilitates a fake buy then I agree. If the government agent is in at the point where it’s a bunch of dumb fucks sitting around bitching about the government and one of them says hey we should kidnap the governor, and the government agent offers to help make it happen, that is clearly entrapment. It sounds to me like this was somewhere in between those two clear cut scenarios.

Actually, no, that may not be entrapment, as most definitions require the government to induce a crime the defendants were otherwise not disposed to commit.  That the government brings a crime closer to fruition is not entrapment.  It's still pretty dirty, though.

However, the same evidence that might support an entrapment defense usually casts doubt on the intention of the defendants to commit the crime, which is usually at issue.  It's not strictly according to Hoyle, but a "mild" form of jury nullification.  Juries do seem to be "onto" cases overly reliant on informants and investigatory misconduct, even if it doesn't rise to the level of an absolute defense.

Also, it appears that this was tried in Grand Rapids?  That's Amway country.  I wonder how elaborate the voir dire was.  I'd probably place the government at a disadvantage in that venue for this kind of case.

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956 asked the right question. Imagine that the only changes were their names to Ahmad Khan, and their supporting ideology for hating the American government being Islam, and those dudes would have been convicted after .000001 seconds of deliberation.
Losers and dead-Enders like this are EXACTLY who we need to be worried about. They will attempt to overthrow governments and assassinate leaders again, and eventually, they will succeed.
Which is what the MAGAs want. Most of them may not want to get their particular hands dirty, but when Kamala is murdered, preventing her from counting the electoral votes, and the MAGAs stage their own inauguration of trump, they’ll be happy with that outcome.

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I don’t think that FBI should try to entrap some cracker pot head from Michigan nor some guy named Khan from Houston. 

Doesn’t look like they had to do any entrapping here - these guys absolutely wanted to do what they ended up plotting to do. And if you think this same jury doesn’t quickly convict Ahmed for doing the exact same shit in the name of Allah, you don’t know America 2022 at all.
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21 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


Doesn’t look like they had to do any entrapping here - these guys absolutely wanted to do what they ended up plotting to do.

 

You seem very convinced of this.  You probably have a better grasp on the evidence presented at trial. Only thing I am convinced of is that the FBI clearly shit the bed. 

 

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1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

956 asked the right question. Imagine that the only changes were their names to Ahmad Khan, and their supporting ideology for hating the American government being Islam, and those dudes would have been convicted after .000001 seconds of deliberation.
Losers and dead-Enders like this are EXACTLY who we need to be worried about. They will attempt to overthrow governments and assassinate leaders again, and eventually, they will succeed.
Which is what the MAGAs want. Most of them may not want to get their particular hands dirty, but when Kamala is murdered, preventing her from counting the electoral votes, and the MAGAs stage their own inauguration of trump, they’ll be happy with that outcome.

This is completely true.  The FBI acted reprehensibly in some "foreign" terrorist investigations and still secured convictions.

 

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NYT link https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/08/us/verdict-whitmer-kidnapping-case.html?

 

Spoiler

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — It was one of the country’s highest-profile domestic terrorism cases: An alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, eliminate her security detail and perhaps touch off a civil war. But after a trial in which prosecutors portrayed the four defendants as threats to democracy, jurors on Friday acquitted two of the men and said they were unable to reach verdicts for the two others.

The result was a major blow to the Justice Department, which during the Biden administration has made domestic terrorism one of its top priorities in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The defendants in the Michigan trial were arrested weeks before the 2020 election, and the case was seen by some as revealing increasingly combative discourse among certain right-wing groups. But a series of missteps during the investigation, and the eventual failure to win any convictions against the men who went to trial, raises questions about the ability of federal law enforcement, when it infiltrates right-wing groups, to develop convincing cases without infringing on the rights to speak freely and own weapons.

Prosecutors built their case on a trove of audio recordings and encrypted texts from 2020 in which some of the men vented about Covid-19 restrictions, spoke about political violence and debated the best way to kidnap Ms. Whitmer, a Democrat, from her vacation home in northern Michigan.

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Yet the very existence of those recordings and text conversations underscored defense lawyers’ theory of the case: that the supposed plot had been conceived and nudged ahead by a network of F.B.I. agents and informants who preyed on the worst instincts of their loose-lipped targets. The defense lawyers described the men on trial as big talkers who were never going to commit any kidnapping.

“Words hurt you? Words scare you?” Daniel Harris, who was acquitted of all the charges against him, had said when he took the stand in his own defense. Mr. Harris insisted that he never joined any plot, and he referred derisively to an F.B.I. informant, Dan Chappel, who had testified earlier in the trial that he feared the group’s antigovernment and anti-law-enforcement rhetoric would escalate into violence.

Issues with the actions of some F.B.I. agents also loomed over the trial, though little of that was discussed explicitly in front of jurors. One F.B.I. agent was fired last year after being charged with domestic violence. Another agent, who supervised Mr. Chappel, tried to build a private security consulting firm based in part on some of his work for the F.B.I., according to a BuzzFeed News report.

“The jury, even though they didn’t get all of it, they smelled enough of it,” said Michael Hills, a lawyer for Brandon Caserta, who was acquitted of the only count against him.

A spokeswoman for the F.B.I.’s Detroit office declined to comment.

The jury of six men and six women, which deliberated for nearly a week, did not reach any verdict on the charges against two defendants, Barry Croft and Adam Fox, whom prosecutors portrayed as having a leadership role. A judge declared a mistrial for those men and ordered them held in jail.

Others have also been charged in connection with the investigation. Two men, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, pleaded guilty before the trial to kidnapping conspiracy and testified against the defendants in the federal case. Eight other men were charged with related crimes in state court.

Outside the courthouse, Andrew Birge, the top federal prosecutor in western Michigan, did not respond when asked directly whether his office would seek a second trial for Mr. Croft and Mr. Fox. But he said in a statement that he was limited in what he could say because “two defendants now await re-trial.”

“Obviously we’re disappointed in the outcome,” Mr. Birge said. He added: “We still believe in the jury system, and really, there’s not too much more I can say at this time. I appreciate the time the jury put in. They listened to a lot of evidence, deliberated quite a bit.”

During weeks of testimony at the federal courthouse in Grand Rapids, prosecutors showed jurors inflammatory social media posts and chat messages from the defendants, and presented audio secretly recorded by Mr. Chappel and other informants. One former co-defendant who pleaded guilty testified that he hoped to set off a chain of events that would prevent Joseph R. Biden Jr. from being elected president and would perhaps foment a civil war.

“That was the whole plan: They wanted to kick that off by kidnapping the governor,” Nils Kessler, a federal prosecutor, said during closing arguments.

But the prosecution’s case was hampered by a lack of clarity on what exactly the men were accused of plotting. No attack ever took place and no final date for an abduction was set, testimony showed. The details of the alleged plan sometimes differed drastically from prosecution witness to prosecution witness.

The F.B.I. informant, Mr. Chappel, said he believed that the group planned to kill Ms. Whitmer, whose handling of the Covid-19 pandemic had infuriated the men. Mr. Garbin, who earlier pleaded guilty in the case, said he thought the group of men might abandon the governor in a boat in the middle of Lake Michigan. Mr. Franks, who also pleaded guilty, told jurors that he had hoped to die in a shootout with the governor’s security detail.

“There was no plan to kidnap the governor, and there was no agreement between these four men,” Joshua Blanchard, a lawyer for Mr. Croft, said in closing arguments. He said the government tried to conjure up a conspiracy by using a network of informants and undercover agents, and that “without a plan, the snitches needed to make it look like” there was movement toward a plan.

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From left, Barry Croft, Daniel Harris, Adam Fox and Brandon Caserta.Credit...Kent County Sheriff and Delaware Department of Justice, via Associated Press

As the pandemic began in 2020, Ms. Whitmer, a first-term governor with a national profile, took a more restrictive approach than some other Midwestern leaders, keeping many rules in place even when new virus case numbers dropped. At the time of the arrests of the men, in October 2020, the governor criticized President Donald J. Trump’s rhetoric about hate groups.

After the verdicts were announced, Ms. Whitmer’s chief of staff issued a statement that called for “accountability and consequences for those who commit heinous crimes,” adding that “without accountability, extremists will be emboldened.”

In a separate statement, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, a Democrat, called the verdict disappointing. “Our differences must be settled at the ballot box, not through violence,” he said. “We need to be honest and clear about what causes violence by extremists and do all we can to address the root cause of it.”

Defense lawyers sought to portray Mr. Chappel, a military veteran who pretended to befriend the men while surreptitiously recording them for the government, as a leader of the group. They noted that Mr. Chappel, known as “Big Dan,” sometimes led training outings and gave advice about the plot, including when he floated the idea of using explosives outside the governor’s house when she was not there. On one training outing, Mr. Chappel and others videotaped themselves jumping out of Mr. Franks’s bright-blue PT Cruiser and taking cover behind its doors while they fired rifles.

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A house in Munith, Mich., where law enforcement officials said suspects met to train and make plans, as seen in 2020. Credit...Nicole Hester/Ann Arbor News, via Associated Press

Legal observers questioned after the verdict whether the F.B.I. might have moved in too early to make the arrests, before the men tried to carry out any abduction or even set a date for an attack. On the day of the arrest, testimony showed, some of the defendants thought they were going to get free gear from an undercover F.B.I. agent before lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings. Instead, a phalanx of F.B.I. agents took them into custody.

“I think the message that it shows to law enforcement is, before you arrest somebody and bring the charges, you’d better be darned sure that you’ve got a locked, tight case,” said Matthew Schneider, who served as the top federal prosecutor in eastern Michigan during Mr. Trump’s presidency, and who said he was involved in the early stages of the investigation. “Did they have to arrest them at that time? Could they have waited?”

R. Michael Bullotta, a defense lawyer who previously worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Detroit, said that he, too, wondered whether the arrests were premature. Mr. Bullotta also said that the sheer quantity of informants might have hampered the case.

“I don’t know that they needed to have as many informants as they had,” Mr. Bullotta said. “That almost made it look like it was a government party as opposed to just having one informant reporting to the F.B.I.”

As some of the defense lawyers acknowledged in court, many of the men were recorded making offensive remarks, or statements advocating violence, about law enforcement officers, Ms. Whitmer or politicians in general. One F.B.I. agent testified that Mr. Caserta had posted on social media that the Second Amendment gave people the right to “kill agents of the government when they become tyrannical.”

The chief tension of the case was whether speech like that crossed a line into criminal activity.

“If I don’t like the governor and it’s rough talk, I can do that in our country,” Mr. Hills said after the verdict was announced and his client left the courthouse.

 

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Just now, Anastasis said:

 

You seem very convinced of this.  You probably have a better grasp on the evidence presented at trial. Only thing I am convinced of is that the FBI clearly shit the bed. 

 

As I posted above actual entrapment requires evidence that the accused was not "disposed to commit the crime."  In other words, the government induced them to commit a crime they otherwise would not have, had all similar resources been available.  It's pretty hard to prove and an unusual circumstance.

Here's a jury instruction on entrapment from the 9th Circuit. https://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/jury-instructions/node/379

It can get pretty blurry for a jury, but the judge here apparently ruled that the jury would not be instructed on entrapment because there was plenty of evidence that these schmucks were plenty disposed to commit this crime. 

That's why entrapment per se didn't work for these guys, or the Newburgh four, but the Newburgh four were convicted.

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Ok. So don’t call it entrapment. The FBIs chief informant appears to have been a key agitator in the whole thing. The FBI agents were a shit show. Looks like the FBI botched it. And agree does not appear as offensive as some prior examples, but they still fd it. 
 

If there are two problems here, the jury system and the FBIs methods and competence executing these investigations, I say we address the FBI. Not sure what the alternative is to the jury system. 

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Wait, riling up stupid, vulnerable people to commit crimes is illegal now?  Or it's just not cause for conviction?  I can live with the latter, but if the former is true from this...then I am serious fucking trouble.  

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1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

Ok. So don’t call it entrapment. The FBIs chief informant appears to have been a key agitator in the whole thing. The FBI agents were a shit show. Looks like the FBI botched it. And agree does not appear as offensive as some prior examples, but they still fd it. 
 

If there are two problems here, the jury system and the FBIs methods and competence executing these investigations, I say we address the FBI. Not sure what the alternative is to the jury system. 

13 arrested, 12 informants involved. Again, I’m playing catch up here, but this is pretty crazy. 
 

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kenbensinger/michigan-kidnapping-gretchen-whitmer-fbi-informant


“The government has documented at least 12 confidential informants who assisted the sprawling investigation. The trove of evidence they helped gather provides an unprecedented view into American extremism, laying out in often stunning detail the ways that anti-government groups network with each other and, in some cases, discuss violent actions.

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.”

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2 hours ago, Anastasis said:

One former co-defendant who pleaded guilty testified that he hoped to set off a chain of events that would prevent Joseph R. Biden Jr. from being elected president and would perhaps foment a civil war.

So at least one member of the group admitted to the plotting.  How far do they need to let them go before stopping it?  
 

sounds like a bad movie. We need to get them buying equipment!  We need to get them at the discussed venue on the discussed day!

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2 hours ago, Lobo said:

Wait, riling up stupid, vulnerable people to commit crimes is illegal now?  Or it's just not cause for conviction?  I can live with the latter, but if the former is true from this...then I am serious fucking trouble.  

I can think of another group of people that were riled up by government employees and actually did commit some harm. 

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2 hours ago, Anastasis said:

They noted that Mr. Chappel, known as “Big Dan,” sometimes led training outings and gave advice about the plot, including when he floated the idea of using explosives outside the governor’s house when she was not there. On one training outing, Mr. Chappel and others videotaped themselves jumping out of Mr. Franks’s bright-blue PT Cruiser and taking cover behind its doors while they fired rifles.

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42 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I can think of another group of people that were riled up by government employees and actually did commit some harm. 

The Portland Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building was set on fire Saturday night after demonstrators gathered outside.

 

https://katu.com/amp/news/local/fires-set-at-portland-ice-building-no-arrests-made-police-say

 

this what you’re referring to?


 

Edited by Incredulity
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Although, I frown upon arson vehemently...when it comes to reports like this outta Portland...can I just take the MAQA playbook and say, "Who cares?  It was so long ago.  Not that many died.  False flag.  Patriotic duty.  Who cares?  So long ago.  Oath Keepers and ANTIFA.  Stop the steal.  Keep the faith.  Who cares?"  

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2 hours ago, Incredulity said:

The Portland Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building was set on fire Saturday night after demonstrators gathered outside.

 

https://katu.com/amp/news/local/fires-set-at-portland-ice-building-no-arrests-made-police-say

 

this what you’re referring to?


 

Which government employees riled them up and encouraged them? Be specific. You seem to have some insider knowledge.

54 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

So, not an assault on our democracy?

interesting

Assault on the apparatus of our immigration system? Sure.

Assault on our democratic system that relies on the peaceful transfer of power? Go fuck yourself.

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It's funny how the same intellectually dishonest chucklefucks who think the jan6 defendants dindonuffinwrong because the election still got certified are the same apologists who think these fascist chuds are innocent because they didn't get the chance to execute their plan and bombing of public infrastructure.

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On 4/9/2022 at 3:26 PM, Incredulity said:

So, not an assault on our democracy?

interesting

If someone commits arson, prosecute and jail them.

Is it an assault on our democracy? Compared to what? It's possibly an assault on a government building. I doubt many laws and institutions forming the underpinning of the republic were much threatened.

I'm not going to read posts even older than the one I quote, but how did this quibble end up on a thread about the planned kidnapping and possible murder of Governor Whitmer?

I'll hold my breath until you respond.

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Now hit their clubhouse with civil suits until they're digging change out of the couch to eat off the dollar menu.
Fox and Croft:
“Wait! We can’t keep our guns in prison??! What about ‘not infringed’ do you libtards not get?! Theys Mexercans and BLM thugs and Mooslims in there! I thought this was America!”
God, I hope they have protective boyfriends. 
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  • 1 month later...

https://apnews.com/article/michigan-gretchen-whitmer-jackson-kidnapping-adam-fox-4b57cba0719b36ba3e1b59b7c81fdfa6

JACKSON, Mich. (AP) — A judge has dismissed a young woman from the jury hearing the trial of three men in connection with a 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer after attorneys accused her of flirting with one of the defendants.

Judge Thomas Wilson announced Friday that the woman has been removed from the jury, two days after attorneys raised concerns the juror was having too much non-verbal communication with defendant Paul Bellar, the Jackson Citizen Patriot reported.

William Rollstin, who is prosecuting the case for the Michigan attorney general, raised concerns about the juror before Wilson during a meeting in chambers Wednesday.

“Since the start of the trial ... there’s been non-verbal communication between one of the jurors — a female — and Mr. Bellar,” Rollstin said. “The communication has been in the form of eye contact (and) smiling at each other.”

Several others in the courtroom, including Wilson and Bellar’s attorney, Andrew Kirkpatrick, also said they had seen interactions between the two since the trial began.

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