Two Men Convicted On Charges Of Conspiring To Kidnap Michigan Governor

Adam Fox and Barry Croft have been convicted by a jury of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. They were also convicted on charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.

The two men face a maximum of life in prison.

Prosecutors said that Fox and Croft planned to nab Whitmer at her vacation home and then set off explosive devices to disrupt the police response.

"You can't just strap on an AR-15 and body armor and snatch the governor," Nils Kessler, a federal prosecutor, told the jury during closing arguments.

Defense lawyers for Fox and Croft argued that their clients were entrapped by undercover FBI agents. They claimed that the two men nothing more than big talkers who were angrily venting about Whitmer and the strict COVID-19 protocols she put in place. They suggested that it was the FBI agents who were the main drivers of the plot to kidnap her.

"In America, the FBI is not supposed to create domestic terrorists so that the FBI can arrest them," Fox's lawyer, Christopher Gibbons, said during closing arguments.

Prosecutors countered that argument, pointing out that the two men had conducted surveillance at Whitmer's vacation home.

"These defendants were outside a woman's house in the middle of the night with night-vision goggles and guns and a plan to kidnap her," Kessler said. "And they made a real bomb. That's far enough, isn't it?"

The jury rejected their defense and found both men guilty after eight hours of deliberations.

In a trial earlier this year, a jury failed to return a verdict against Croft and Fox, and a mistrial was declared. The jury also acquitted two other men charged in the plot to kidnap Whitmer.