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The behavior of FBI informants is once again being scrutinized in the federal government’s botched case allegedly involving the kidnapping of Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.
The bureau’s use of such sources is at the center of a second trial involving two men who were initially arrested in connection with the alleged plot, The Daily Wire reports.
In April, a jury hung on federal charges of a conspiracy involving defendants Adam Fox and Barry Croft while also acquitting two others in the case. Two additional men pleaded guilty to the allegation before the first trial started in March, the outlet continued.
The Daily Wire adds:
After the government failed to secure a conviction on a single charge in April, federal prosecutors chose to pursue the case against Fox and Croft again. The FBI arrested the two men in October 2020 after a seven-month investigation into a conspiracy to kidnap and potentially assassinate Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
While the men made violent statements against Whitmer and concocted plots, sometimes extravagant, against the governor over her COVID regulations and other actions, the defendants’ attorneys have argued that their clients were just venting. The attorneys further argued that the investigation, which involved dozens of FBI agents and informants, amounted to entrapment.
Prosecutors have said that the defendants were part of a dangerous and radical group that took concrete steps to carry out kidnapping and potentially killing the governor. Those steps included several training camps and two trips to survey the governor’s vacation cottage.
As in the first trial, Fox’s and Croft’s legal defense primarily hinges on the behavior of the bureau’s confidential human sources.
On Friday, their attorneys honed in on relationships that two of the informants, Jenny Plunk and Steve Robeson, had with the defendants. Both of the CI’s (confidential informants) smoked pot — a federal crime — with Croft, while at another point, Plunk shared a hotel room with him, Yahoo News reported.
“Does the FBI have a policy about opposite-gender sources sleeping in the same room?” Croft attorney Joshua Blanchard asked FBI Special Agent Christopher Long, before going on to inquire as to whether the agent had ever been a part of a case involving an informant sleeping in the same room as a suspect.
Long said that he had not, the report noted.
In addition, Long was about a text he had sent to Plunk at another point in the investigation after a group of militia members sought to put distance between them and Croft, with Long pushing Plunk to try and keep the group together.
“You just have to find common ground … Show them the good ideas Croft brought, and show them what’s workable and not. A compromise may be needed on both sides,” he said, FOX 17 reported.
Meanwhile, conflicts involving Robeson ran so deep during the probe that the federal government later accused him of being a “double agent” acting on behalf of the alleged conspirators.
The first case appeared doomed from the start. In December, for instance, prosecutors announced that they would not call on three FBI agents involved in the case after allegations of personal and professional misconduct. And one informant in the case was charged with fraud in an unrelated case, also in December, The Washington Examiner reported.
In a pair of stunning filings submitted on Christmas Day, attorneys for the defense showed evidence that they said proves that the FBI and confidential informants “conceived and controlled every aspect” of the plot to kidnap Whitmer.
“These defendants had no desire whatsoever to kidnap anyone,” the attorneys argued.
The defendants, who are members of the Three Percenters and Wolverine Watchmen militia groups, would not have planned to kidnap Whitmer or blow up a bridge close to her residence if they were not entrapped by overzealous government agents, the attorneys said as they asked a federal court to dismiss the case.
