The co-leader in the scheme to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 received a prison sentence of 19 years in federal court on Wednesday.
Delaware trucker Barry Croft and accomplice Adam Fox were convicted of a kidnapping conspiracy in August. Croft was also found guilty of possessing an unregistered explosive and Fox of one count of conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction.
The court declared a 16-year prison sentence for Fox on Tuesday. The pair had potentially faced life in prison for the heist, for which the prosecutors lobbied.
Fox and Croft were arrested in early October 2020 and accused of devising a plot, motivated by their outrage over pandemic restrictions, to kidnap Whitmer. The two had flirted with the idea of overthrowing the government, according to UpperMichiganSource.com. The prosecution argued Fox and Croft were extremists. Fox was the “driving force urging their recruits to take up arms, kidnap the governor and kill those who stood in their way,” the prosecution said.
“The abduction of the governor was only meant to be the beginning of Croft's reign of terror,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler said. “He called for riots, 'torching' government officials in their sleep and setting off a 'domino' effect of violence across the country.”
The pair also allegedly devised a plot to blow up a bridge near the governor's home to impede the government’s response to the planned abduction. The two scouted the governor’s Michigan home and mapped out the distance between it and the police station, the prosecution said, according to the Detroit News. Fox allegedly kept kidnapping supplies, such as a rope and flex cuffs, in his house.
“Although he may not have had hierarchical control over all the other participants, he coordinated and pushed the implementation of the conspiracy from its inception to its final stages,” Kessler said of Croft in a court filing.
Judge Robert J. Jonker said on Tuesday that a more lenient sentence for Fox was sufficient to deter future acts of domestic terrorism, the Detroit News reported. Fox will also have to serve five years of supervised release.
Earlier in December, three men were found guilty of “providing material support for a terrorist act” that involved the foiled plot and received various prison sentences. Fox allegedly trained alongside the trio — Joe Morrison, Pete Musico, and Paul Bellar — who were members of a paramilitary gang, the Wolverine Watchmen. Fox reportedly used to meet with them and an undercover FBI agent in the basement of a vacuum shop near Grand Rapids, Mich., in 2020.
“When the aim of that kidnapping is to terrorize the people and affect the conduct of government, it is so pernicious that only the most serious sanction is sufficient,” Kessler said. “The sentence imposed by this court should reflect the incredibly dangerous threat posed by Adam Fox and Barry Croft's attempt to light the fire of a second revolution.”
Fox’s defense attorney, Christopher Gibbons, alleged that Fox and Croft were entrapped by more than a dozen government agents and informants who “conceived and controlled every aspect” of the plan to capture Whitmer. The defense also noted that the plan was never executed and no one was physically harmed by it.
"Adam Fox was not ever predisposed to the crime of kidnapping Gov. Whitmer. He talked a big game but talk is just talk. Adam Fox took no affirmative steps to achieve the ends as Special Agent Chambers [an undercover federal agent] and Big Dan [a confidential informant] pushed so hard to achieve," Gibbons said in his closing argument of the trial.
Of four other men charged with conspiracy to kidnap in connection with the plan of October 2020, two have been acquitted by a jury, one has received a prison sentence of four years, and the other has received a two-and-a-half year sentence.
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