(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Better late than never, perhaps.
More than five years after the Justice Department announced that it had foiled a purported militia conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, liberal talk show host John Oliver is admitting what many in conservative media have been saying all along: The FBI fomented the plot with its own undercover agents and informants.
“We first started looking at this story a few years ago, and it has changed how I view every sting story that’s made headlines since. Remember when that group of men were arrested for trying to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer? Guess how many confidential informants seemed to help that plot along? I’ll give you a clue: It’s a lot more than you’d like,” Oliver said in his most recent episode, which focused on police sting operations.
John Oliver admits there were more government fingerprints than “you would like” in the “kidnapping” plot of Gretchen Whitmer.
“Remember when that group of men was arrested?”
“Guess how many confidential informants seem to help that plot along?”
“I’ll give you a clue — it is a… pic.twitter.com/3oXqhuhPT4
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) March 23, 2026
“And you don’t have to sympathize with these men or agree with their views to wonder if that plan could have even gotten off the ground if there hadn’t been as many as a dozen confidential informants involved and two undercover federal agents.”
Of the 12 men arrested, four took plea deals, five were eventually acquitted, and five were found guilty — two of them in federal court and three in state court.
Two separate courts have upheld the convictions, despite the fact that judges admitted the FBI had provoked the accused. In the state case, a judge acknowledged that an FBI informant created a phony “III%er,” or “3%,” militia group and made one of the defendants its leader. “The 3% groups were established across the country and were created by the FBI. The FBI used assets from other 3% groups in forming the Michigan 3% group,” Judge Thomas Wilson said in January 2025 — upholding the state convictions anyway.
Similarly, in the federal appeal, justices wrote in April 2025 that “the Defendants are correct that the government encouraged them to settle on a plan,” but that “the jury heard the substance of most of these statements and yet still convicted [them].”
The so-called leaders of the plot, Adam Fox and Barry Croft, are serving 16- and 20-year sentences, respectively—both jailed at the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
Meanwhile, state defendants Paul Bellar, Joe Morrison and Pete Musico are also serving seven-year, 10-year and 12-year prison sentences, respectively.
Former DOJ pardon attorney Ed Martin said he was looking at the Whitmer case for potential pardons, but Martin was removed from his post earlier this year. Trump has also ruled out pardons, according to Whitmer.
Whitmer, a Democrat, told Michigan Public Radio last May that President Donald Trump asked her about a month ago how she would feel if he pardoned the two men.
“I said, ‘I think it would be the wrong decision,’” Whitmer recounted. “I would oppose it and he said, ‘OK, I’ll drop it.’”
See Oliver’s full episode here:
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
