(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The attorneys of the four men charged with attempting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, D-Mich., say FBI agents coerced their clients.
Opening statements in the case regarding the 2020 plot to kidnap Whitmer over her handling of COVID-19 were given, with attorneys for the four men making the case for entrapment, the Daily Wire reported.
“[The FBI] had decided, they were going to work this as a [Terrorism Enterprise Investigation] whether … they got the facts or not,” Joshua Blanchard, one of the attorneys for the defense said.
None of the attorneys denied that their clients made offensive statements about the governor and others during the summer of 2020. However, they all denied that any of their clients knowingly agreed to and took concrete steps to carry out a kidnapping plot.
The FBI was allegedly involved in many aspects of the plan, with training sessions and recon missions being led and underwritten by undercover agents and informants.
The state attorney, Johnathan Roth, pushed back on these claims, pointing out that giving someone the opportunity to commit a crime is not technically entrapment.
Roth also claimed that the number of resources the FBI devoted to this case shows that it was a serious crime. When bombs and firearms are involved, the FBI brings in “more investigators to control that because lives are at risk,” Roth told the court.
Blanchard, on the side of the defense, said one of the FBI informants plied the men with marijuana before selectively recording their conversations.
The four men, Adam Fox, Brandon Caserta, Barry Croft Jr. and Daniel Harris, were all described as prepper, conspiracy theorist types who may be construed as suspicious due to what could be seen as erratic behavior.
