(Ken Silva, Headline USA) In a December 2022 victim impact statement, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer claimed to be in constant fear over the alleged 2020 militia plot to kidnap her.
“I now scan crowds for threats. I think carefully about the last thing I say to people when we part. I worry about the safety of everyone near me when I’m in public. And I’m reluctant to share too much because I worry it will endanger a loved one, a staff member, a police officer on my security detail,” Whitmer said last December during the sentencing hearing of three men found guilty of conspiring against her.
“I am changed and my family is changed.”
Whitmer’s statement led to the three defendants—Pete Musico, Joe Morrison and Paul Bellar—being sentenced to 12, 10 and seven years imprisonment, respectively.
But now, Whitmer has indicated that her impact victim statement was false. In a recent interview with Michigan Advance, she said she never feared for her safety.
“I’ll say it’s very different being governor of the state. I have got state police that are part of the detail that keep me and my family safe. And even with everything over the last six years, I’ve never personally worried about my safety,” she told the publication.
“Being a public servant in another office, almost any other office, doesn’t have anything like the security that I have.”
Meanwhile, the families of the men are still reeling from what the overwhelming evidence has shown to be a conspiracy fomented by FBI agents and their undercover informants.
Rosemarie Battaglia-McGuire, the mother of incarcerated plot defendant Barry Croft Jr., told Headline USA last year that her son had been supporting three daughters at the time of his arrest. Now, he’s lost custody of them to a mother who hadn’t been in their lives in more than a decade, she said.
Croft was convicted along with co-defendant Adam Fox in August 2022, receiving a 235-month prison sentence in December 2022.
Croft and Fox have appeals pending, but Battaglia-McGuire said neither she nor her son are optimistic given their experience with the U.S. legal system so far—though the recent hearing might prove them pleasantly surprised. The mother said she’s thankful that her son has remained strong in prison.
“He’s going to church regularly, he’s helping the other men with their legal problems and their rights,” she said. “He’s studying the Bible … It’s been a joy to my heart that he’s at least turning to the Lord.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
