(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The trial of three men accused of aiding the 2020 alleged militia plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer began this week, with both parties making their opening statements on Tuesday.
The prosecution began by recycling the same false narrative spread by the U.S. government since October 2020, when the FBI arrested 14 members of the alleged conspiracy.
William Rollstin of Michigan’s attorney general’s office told a jury that the defendants—Eric Molitor and twin brothers William Null and Michael Null—assisted the “ringleaders” of the plot, Adam Fox and Barry Croft.
Rollstin said that Croft, a Delaware resident, was the “national leader” of a violent militia movement bent on killing public officials, while Fox was Croft’s commander in Michigan. According to Rollstin, Fox then recruited other Michigan militiamen, including Molitor, to participate in the alleged plot against Whitmer.
The reason the FBI as able to foil the kidnapping plot was because one of the militia members, Dan Chappel, was alarmed by their violent rhetoric when he joined the group in early 2020, and agreed to act as an undercover informant, Rollstin said.
However, much of Rollstin’s narrative has already been debunked.
For starters, the FBI was monitoring members of the alleged conspiracy long before FBI informant Chappel allegedly discovered their violent rhetoric on social media in early 2020. As Headline USA reported in January, FBI informant Stephen Robeson had targeted Croft since at least 2019.
Evidence revealed in Fox and Croft’s trial last year also undermines Rollstin’s claim that Fox was Croft’s second in command.
In fact, it was FBI informant Robeson who made Fox the head of Michigan’s chapter of the Three Percenters militia after a June 6, 2020, meeting in Dublin, Ohio—a meeting also set up by Robeson, according to Fox’s defense attorney, Christopher Gibbons.
Tuesday was also the first time that government has claimed that Fox recruited Molitor to be part of the kidnapping conspiracy, according to independent journalist Christina Urso, who is working on a documentary about the Whitmer kidnap conspiracy entitled Kidnap and Kill: An FBI Terror Plot.
Defense attorneys didn’t address these specific points during their opening statements Tuesday. Instead, they argued that their clients had no knowledge of a plot to kidnap Whitmer, and were merely viewed by the FBI as guilty by association with Croft and Fox.
Molitor’s attorney, Bill Barnett, did note that his client turned down Fox’s recruitment efforts when he saw that militia members were talking about exploding Whitmer’s boat. Fox even told FBI informant Chappel that Eric “wasn’t down for extreme shit” after failing to recruit him, Barnett said.
Barnett also focused on the entrapment elements of the Whitmer case, noting how FBI informant Chappel was the second in command of the Wolverine Watchmen. Chappel, an Army veteran, also provided much of the training to the militias, Barnett said.
“Unbeknownst to Eric, the FBI had been watching and infiltrating a downstate militia,” he said.
“The FBI sent an informant—who’s supposed to be a listening post—and he becomes second in command,” he said. “Dan trained them to be more dangerous.”
Additionally, Barnett referred to Fox as the government’s “patsy,” referring to how Fox was a recently divorced homeless man whom the government manipulated into being the leader of a manufactured militia conspiracy.
Fox, who incarcerated in the Florence supermax prison in Colorado, was initially planning to testify for Molitor about the FBI’s nefarious actions. However, he was threatened with additional charges and withdrew.
Nine have been convicted in state or federal court, including four who pleaded guilty, while two were acquitted. Both Fox and Croft have appeals pending against their federal convictions.
The ongoing state trial is set to last about three weeks.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
