(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Speaking over phone from prison, one of the men incarcerated for allegedly plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has issued a message for the House Weaponization Subcommittee formed to investigate FBI malfeasance.
“The court sealed the discovery information in our case in order to cover up for the FBI. If you investigate this case, I swear before the almighty God that you’ll find these words to be true,” Barry Croft Jr., who was sentenced to 235 months imprisonment last December for his alleged role in the conspiracy, said in a video published Sunday on YouTube.
Croft’s statement refers to the fact that the judge who presided over his trial did not let him present evidence of how FBI agents directed undercover informants to promote the Whitmer kidnap plot—such as when an FBI agent told his informant in a text that the “mission is to kill the governor specifically.”
The presiding judge also declined to compel the informant who recorded Croft from testifying—even though it turned out that the informant, Stephen Robeson, had gotten Croft drunk and high before recording his incriminating statements. Robeson had also been made an informant and contacted Croft before the FBI officially began its investigation, as Headline USA previously reported.
Additionally, the judge disallowed defense attorneys from presenting evidence of FBI agents’ wrongdoings during the trial—one agent involved in the case savagely beat his wife and had posted anti-Trump comments on his Facebook, another was accused of perjury in an unrelated case, and a third was found to be using the Whitmer case to promote his private security company.
However, the judge did allow prosecutors to present evidence of Croft’s 26-year-old gun and assault charges, even though he received a pardon from Delaware’s governor for those crimes in 2019.
In his statement published Sunday, Croft further alleged that the FBI had targeted him since May 2019 due to his connections with Kevin Lyndel “KC” Massey, a Texas militia leader who was found dead in January 2020 of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Despite investigating Croft for months, the FBI never found any evidence of him committing a crime.
“But the FBI was determined to obtain a prosecution against me,” he said. “Their answer was to send [undercover informants] at me in January of 2020.”
Croft, a former truck driver who had been supporting three children at the time of his arrest, has an appeal pending in his case. But he said he’s not optimistic about his chances for success, given his experience with the U.S. legal system so far.
“I feel you are my only hope for a legitimate finding of fact in this matter,” he said to the members of the Weaponization Subcommittee.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
