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The co-leader of the plot to kidnap US Governor Gretchen Whitmer has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for plotting to kidnap the Democrat and blow up a bridge to facilitate his escape.
Adam Fox, 39, returns to federal court four months after he and Barry Croft Jr were found guilty of conspiracy in their second trial in Grand Rapids, Mich. court.
They are accused of being at the helm of a plot to foment anti-government extremists ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
The administration had pushed for a life sentence, saying Croft provided the bomb-making skills and ideology and that Fox was “the driving force behind urging their recruits to take up arms, kidnap governors and kill anyone who stands in their way.”
But Judge Robert J. Jonker said that while Fox’s sentence was punishment and a deterrent for similar conduct in the future, the government’s demand for a life sentence “was not necessary to achieve those ends.”
“Too much. There are things that are bigger than life in this situation,” Mr Jonker said, later adding that 16 years in prison “still seems like a long time to me”.
Mr. Junker said he also considered the emotional baggage Whitmer would have to carry as a result of the plot.
In addition to the 16 years in prison, Fox must serve five years of supervised release. But he will be credited for spending more than two years in custody since his arrest.
Fox and Croft were convicted at a second trial in August, months after another jury in Grand Rapids, Mich., failed to reach a verdict but acquitted two other men.
Croft, the truck driver of Bell, Delaware, will be sentenced Wednesday.
Evidence shows Fox and Croft met with like-minded provocateurs at a summit in Ohio in 2020, received weapons training in Michigan and Wisconsin, and “watched” them in a car with night-vision goggles Whitmer’s vacation home.
Whitmer was not physically injured. The FBI, secretly embedded in the syndicate, screwed things up by the fall.
“If they do catch the governor, they have no real plan for what to do with the governor. Paradoxically, that makes them more dangerous, not more dangerous,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Niels Kessler told the hearing said in a previous court filing.
Two men who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and testified against Fox and Croft received substantial sentence reductions: Ty Garbin was released after serving two and a half years, while Caleb Franks was sentenced to four years.
Recently in state court, three men were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for assisting Fox earlier in the summer of 2020. Five other men are awaiting trial in County Antrim, where Whitmer’s holiday home is located.
When the conspiracy was quelled, Democrat Whitmer accused then-President Donald Trump, saying he had “comforted those who sow fear, hatred and division.” In August, 19 months after leaving office, Trump said the kidnapping plan was a “sham deal”.
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