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A jury has convicted two men of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, a plot that prosecutors described as antigovernment extremists’ call to the American Civil War.
The jury also found Adam Fox and Barry Croft, Jr. guilty of conspiring to obtain weapons of mass destruction, that the bomb would blow up a bridge and obstruct police if the kidnapping could be done at Ms Whitmer’s holiday home .
Croft, 46, a truck driver in Bell, Delaware, was also convicted of another explosive charge.
It was the couple’s second trial after a jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict in April.
Two other men were acquitted and two others pleaded guilty and testified for prosecutors.
The government’s victory follows last spring’s shockingly mixed results.
“You can’t just wear AR-15s and body armor and go rob the governor,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler told jurors.
“But that’s not the defendant’s ultimate goal,” Mr Kessler said.
“They wanted to start a second American Civil War, a second American Revolution, they called it boogaloo. They wanted to do that for a long time before they settled on Governor Whitmer.”
The investigation began when Army veteran Dan Chappell joined a paramilitary group in Michigan and was shocked when he heard remarks about the killing of police officers.
He agreed to become an FBI informant and approached Fox and others in the summer of 2020, secretly recording conversations and participating in “shooting house” exercises in Wisconsin and Michigan.
The FBI turned it into a major domestic terrorism case, with two other informants and two undercover agents embedded in the group.
Fox, Croft and others, accompanied by government agents, traveled to northern Michigan at night to visit Ms. Whitmer’s home and a potentially destroyed bridge.
Defense attorneys tried to bring the FBI to trial, through cross-examination of witnesses and in closing remarks repeatedly emphasizing that federal players were present at every key incident and trapped them.
They said Fox and Croft were “big mouths” who enjoyed marijuana and had done nothing but exercising their right to speak ill of Ms Whitmer and the government.
“This is not Russia. This is not how our country works,” Croft attorney Joshua Blanchard told jurors.
“You don’t suspect that someone might commit a crime because you don’t like what they say, you don’t like their ideology.”
Fox attorney Christopher Gibbons said the FBI should not be creating “domestic terrorists.”
He described Fox as poor and living in the basement of a vacuum store in the Grand Rapids area, where he met with Chappell and an agent.
Democrat Ms. Whitmer accused then-President Donald Trump of fueling distrust and anger over coronavirus restrictions and refused to condemn hate groups and right-wing extremists, such as those accused of conspiracy.
Over the weekend, she said she was not concerned about the second trial but remained concerned about “violent rhetoric in this country”.
Mr Trump recently called the kidnapping scheme a “sham deal”.
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