FILE - Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer speaks at a news conference on March 11, 2022, at the governor's office in Lansing, Mich. Two men accused of crafting a plan to kidnap Whitmer in 2020 and ignite a national rebellion are facing a second trial with jury selection starting Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, months after a jury couldn't reach a verdict on the pair while acquitting two others in the case. (AP Photo/David Eggert, File)
Jury selection started Tuesday in the second trial of two men charged with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 over their disgust with restrictions early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prosecutors are putting Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. on trial again after a jury in April couldn’t reach a verdict. Two co-defendants were acquitted and two more pleaded guilty earlier.
Dozens of prospective jurors from western and northern Michigan reported to the federal courthouse in Grand Rapids.
The plot to kidnap the Democratic governor followed training in Wisconsin and Michigan and two trips to scout her second home in northern Michigan, according to evidence in the first trial.
Fox lived in the Grand Rapids area and Croft is from Bear, Delaware. They regularly communicated with other extremists who were angry with Whitmer and various public officials, evidence showed.
“This is not a political forum,” U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker said during opening remarks to the jury pool.
Convicting or acquitting the men can’t be influenced by “whether you like Governor Whitmer or dislike Governor Whitmer,” the judge said. “It’s not if you think masking mandates or vaccine mandates or any other response was good or bad policy. It’s not a proxy for any of those things.”
The jury will hear secretly recorded conversations and see text messages and social media posts favoring violence. Defense attorneys, however, will hammer away at the credibility of undercover FBI agents and informants who fooled the group into thinking they were allies.
Lawyers for Fox and Croft will argue they were shielded by the First Amendment and entrapped by the government every step of the way.
“Utter nonsense,” Fox’s attorney, Christopher Gibbons, said of a kidnapping plan.
Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta were found not guilty at the first trial. Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks earlier pleaded guilty and will testify again against Fox and Croft.
Garbin told jurors at the first trial that the goal was to cause national chaos with a kidnapping close to the election between Joe Biden and then-President Donald Trump.