‘When you said [FBI informant] Dan is the one who did the training, that is describing the FBI as entrapping your client…’
For instance, at his federal trials last year, Fox was prohibited from introducing as evidence thousands of text messages between FBI informants and their handling agents. Those texts show, among other things, that FBI agents encouraged their informants to kidnap Whitmer.
What do the arresting entrapment agents, the prosecutor and judge have in common? They all work for the same boss.
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) During Tuesday’s opening statements at the trial of three men accused of aiding the 2020 alleged militia plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, defense attorney Bill Barnett made accurate statements about an FBI informant involved in the case—describing how the informant, Dan Chappel, became the second in command of a militia, trained his fellow members and encouraged them to commit crimes.
State prosecutor Bill Rollstin objected to Barnett’s factual statements, accusing him of trying to “poison the jury” by arguing that the FBI entrapped his client.
Barnett responded to Rollstin’s claim by arguing that he’s only presenting true facts to the jury.
“I was stating facts that are in the police reports. Everything’s a fact. They don’t want to hear facts in this case,” he said.
Barnett further said that he’s not even arguing that his client, Eric Molitor, was entrapped. Barnett said Molitor didn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping conspiracy and is innocent of any wrongdoing.
“I never once said, ‘entrapment,’” the lawyer said. “I’m sorry I had to tell the whole story that’s not being told here [about FBI informants provoking the plot].”
However, Judge Charles Hamlyn agreed with the prosecution. The judge claimed that by noting that an FBI informant was second in command of a militia supposedly plotting to kidnap Whitmer, Barnett was essentially making an entrapment defense.
“There were a couple times you said the FBI did the training, the FBI was the XO [executive officer], [confidential human source] Dan was the one to organize these guys and did that,” the judge said.
“If you didn’t cross the line, you were right on it,” he added.
“When you said CHS Dan is the one who did the training, that is describing the FBI as entrapping your client.”
The judge’s ruling sparked outrage from those watching the trial, including from the sister of Adam Fox, one of the men who was found guilty last year of plotting against Whitmer.
Questions about Red and the FBI’s role in fomenting violence in both right- and left-wing movements could ostensibly be answered by the House Weaponization Subcommittee,
In August 2020, an FBI undercover agent code-named “Red” unsuccessfully tried to foment a plot to assassinate Colorado’s attorney general. The next month, an FBI undercover agent with the same code-name and physical description played a major role in the conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
After reviewing audio recordings and other information, three people involved in the Whitmer case have concluded that the “Red” in Colorado is the same person as Michigan “Red,” whose real name is special agent Timothy Bates.
Indeed, in both cases, “Red” is described as 6 feet 2 inches tall with facial hair and a tattoo sleeve going down his arm. “Red” was also introduced to BLM activists and militiamen alike as an ex-military, outlaw munitions expert. And moreover, “Red” took each of his targets on surveillance car rides.
The information about Colorado Red and the short-lived association plot was recently revealed in a new podcast, “Alphabet Boys,” which details how the FBI infiltrated the BLM movement.
According to Alphabet Boys, an FBI informant introduced Red to a BLM activist who had expressed interest in assassinating Colorado’s attorney general. Red and the activist met in August 2020, and then went on a car ride to surveil the AG’s home—but the activist suspected Red of being a fed, and never contacted him again.
The next month, “Red” would figure prominently in the Whitmer case, attempting to goad militia members into buying explosives in the weeks before they were arrested. Former Whitmer defendant Brandon Caserta met Red in person and said he listened to his voice “hundreds of times” on audio throughout his legal proceedings.
After listening to the Alphabet Boys, Caserta—who was exonerated of all charges—said he’s 100-percent certain that Colorado Red and Michigan Red are one in the same.
“I’m only 10 minutes in. I don’t need to go any further. That’s Red—100 percent,” he said.
Likewise, the family of Adam Fox—who was convicted in the Whitmer plot—thinks it’s the same person. Fox’s family has heard audio of Bates, and watched him testify against Fox.
“Literally the minute I heard the voice I knew it was him,” said Fox’s sister, Gabrielle, whose last name Headline USA is withholding for privacy reasons. “I am in complete agreement with Brandon: That sounds just like Red.”
Fox’s mom, Christina, added, “It does sound like him.”
Not only does the Colorado Red’s voice sound the same as Bates, according to Caserta and Fox’s family; he also matches the same physical description.
What they will never acknowledge is that these schemes are concocted to make the FBI look like heroes who swooped in to save the public at the last minute.
In October of 2020, 14 people were arrested in Michigan and accused of being participants in a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The governor had imposed draconian restrictions on religious, travel and commercial activities as a means, she claimed, to stem the spread of COVID-19. All of her restrictions were eventually found by courts to be unconstitutional under both the Michigan and the U.S. Constitutions.
Sixteen plotters were supposedly planning to try the governor in a makeshift court and, if convicted, to impose some sort of punishment. Before the plotters could spring into action, the FBI arrested 14 of them. Two plotters were not arrested since one of them was a paid FBI informant and the other was an undercover FBI agent.
In pleadings filed in federal court last week, the defendants revealed that the FBI enticed, cajoled and manipulated them into this plot, and even trained them and paid their expenses.
Can the government get away with planting the seeds of a crime in the minds of innocent folks, providing them with the means for the crime, arresting them before the crime takes place and then charging them with a crime that never occurred?
Here is the backstory.
The FBI has perfected the art of the sting. In the years immediately following the attacks on 9/11, FBI agents regularly found young Arab American males in the U.S. who were essentially loners, disenchanted with life, and talked them into fantastic plots. The FBI supplied what the loners thought were explosives — for the New York City subway system and the Brooklyn Bridge, for example — and then heroically arrested them before the inert explosives could be detonated.
The New York Times has reported there have been twenty terrorist plots against the U.S. Three of those plots were real; the other 17 were created — and then stopped —by the FBI.
Over two dozen people were killed during the Antifa and BLM protests in 2020. It is routinely reported that “five people died as a result” of the Jan. 6 disturbance. This is a totally accurate statement, however, it is still misleading. Only one of the deceased died as a result of violence. She was actually murdered by a government official. Relating these deaths allows the media to routinely describe Jan. 6 as a “deadly insurrection” as opposed to the “mostly peaceful” protests by Antifa and BLM. Prior to Jan. 6, Trump supporters had held dozens of mass rallies without burning cities or murdering people. This was a major embarrassment for the Deep State. Media coverage of the Jan. 6 event has been largely successful in minimizing that embarrassment. This was a major Deep State coup and the planning and execution of this “insurrection” reveal a disturbing relationship between the government and radical groups. The FBI did not only fail to adequately prevent the disturbance, they appear to have actively facilitated it. The FBI and radical leftists are branches of the Deep State.
The FBI has a history of instigating terrorist plots that they thwart with great fanfare. This is not a conspiracy theory.
The New York Times has reported there have been twenty terrorist plots against the U.S. Three of those plots were real; the other 17 were created — and then stopped — by the FBI.
The Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping case is based on evidence provided by two FBI informants and two undercover agents according to the FBI’s affidavit. As many as twelve informants were used in this case. Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, was at one time an FBI informant. Several sizable right-wing organizations were involved in the Jan. 6 disturbance. The FBI had infiltrated every one of them and therefore knew exactly what they had planned.
The DC Metropolitan Police also had at least one undercover employee embedded within the pro-Trump crowd. This is not speculation. It is based on court records.
It is preposterous to contend that the FBI did not have operatives in this disturbance as Christopher Wray contends. Journalist Glenn Greenwald commented, “What would be shocking and strange is not if the FBI had embedded informants and other infiltrators in the groups planning the January 6 Capitol riot. What would be shocking and strange—bizarre and inexplicable—is if the FBI did not have those groups under tight control.”
The FBI and the Capitol Police knew in advance that the demonstration would turn violent.
The Capitol Police had clearer advance warnings about the Jan. 6 attack than were previously known, including the potential for violence in which “Congress itself is the target.” But officers were instructed by their leaders not to use their most aggressive tactics to hold off the mob, according to a scathing new report by the agency’s internal investigator.
Yet the head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, Steven D’Antuono, told reporters that the agency did not have any intelligence suggesting the Trump rally would not be peaceful.
During Senate testimony, Senator Amy Klobuchar suggested that the FBI had not infiltrated these groups. She asked Christopher Wray, “There must be moments where you think if we would have known, if we could have infiltrated this group or found out what they were doing, and that — you have those moments?” Wray did not correct her. The knowledge that there would be violence was based partially on a document acquired by the Norfolk FBI. It asserted, “Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”
The FBI does not reveal the source of this document. Was it really the work of a Trump supporter? Still, the violence could have been prevented.
According to Kash Patel, Chief of Staff to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, “We had offered the Capitol Police, and Mayor Bowser of Washington, D.C., thousands of National Guardsmen and women, two days before Jan. 6. And they turned us down.”
Defenders of left-wing radical groups stress the fact that they are “decentralized.” Wikipedia‘s description of Antifa mentions its “decentralized” nature numerous times. Yet, the left is capable of acting in unison, as if under the command of a single director. Mike Podhorzer, senior adviser to the president of the AFL-CIO, is mentioned in a Time magazine article giving a reason why left-wing groups were not visible on Jan. 6. He credits the activists for their restraint: “They had spent so much time getting ready to hit the streets on Wednesday. But they did it. Wednesday through Friday, there was not a single Antifa vs. Proud Boys incident like everyone was expecting. And when that didn’t materialize, I don’t think the Trump campaign had a backup plan.” Podhorzer continued, “To preserve safety and ensure they couldn’t be blamed for any mayhem, the activist left was ‘strenuously discouraging counter activity.’” All these “independent” groups decided in unison to stay home that day. Or did they?
Antifa activist John Sullivan’s brother James claims that there were 265 disguised Antifa members at the disturbance. The FBI will investigate this just as they are investigating child sex crimes. (Unfortunately, David Harris, who was in charge of investigating crimes against children, was arrested for numerous child sex crimes.)
Part of the reason for the feds not releasing the government videos is that there are literally tens of thousands of researchers who plan on viewing the tapes. They may reveal FBI informants taking part in the violence. The left has an extensive network of training facilities for agents provocateurs.
Scott Foval, former National Field Director at Americans United for Change claimed, “We have to have people prepared to go wherever these events are, which means we have to have a central kind of agitator training.” He continued, “I’m saying we have mentally ill people that we pay to do sh—, make no mistake.” Robert Creamer, founder of Democracy Advocates and husband of Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky, stated, “Wherever Trump and Pence are going to be, we have events, we have a whole team across the country that does that.”
According to Rep. James Comer, the Republican leader of the U.S. House Oversight Committee, protestors are kept in deplorable conditions. Yet, John Sullivan, who is recorded on tape saying “Let’s burn this shit down” was released without bail and placed on house arrest. Many of the “unindicted co-conspirators” appear to have been more violent than those placed in solitary confinement. This is possibly why the Department of Justice refuses to release to the public over 14,000 hours of video taken at the Capitol during the “insurrection.” Selected clips are presented in court as evidence against Jan. 6 defendants. Capitol Police argue that making all the tapes available to defense attorneys —let alone to the American public—could provoke future violence.
John Dietrich is a freelance writer and the author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (Algora Publishing). He has a Master of Arts Degree in International Relations from St. Mary’s University. He is retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. He is featured on the BBC’s program “Things We Forgot to Remember:” Morgenthau Plan and Post-War Germany.
So now we come to Gretchen Whitmer. Apparently there were 18 folks involved in the alleged plot. How many do you suppose were government agents or “informants?” Twelve. Guess which ones were in charge – – –
What’s a “Handschu Scam” and what, if anything, does it have to do with the alleged terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, the latest fiasco in the U.S. “Justice” Department’s Julian Assange farce, and the January 6, 2021 D.C. riot, mega-hyped into an “insurrection” to satisfy the gullible?
When government agents infiltrate lawful political organizations, they’re under pressure to come back with information. And what government hearings have revealed time and time again is that they come back initially with no information, with information about lawful activities and then they’re under pressure to generate some business. And they try to entrap people and foment illegal activity. …and the people behind the plot to blow up anything [in the Handschu case] were all government agents. –ACLU’s Donna Lieberman
So how far will that “pressure to generate some business” make them go? Here’s a clue – – –
A 22-year-old Bangladeshi man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for attempting to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City with a fake bomb as part of an elaborate FBI sting. Quazi Nafis pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in February. His case drew claims of government entrapment after the FBI supplied the inert explosives, the van used to carry them, the detonator and even the storage facility where an agent helped Nafis assemble the fake bomb. Man Sentenced to 30 Years for Bid to Attack Federal Reserve with Fake Bomb
As revealed in the Handschu case mentioned by Ms. Lieberman, this government entrapment scam is one of the U.S. law-and-order-industry‘s dirty little secrets.
L. Reichard White [send him mail] taught physics, designed and built a house, ran for Nevada State Senate, served two terms on the Libertarian National Committee, managed a theater company, etc. For the next few decades, he supported his writing habit by beating casinos at their own games. His hobby, though, is explaining things he wishes someone had explained to him. You can find a few of his other explanations listed here.
The lockdowns that governors imposed also pointlessly ravaged many Americans’ mental health. The Centers for Disease Control last month reported a 51% increase in emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts by teenage girls in early 2021. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found a 300% increase in the percentage of adults reporting symptoms of anxiety disorder and/or depressive disorder (41% of adults in January 2021). The CDC also reported a record number of drug overdose deaths last year, due in part to the lockdowns and other government-imposed disruptions.
There are no fact-checkers for victory laps. Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo summarized his experience with the Covid-19 crisis: “Speaking for myself, it was a tremendous personal benefit.” Cuomo made that declaration in a speech concluding his one-year chairmanship of the National Governors Association. Because Cuomo’s spiel sought to rewrite history to exonerate politicians who ravaged Americans’ rights and liberties, it requires a rebuttal.
Cuomo declared that “we maximized the moment as governors. Governors have a new credibility. Governors have a new status.” Cuomo epitomized the rush to “absolute power” that occurred in governor’s mansions across the nation. After he fueled pandemic fears, the New York Times proclaimed, “Andrew Cuomo Is the Control Freak We Need Right Now.” A New Yorker profile, titled “Andrew Cuomo, King of New York,” explained that Cuomo and his aides saw the battle over Covid policy as “between people who believe government can be a force for good and those who think otherwise.” Cuomo denounced anyone who disobeyed his edicts, including condemning sheriffs as “dictators” for refusing to enforce his mask mandate inside people’s homes.
Cuomo had plenty of power-mad accomplices in the governors’ association. Oregon Governor Kate Brown banned residents from leaving their homes except for essential work, buying food, and other narrow exemptions and also banned all recreational travel. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer imposed some of the most severe restrictions, prohibiting anyone from leaving their home to visit family or friends. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti even banned people from walking or bicycling outside. The CDC eventually admitted that there was almost no risk of Covid contagion from outdoors activity not amidst a throng of people. But that did not stop politicians from claiming that “science and data” justified locking people in their homes.
Some governors have acted as if their shutdown orders gave them unlimited sway to decree when normal life could resume. California Gov. Gavin Newsom decreed that Covid restrictions would be perpetuated in California counties based on voter turnout, alcohol availability, and other non-health factors. California assemblyman Kevin Kiley groused, “An entire county can be kept shut down because certain areas are judged to be lacking in ‘equity,’ even if the whole county has relatively few cases of Covid.” The end of Covid restrictions turned into hostage release negotiations with domineering rulers clinging to all their new prerogatives.
Cuomo was proud that, when he visits a school, he is no longer asked “‘What does a governor do?” because “people know what governors do and how important governors are.” Governors can wreck kids’ futures by shutting down schools and placing children under indefinite home detention, costing millions of children almost an entire year of learning.
James Bovard is the author of ten books, including Public Policy Hooligan, Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader’s Digest, and many other publications. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, a frequent contributor to The Hill, and a contributing editor for American Conservative
What is even less well-known, though, is that the bomb that nearly murdered tens of thousands was builtwith the help of an FBI informant. Egyptian immigrant Emad Salem was a part of Ramzi Yousef’s cell during the plotting of the attack. Salem, posing as an ex-Green Beret, was encouraged by the FBI to join the nascent New York Islamic extremist movement. Once Salem had penetrated the cell, instead of using him to thwart an attack, the FBI deliberately let the attack go forward.
Last week, Revolver highlighted the disturbing number of key figures in the January 6 Capitol incident who have gone unnamed and unindicted even as the number of criminal cases federal officials have brought spirals into the hundreds. Read it here if you’ve been living under a rock.
By now, it is a distinct possibility that many participants in the January 6 “riot” were associated with the government in some manner, be it as informants or full-blown agents.
America’s regime media is deeply committed to the narrative of January 6 as a planned “insurrection,” so they have flailed desperately to debunk reporting by Revolver as well as Fox’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Twitter’s “neutral” “aggregators” made a cringeworthy clarification that only further bolstered Revolver’s claims.
Looks like Twitter and the FBI are big made at @DarrenJBeattie and Tucker Carlson. The amount of cope in this “clarification” is palpable. pic.twitter.com/vgEVaNB0fw
Revolver will continue to report out the story of the Capitol incident and the federal government’s potential role in instigating it. But there is another reason to suspect federal involvement in January 6: The federal government has a decades-long history of this exact behavior. Revolver has already reported extensively on the phony “plot” against Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, where five out of eighteen core plotters were actually connected to the federal government. But there are countless additional incidents, all over the country, stretching all the way back to the 1950s.
Under these gubernatorial tyrants, we have caught a glimpse of the future. Commerce is stifled while protesting is encouraged. Families cannot meet for a holiday dinner or midnight Mass, but they can march down the street with Antifa. Liquor stores are considered “essential services” while the Sacraments are non-essential. This might be the new normal, but Sobran would insist this is just the normal behavior of the modern state.
The Supreme Court granted injunctive relief to houses of worship previously closed under New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s restrictions on public gatherings. Justice Neil Gorsuch chided the governor for his “color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques.”
This is a tremendous step toward the restoration of order in America. Almost all Americans have lived through a chaotic year. The community, encouragement, and sacred liturgy offered by local churches are havens of order in these troubled times. Cuomo’s efforts to shutter these havens were unjustified and imprudent.
“The virus has infiltrated Sunday services, church meetings and youth camps,” reported TheNew York Times in a July piece that was quoted extensively on news channels. Yet reports of mass outbreaks originating in churches are rather underwhelming in the grand scheme:
More than 650 coronavirus cases have been linked to nearly 40 churches and religious events across the United States since the beginning of the pandemic, with many of them erupting over the last month as Americans resumed their pre-pandemic activities, according to a New York Times database.
Considering that there are approximately 384,000 congregations and roughly 231.7 million Christians across the United States, perhaps the 0.0001 percent of churches with mass outbreaks, between February and July, could take special precautions—they can quarantine the sick, for instance. COVID prevention should be a practical matter, addressed on a church-by-church basis. Churches in densely populated urban areas face different struggles than churches out in the hinterlands. To require all churches across an entire state to shutter their doors is to make the exception—the very small exception—the rule.
Constitutionally, the burden for closing churches should be much higher than for secular places of public accommodation, such as liquor stores. The American founders enshrined a right to the “free exercise of religion” in the First Amendment to the Constitution—a right to buy liquor is not similarly enshrined. Indeed, many of the founding stock came to America precisely because their churches were being closed by despots back in Europe.
When despots want to break a people, they target their religion. If you destroy the cult, you destroy the culture. Without a common culture, a people cannot remain distinct. Civilization has never existed without a strong sense of the supernatural. “Wherever an altar is found,” wrote Joseph DeMaistre, “there civilization exists.”
Unlike Cuomo, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer mercifully exempted churches from her tyrannical diktats in Michigan. Accordingly, they’ve been the only centers of order in the state. Many never closed and are still running like clockwork as everything else crumbles.
The situation with Michigan churches during COVID seems a good example of what Joseph Sobran—Chronicles columnist and long-time National Review contributing editor—called Theo-Anarchy.
Sobran believed that men could restore order by organizing their lives around the parish and the liturgy, that no other modern institution was necessary. In fact, there is one modern institution that is downright destructive of natural order: the modern state. The restoration of natural order is dependent on the modern state disappearing; only then—Sobran believed—would the people organize their lives around the parish as their ancestors did.
Government today, explained Sobran, is always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal, the majority to the minority, the central to the eccentric, the natural to the unnatural. In that spirit, it now sacrifices the healthy to the unhealthy.
Under these gubernatorial tyrants, we have caught a glimpse of the future. Commerce is stifled while protesting is encouraged. Families cannot meet for a holiday dinner or midnight Mass, but they can march down the street with Antifa. Liquor stores are considered “essential services” while the Sacraments are non-essential. This might be the new normal, but Sobran would insist this is just the normal behavior of the modern state.
Again, there isn’t a shred of evidence included in the FBI’s criminal complaint, nor subsequent reporting, that the men adhered to a white supremacist ideology – a false narrative.
And so, it appears that the FBI busted an anarchist, anti-government militia which plotted violence against elected officials – yet hated both sides of the aisle.
Let’s see how fast this entire affair disappears from the news cycle.
Last week, the FBI says it foiled a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D), after the FBI infiltrated an anti-government militia and arrested 13 members who “talked about murdering ‘tyrants’ or ‘taking’ a sitting governor.”
And while the FBI never suggested a race-based ideology in its criminal complaint, the MSM – as well as Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D), took the ‘white supremacist’ ball and ran with it – hard.
On Friday, however, the Washington Post profiled several members of the group. Notably absent were accusations of ‘white supremacy’ – perhaps after acknowledging:
“One of alleged plotters, 23-year-old Daniel Harris, attended a Black Lives Matter protest in June, telling the Oakland County Times he was upset about the killing of George Floyd and police violence.”
Another alleged plotter, Brandon Caserta, called President Trump a ‘tyrant’ – adding ‘Trump is not your friend, dude.’ Caserta notably has an anarchist flag behind him in several videos he’s recorded.
Wow! This is big. Brandon Caserta, one of the ringleaders of the group of men arrested for a plot where the group planned to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, hated President Trump too!
“They are oppressing you for a paycheck. If you’re still supporting law enforcement, you are supporting the people who are enforcing slavery on everyone else.”
This is Brandon Caserta, a man who was arrested for a plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer. He’s a police hating anarchist. pic.twitter.com/3qGZpPpOJw — Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) October 8, 2020
Again, there isn’t a shred of evidence included in the FBI’s criminal complaint, nor subsequent reporting, that the men adhered to a white supremacist ideology – a false narrative.
And so, it appears that the FBI busted an anarchist, anti-government militia which plotted violence against elected officials – yet hated both sides of the aisle.
Let’s see how fast this entire affair disappears from the news cycle.
The FBI admits that it paid one informant $8,600, and there may be other payments that are revealed in the coming days or weeks. FBI agents have been taught that subjects of FBI investigations “have forfeited their right to the truth,” which helps explain the vast increase in federal entrapment operations in recent decades.
#StopTrumpsTerror is one of the hottest trending topics on Twitter, with more than 90,000 tweets. Yesterday, the FBI announced the arrest of six people yesterday in a plot (perhaps government-hatched) to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and put her on trial for treason for destroying the state’s economy with the lockdowns she imposed. Seven other individuals were arrested and charged with violating Michigan’s anti-terrorism law.
Trump had no connection to the plot, and at least one of the alleged plotters denounced Trump as a “tyrant” and “the enemy.” But Trump’s condemnations of lockdowns was enough for Gov. Whitmer to denounce Trump yesterday as “complicit” with the plotters. She derided Trump for spending “the past 7 months denying science, ignoring his own health experts, stoking distrust, fomenting anger and giving comfort to those who spread fear and hatred and division.” Former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi told MSNBC that Donald Trump should be investigated for “aiding and abetting” the Michigan plot.
Whitmer, one of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s favorite governors, enraged many Michiganders by locking down the state after the outbreak of Covid-19. Whitmer placed almost the entire state under house arrest, dictating a $1,000 fine for anyone who left their home to visit family or friends. Business owners faced up to three years in prison for refusing to close their operations. Whitmer severely restricted what stores could sell and prohibited purchasing seeds for spring planting after she decreed that a “nonessential” activity. (Purchasing state lottery tickets was still an “essential” activity.) Though Covid infections were concentrated in the Detroit metropolitan area, Whitmer shut down the entire state — including northern counties with few cases, boosting unemployment to 24 percent statewide. In a tweet yesterday, Trump said Whitmer “has done a terrible job. She locked down her state for everyone, except her husband’s boating activities.”
Whitmer’s actions infuriated many Michiganders and no informants were necessary to spur much of the anti-government rhetoric recited in the federal indictment yesterday. Plenty of hotheads say things online or in allegedly encrypted messages that look menacing or idiotic in cold print afterwards. Threatening violence against government officials – or anyone else – is reprehensible. But how far did those guys move to actually carrying out their plot? Last month, some of the conspirators “drove to the area surrounding the [Whitmer vacation] residence and discussed detonating explosives to divert police — even checking the underside of a bridge for spots to place a charge,” as the Washington Post summarized the indictment.
The FBI admits that it paid one informant $8,600, and there may be other payments that are revealed in the coming days or weeks. FBI agents have been taught that subjects of FBI investigations “have forfeited their right to the truth,” which helps explain the vast increase in federal entrapment operations in recent decades. Trevor Aaronson, author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism, estimated that only about 1% of the 500 people charged with international terrorism offenses in the decade after 9/11 were bona fide threats. Thirty times as many were induced by the FBI to behave in ways that prompted their arrest. The bureau’s informant program extends far beyond Muslims. It bankrolled an extremist right-wing New Jersey blogger and radio host for five years before his 2009 arrest for threatening federal judges. A long-term FBI informant organized the Ku Klux Klan rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in July 2017.
The alleged Michigan plot is almost too idiotic to believe. The alleged conspirators purportedly planned to kidnap Gov. Whitmer and take her to Wisconsin for a private trial. This is on par with the 2006 FBI-fabricated terror plot of the Liberty City Seven, where an informant swayed a bunch of dimwits to babble about blowing up government buildings. That group was so knuckle-headed that they asked the informant for military uniforms and wanted to conduct a parade.
The Michigan conspirators are receiving vastly more coverage than a recent Michigan Supreme Court decision, which effectively labeled Whitmer a lawless dictator who had extended a “state of emergency” far beyond what an unconstitutional state law allowed. Instead of obeying the ruling of the highest state court, Whitmer responded by having the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services issue “new COVID-19 emergency orders that are nearly identical to her invalidated emergency orders,” as the Mackinac Center noted.
Four months earlier, the Michigan Court of Claims condemned Whitmer for contorting a Michigan workplace safety law to unjustifiably inflict additional penalties on businesses and individuals who failed to submit to her pandemic commands.
But, according to the media, locking down Michigan isn’t tyranny – it is public service.
Anyone who protests or heartily condemns lockdowns will also be presumed collectively guilty with the Michigan plotters. The same media moral framework will likely be used to exonerate new lockdowns that may be imposed in the name of curbing Covid-19. Earlier this week, many pundits denounced Trump as a would-be Mussolini for his statement on the White House balcony after he returned from Walter Reed Hospital. Commentators were horrified that Trump, who was standing outside not close to anyone, removed his facemask.
If Biden is elected president and fulfills his promise to impose a national facemask mandate or dictates a national shutdown of the economy, such actions will be portrayed as benevolence at its best, rather than the most foolhardy federal interventions since the 55 mile per hour speed limit.
Will the Michigan plot be touted by the media to valorize every government official who placed any American under house arrest in response to the pandemic? It is possible to heartily condemn both nitwit conspirators and oppressive politicians. Unfortunately, the media will likely pay far more attention to the bluster of boneheads than to actual devastation produced by unjustified shutdowns.
MCViewPoint 
