Two men were convicted by a jury in Michigan on Tuesday, August 23, of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.

The jury took about eight hours over the course of two days to return the verdict.

Adam Fox, 39, from Grand Rapids, considered the ringleader in the conspiracy, and Barry Croft, Jr, 46, a trucker from Bear, Delaware, were convicted of conspiracy in the kidnapping plot, and attempts to obtain a weapon of mass destruction. 

Croft was also convicted of a second explosives charge.

The plot was unraveled by the FBI after a military veteran, Dan Chappel, joined a far-right Michigan group and became concerned when he heard members talking about killing police. He collaborated with the FBI and got close to Fox and other members of the group, and secretly recorded their conversations. 

The investigation became a domestic terrorism case after the FBI embedded other undercover agents into the group. 

Prosecutors said that the pair wanted to blow up a bridge in order to block the police from stopping an abduction that was planned to be carried out at Governor Whitmer’s vacation home. Several members of the group traveled to northern Michigan to case out the vacation home and the bridge area, in preparation for the planned abduction. Two other men, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, were part of that group. They pleaded guilty and were used by the prosecution to testify against Fox and Croft. 

In the end, the governor was not hurt. Six men were arrested in October 2020 before they could carry out the abduction plan. 

Another jury four months ago was unable to reach a verdict on Fox and Croft, and the trial ended in a mistrial, but they acquitted two other men from the group. 

“Today’s verdicts prove that violence and threats have no place in our politics and those who seek to divide us will be held accountable. They will not succeed,” said Governor Whitmer, on Tuesday.

Assistant US Attorney Nils Kessler, referring to the abduction plot, said, “But that wasn’t the defendants’ ultimate goal. They wanted to set off a second American civil war, a second American Revolution, something that they call the boogaloo. And they wanted to do it for a long time before they settled on Governor Whitmer.”

Attorneys for the defendants tried to convince the jury that the FBI had set up their clients, and that the men were exhibiting their rights of free speech regarding their gripes, specifically their anger over coronavirus restrictions. The attorneys pushed the argument that the FBI had forced the defendants to move forward with their plot. Fox’s attorney told the jurors that Fox was lured into the scheme by the confidential informant named “Big Dan.”

David Porter, who heads the FBI in Western Michigan, said, after the verdict and outside the courtroom, “Here in America, if you disagree with your government you have options. … What you cannot do is plan or commit acts of violence.”

The men face a maximum sentence of life in prison for the kidnapping conspiracy conviction.