The person who planned to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was given a 16-year prison sentence.
On Tuesday, Adam Fox, who is 39 years old, went before U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jonker in Grand Rapids.
He was found guilty earlier this year of planning to take Ms. Whitmer from her vacation home with other militiamen.
The group went after the Democratic Governor in 2020 because they didn’t like the COVID rules she put in place at the start of the pandemic.
Fox was given a sentence because he planned to use a weapon of mass destruction to blow up a bridge after kidnapping Ms. Whitmer to make it easier to get away.
In August, a federal court found Fox and another defendant, Barry Croft Jr., 47, guilty. Croft, who is also a member of the Three Percenters’ Militia, is going to be sentenced on Wednesday.
In August, a jury decided that the two men were guilty of plotting to get a bomb, which is a weapon of mass destruction, to blow up a bridge so that police wouldn’t be able to stop the planned kidnapping.
Croft, who was born in Delaware, was also found guilty of another explosives charge.
Fox and others wanted to take Ms. Whitmer hostage and put her on “trial” for treason, even though the charges were made up.
The Militia Group’s plan to kidnap people was mostly caused by their opposition to public health measures in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But prosecutors said Fox wanted to start a “second American revolution” and get the US involved in armed conflict before the 2020 presidential election, which turned out to be a heated race.
Prosecutors said Fox was the mastermind behind the plot, but Judge Jonker said he didn’t seem like a “natural leader.”
But the District Court judge knew that conspiracies like the one to kidnap the governor needed “a lot of fuel,” and Fox was able to provide that fuel.
Prosecutors wanted a life sentence, but Judge Jonker said that wouldn’t be enough to stop him from doing it again. He did say that a “significant sentence” was needed, though.
Christopher Gibbons, Fox’s lawyer, had said that the government’s descriptions of his client were “calculated to scare the public.”
“These dramatic descriptions of Adam Fox don’t make sense in terms of his actual behavior, and they don’t reflect his actual intentions or abilities,” he said.
Back in August, lawyers for Fox and Croft said that the two couldn’t have come up with such a plan.
They said that an undercover operation by the FBI had tricked the men into committing the crime.
Mr. Gibbons had said, “In America, the FBI isn’t supposed to make domestic terrorists so that it can arrest them.”
Three more men were found guilty of helping with the plan to kidnap Ms. Whitmer in October.
A jury decided that Joseph Morrison, who was 28 years old, his father-in-law, Pete Musico, who was 44 years old, and Paul Bellar, who was 23 years old, were all guilty of being in a gang, breaking gun laws, and giving material support to terrorism.
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