Adam Fox Wiki – Adam Fox Biography

The leader of a foiled plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was sentenced Tuesday to 16 years in prison.
Gretchen Whitmer in Lansing in October of last year. Adam Fox

The result was a victory for the government after last spring’s mixed result.
Duo found guilty of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer
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Adam Fox’s sentence follows his conviction in a second federal trial in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in August, for conspiring to kidnap the Democrat and blow up a bridge so the kidnappers could escape.

Barry Croft Jr, who co-directed the plot, was also found guilty at that trial. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday.

Fox and Croft were charged with leading a conspiracy to foment anti-government extremists shortly before the 2020 election. Their arrests and the apprehension of 12 others speak to the widespread social and political conflicts in the US that characterized 2020, a year of pandemic and protest, often in the form of violent extremism.

Whitmer was not injured. Federal agents embedded with the extremists put a stop to the conspiratorial activities in the fall.

“They had no real plan for what to do with the governor if they did capture her,” Nils Kessler, the prosecutor in the case, wrote in a court filing. “Paradoxically, this made them more dangerous, not less.”
Prosecutors said the men’s scheme was meant to spur a “second American revolution.” They said Fox was the mastermind behind the plan to break into Gretchen’s vacation home, capture her at gunpoint, and then force her to stand “trial” on bogus treason charges and face the death penalty.

The men were angry about the public health policies Whitmer put in place to combat the covid-19 pandemic. Whitmer also clashed with then-President Donald Trump over such restrictions.

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He claimed that Trump fanned the flames of political extremism. At a campaign rally in the state, her attacks drew chants of “lock her up.”

Fox and Croft met with ideologically aligned extremists in Ohio. They conducted weapons training in Wisconsin and Michigan and guarded Whitmer’s vacation home with night vision goggles, according to reports detailing evidence against the men.

“People need to stop getting angry out of place and put it where it needs to go, and that goes against our tyrannical … government,” Fox said in spring 2020, referring to covid-19 regulations and perceived affronts to gun owners.

Prosecutors sought a life sentence, arguing that while Croft brought his bomb-making skills to the table, Fox was the “driving force that urged his recruits to take up arms, kidnap the governor and kill those who got in their way.” “.

Fox’s lawyer, Christopher Gibbons, argued that a life sentence would be excessive. Noting that secret meetings with extremists and an undercover federal agent were held in the basement of a vacuum shop in the Grand Rapids area where Fox also lived, Gibbons claimed that Fox was anxious and depressed and smoked marijuana daily.

FBI informants routinely exposed Fox to “inflammatory rhetoric,” Gibbons said. The lawyer drew attention to US Army veteran Dan Chappel, whom he claimed “manipulated not only Fox’s sense of ‘patriotism’, but also his need for male friendship, acceptance and approval.”

Gibbons maintained that the government exaggerated Fox’s abilities, claiming that he was impoverished and unable to obtain a bomb to carry out the plan.

The judge, Robert J Jonker, said the life sentence was “not necessary”.

“It’s too much,” Jonker said. “Something less than life does the job in this case.”

The judge added that 16 years behind bars “still in my mind is a long time.”

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