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Michigan overthrow attempt/kidnapping of governor thwarted

ztejas

By ztejas
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workswithseed

workswithseed 2122

Posted
Posted

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jessicagarrison/fbi-informants-in-michigan-kidnap-plot

 

The government employed at least a dozen confidential informants to infiltrate groups of armed extremists who allegedly plotted to kidnap the governor of Michigan, according to a new filing in federal court on Monday.

The filing, made by one of the five defendants in the federal case, asked that prosecutors be ordered to share more information about those informants, their relationship with the FBI, and the specific roles they played in building the case. It came among a blizzard of 15 new defense motions in the high-profile case, including requests to move it to a different district, to suppress evidence from a search warrant, and to try at least one defendant separately from the others.

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Taken together, the new court papers offered a glimpse of the evolving defense strategies in the case, with several attorneys saying that they plan to argue that the FBI “induced or persuaded” the men to go along with the scheme.

 

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workswithseed

workswithseed 2122

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/fbi-agent-who-played-key-role-in-whitmer-kidnap-investigation-charged-with-assault/ar-AAMkV5r

A special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation involved in the operation that resulted in a group of men being charged for allegedly plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was criminally charged on Monday in connection to a domestic incident.

Richard Trask was arraigned in a Michigan court on one count of assault with intent to do great bodily harm, less than a murder charge, after a domestic incident with his wife on Sunday and subsequently released on a $10,000 recognizance bond, according to the Detroit News.

Due to his role in the investigation, Trask's arrest could complicate prosecutors' case against the defendants, according to Andrew Arena, a former special agent in charge of the FBI's Detroit office.

"It's the last thing you want for a major case like this," he told the Detroit News. "Any time you give the defense any ammunition, it's not good."

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89859

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, workswithseed said:

 Why the shit do you need so many informants for 6 assholes?

Have you ever been to Michigan?  There's probably a hundred militias up there.

Anybody organizing a militia these days should probably just assume it's going to be infiltrated.

Used to be that you'd film everybody having sex with one another, so that if there are any informants, and the militia gets busted, the informant knows that videos of them fucking some fat guy with COME AND TAKE IT tattooed over his ass will be released, so everybody kept their cool and nobody ratted anybody out.

Guess those days are long past.

 

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Wally Fairway

Wally Fairway 5593

Posted
Posted
14 minutes ago, Nivek said:


Proof or just more bullshit?

I would say that what's posted on a website doesn't hold up very well as evidence in court. Especially when you're talking about a bunch of assholes for posters. But then again our fearless leader did exactly that, and we ended up on a new set of servers with a new board name.

So what the fuck do I know?

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23473

Posted
Posted (edited)

FBI doing FBI things...

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kenbensinger/michigan-kidnapping-gretchen-whitmer-fbi-informant

An examination of the case by BuzzFeed News also reveals that some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported. Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.

Edited by Anastasis
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Armybrat

Armybrat 40940

Posted
Posted
8 hours ago, Anastasis said:

FBI doing FBI things...

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kenbensinger/michigan-kidnapping-gretchen-whitmer-fbi-informant

An examination of the case by BuzzFeed News also reveals that some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported. Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.

Brings to mind the old KKK/FBI cartoon in the 1950s where two dudes at a klan meeting discussing how the undercover FBI agents actually outnumbered the real kluckers.

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drt

drt 640

Posted
Posted

Because that makes it ok to attend a Klan rally?  Obviously there wouldn't be a rally if half the participants didn't show up.  Except for the math involved.

 

These assholes will get their day in court to try to raise reasonable doubt about entrapment by the FBI.  The fact that anyone thought it was an even halfway decent idea to go after a sitting fucking governor in modern day America is astounding.  Maybe I'm giving the feds too much credit before the trial even starts, but when you start talking about kidnapping and assassinating state governors I'm not going to be surprised when the FBI throws the proverbial kitchen sink at the investigation.   I would say reasonable Americans would expect them to do just that.

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Captainant

Captainant 27862

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, drt said:

hen you start talking about kidnapping and assassinating state governors I'm not going to be surprised when the FBI throws the proverbial kitchen sink at the investigation.   I would say reasonable Americans would expect them to do just that.

Don't forget the planned bombing of public infrastructure to aid their kidnapping of an elected chief executive

...but yes, they really were treated unfairly by the mean old FBI, amirite???

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ChickenSandwich

ChickenSandwich 9856

Posted
Posted

Trial will hopefully put away any doubt, but the FBI and the issue of entrapment is certainly not new post 9/11

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/fbi-is-manufacturing-terrorism-cases-2016-6%3famp
 

http://hrlr.law.columbia.edu/hrlr-online/the-anatomy-of-a-federal-terrorism-prosecution-a-blueprint-for-repression-and-entrapment/

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Wally Fairway

Wally Fairway 5593

Posted
Posted

And on Monday the lead FBI agent was arrested for assault (on his wife)
Preview of the article, link below that

Quote

An FBI agent at the center of the plot to kidnap and kill Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is accused of jumping on his wife in bed and smashing her head against a nightstand after a dispute stemming from a swingers' party, according to court records.

Special Agent Richard Trask, 39, of Kalamazoo, was charged Monday with assault with intent to do great bodily harm, less than murder following an incident Sunday.

An affidavit filed by the Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Office in Kalamazoo County District Court said Trask's wife had bloody lacerations to the right side of her head and "blood all over chest, clothing arms and hand," as well as "severe" bruising to her neck and throat.

She told police she and her husband had several drinks at a swingers' party held at a hotel in the 2700 block of S. 11 Street in Oshtemo Township, just west of Kalamazoo, according to the affidavit. She added that she did not like the party and they argued about it on the way home. 

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2021/07/21/records-fbi-agent-assaulted-wife-swingers-party-gretchen-whitmer-terror-plot/8041014002/

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MissingInAction

MissingInAction 25222

Posted
Posted
On 7/20/2021 at 8:03 PM, atomheartbevo said:

Have you ever been to Michigan?  There's probably a hundred militias up there.

Anybody organizing a militia these days should probably just assume it's going to be infiltrated.

Used to be that you'd film everybody having sex with one another, so that if there are any informants, and the militia gets busted, the informant knows that videos of them fucking some fat guy with COME AND TAKE IT tattooed over his ass will be released, so everybody kept their cool and nobody ratted anybody out.

Guess those days are long past.

 

I knew that tattoo would pay for itself eventually.

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Captainant

Captainant 27862

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, Cheeseweasel said:

Interesting how it's gone from "Fuck the Police" to "I support the FBI".

1) fuck the police.

2) fuck domestic terrorists. 

I'd say it's more interesting how you and yours consider protesting the police to be terrorism, but planning and training for a bridge bombing and kidnapping of a chief executive aren't terrorism. 

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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

Posted
Posted
10 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

Interesting how it's gone from "Fuck the Police" to "I support the FBI".

Kinda true.  You have to give the FBI credit though, they don't shoot as many brown people for no reason.  their corruption is more macro and perfidious.  But they at least have the decency to keep from flat out murder in the streets.  

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Dennis Taylor

Dennis Taylor 18886

Posted
Posted
57 minutes ago, Captainant said:

1) fuck the police.

2) fuck domestic terrorists. 

I'd say it's more interesting how you and yours consider protesting the police to be terrorism, but planning and training for a bridge bombing and kidnapping of a chief executive aren't terrorism. 

What if the police were doing the planning...?

Keanu Reeves Reaction GIF

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105465

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, Nivek said:


Weren’t you a back the blue type before the insurrection?

Ummmmm.....that's a hard "no."  For all of Cajun's faults -- and lord, there are many -- he's been a consistent critic of American policing from the get-go.  Some other folks on here, though....they've got some boot-licking history.

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HoustonHorn

HoustonHorn 1062

Posted
Posted
That's the greatest fun of attempting to intellectually discuss issues that everyone should be concerned about - half the challenge is figuring out where the goalposts have been moved.
Actually it's more about talking past each other by lumping opinions you disagree with into a single position taken by the "other" side instead of correctly attributing a position to the single poster who made a specific statement. Then claiming goalposts are moving.

Just my $0.02 from mostly observing the discourse here and I'm not accusing you or anyone specifically. But it happens all the time.
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Harrison Bergeron

Harrison Bergeron 1798

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, HoustonHorn said:

Actually it's more about talking past each other by lumping opinions you disagree with into a single position taken by the "other" side instead of correctly attributing a position to the single poster who made a specific statement. Then claiming goalposts are moving.

Just my $0.02 from mostly observing the discourse here and I'm not accusing you or anyone specifically. But it happens all the time.

That's fair in this particular issue. It is more about people tending to take extreme, blanket positions and then taking the reverse depending on the T-shirt.

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Captainant

Captainant 27862

Posted
Posted

Training video in alleged kidnapping plot of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer released

 

CHICAGO (WLS) -- New video obtained tonight by the ABC7 I-Team shows accused Michigan militiamen in live-fire training, according to federal prosecutors. Prosecutors have charged the men in an alleged scheme to kidnap and possibly kill Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Front and center in the alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer at gunpoint was a man named Barry Croft, who is seen carrying one flag of the Boogaloo Bois, a far-right anti-government movement. Croft is in photos and on video obtained by the I-Team that prosecutors say shows him and other in live assault weapons training-preparing for a violent assault on the Michigan governor's summer home.

 

Prosecutors say the video was taken during a militia live-fire exercise in southern Wisconsin. According to the case's latest court filing, federal agents had enlisted twelve confidential informants to provide information about Barry Croft and other members of the Wolverine Watchmen, a militia group that allegedly had a plan in place last year to kidnap and potentially kill the Michigan governor.

Digital messages allegedly involving Croft, also provided today to the I-Team, refer to a bridge near the governor's vacation home that authorities say the militiamen scouted, photographed and planned to blow up during their commando attack. All of this information was presented at Croft's detention hearing last January but public release was held up by defense concerns that these images would poison a prospective jury pool.

 
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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

Posted
Posted

In another life, they would have been made the various general officers of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  

In this world, they are going to die.  Painfully.  

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Harrison Bergeron

Harrison Bergeron 1798

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

I feel fairly confident in predicting that one or more of them would have killed each other by accident.

That's one of the main reasons I've always thought these militia threats were a little overblown ... while the orthodoxy is problematic the orthopraxy always seemed so mutt & jeff.

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alincoln

alincoln 2385

Posted
Posted

There are plenty of examples of more egregious FBI entrapment of 18 year old ISIS and Al Qaeda fanbois but this is straight from the FBI playbook only applied to the preferred target of the party currently controlling the federal government.  

https://theintercept.com/2017/09/03/the-fbi-pressured-a-lonely-young-man-into-a-bomb-plot-he-tried-to-back-out-now-hes-serving-life-in-prison/

https://theintercept.com/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-terrorism-isis-grave-threats/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/16/fbi-entrapment-fake-terror-plots

 

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alincoln

alincoln 2385

Posted
Posted
33 minutes ago, Harrison Bergeron said:

That's one of the main reasons I've always thought these militia threats were a little overblown ... while the orthodoxy is problematic the orthopraxy always seemed so mutt & jeff.

We have to keep gen pop living in fear of various bogeymen (Islamists among us for the Rs and domestic terrorists for the Ds) to maintain/increase agency budgets and impose a broader surveillance/police state.

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bolverk

bolverk 29738

Posted
Posted
13 minutes ago, alincoln said:

this is straight from the FBI playbook only applied to the preferred target of the party currently controlling the federal government.  

You do realize both the plot and the subsequent arrests occurred in 2020, prior to the recent election, correct?

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