Prosecutors Rest Their Case Against 2 Men in Whitmer Plot

GRAND RAPIDS—Prosecutors rested their case Thursday against two men charged with conspiring to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, shortly after an FBI agent who was working undercover in 2020 told jurors how a bridge played a role in the scheme.

Timothy Bates, who was known as “Red,” said he participated in a night ride to Elk Rapids, Michigan, and encouraged Adam Fox to take a picture of the bridge near Whitmer’s vacation home when they got out of a pickup truck.

The government says blowing up the bridge as well as utility poles was part of Fox’s plan to get her at another time.

“They wanted to slow down law enforcement response,” Bates testified. “The vacation home of the governor and where that kidnapping was going to take place, or allegedly taking place, was north of the city.”

No kidnapping occurred. About a month later, Fox, Barry Croft Jr. and four others were arrested and accused of being domestic terrorists.

Fox and Croft are on trial for a second time on conspiracy charges. A jury in April couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict but acquitted two other men.

Bates said he posed as someone who could get explosives. By fall 2020, he said there was talk in the group about buying bomb components, and the FBI wanted to stay on top of it. Another agent as well as informants already were inside the group.

Bates said Fox also talked about destroying a second bridge in the Elk Rapids area, though the government didn’t offer evidence of it on secretly recorded conversations. Defense attorneys pounced.

“You were wearing a recorder the entire trip, correct? And the recorder functioned, true?” Fox lawyer Christopher Gibbons asked.

“I can’t speak to how all of them functioned,” Bates said, “but I believe a recorder was on the entire time.”

The defense argues that Fox and Croft were entrapped by government operatives who fed their wild views. Prosecutors say the group wanted to trigger a national revolt and was especially furious over COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Whitmer during the early stages of the pandemic.

Bates said the group talked about raising $4,000 for explosives to attack the bridge but no money was paid.

“No one shook your hand on this deal, correct?” Gibbons asked.

“No one shook my hand,” Bates said.

Croft, 46, is from Bear, Delaware. Fox, 39, was living in the basement of a vacuum shop in the Grand Rapids area.

Croft attorney Joshua Blanchard presented two witnesses before testimony ended for the day. He tried to soften the government’s portrayal of a training session in Cambria, Wisconsin, in July 2020, where a “shoot house” was constructed by FBI informant Steve Robeson.

Colleen Kuester of Baraboo, Wisconsin, recalled how Robeson pitched the event to her as a “family fun” day with a picnic and target shooting, something that appealed to her teen son.

But Assistant US Attorney Nils Kessler played a recording of Croft telling his daughter to stay away while he was making an explosive. Kuester said it was possible she didn’t know all that was going on that day.

Whitmer, a Democrat, has blamed then-President Donald Trump for stoking mistrust and fomenting anger over coronavirus restrictions and refusing to condemn hate groups and right-wing extremists like those charged in the plot. Trump recently called the kidnapping plan a “fake deal.”