(Washington) An American was sentenced on Wednesday to nearly 20 years in prison for fomenting, with an accomplice sentenced the day before to 16 years in prison, a plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan.
Barry Croft, 47, is the last defendant to be sentenced by federal justice in this case which exploded just before the 2020 presidential election.
A month before this very tense election, the authorities had announced the arrest of activists from a far-right group, accused of wanting to attack Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
According to the indictment, these men accused the elected Democrat of being “a tyrant” because of the restrictions linked to COVID-19, and planned to kidnap her in order to subject her to a “trial”.
They had, according to this document, monitored the surroundings of his holiday home and took photos of a bridge which they planned to blow up as a diversion during the kidnapping.
Two of them had pleaded guilty in 2021 and have since been sentenced to four and two and a half years in prison.
During their trial at the start of the year, the four others had pleaded not guilty, claiming to have been trapped by undercover agents of the federal police and informants who would have pushed them to act, train and arm themselves.
Two had been acquitted in April and the jurors had failed to agree on the case of Barry Croft and Adam Fox, presented as the leaders of the group.
The prosecutors then decided to organize a new trial, in August, for these two defendants. This time, the jury had found them guilty in less than eight hours of deliberation.
Following this verdict, Adam Fox, 39, received a 16-year prison sentence on Tuesday and Barry Croft, the “spiritual leader” of the group according to the prosecution, to 19 and a half years.
At the same time, the local justice system has also organized prosecutions and three members of the group were recently sentenced by a Michigan court to terms of 7 to 12 years in prison.
In 2020, the arrest of these activists illustrated the growing threat posed by radical right militias, which was then confirmed during the assault on the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021, in which members of groups such as the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys.