A scheme to kidnap Michigan’s governor in 2020 will get yet another airing in a different court when three men face trial Monday, just weeks before voters consider whether to reelect Gretchen Whitmer to a second term.
Joe Morrison, father-in-law Pete Musico and Paul Bellar are charged in Jackson County, Michigan, with three crimes, including providing material support for terrorist acts, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. They’re accused of forming an alliance with Fox and others through their paramilitary group, the Wolverine Watchmen.“They didn’t go out and participate in a plan to kidnap the governor,” Assistant Attorney General Sunita Doddamani said in court in 2021.
“The state attorney general has carved out a piece of the conspiracy where you have three people working in concert in Jackson County,” Chutkow told The Associated Press. “That’s a story that’s digestible, that a jury can get its arms around, and a story more easily translated than scooping everyone up” in federal court.Lawyers for Morrison, Musico and Bellar say the men cut ties with Fox before the kidnapping plot accelerated in summer 2020; Bellar had moved to South Carolina.
The men claim they were entrapped by Chappel and his FBI handlers, though Garbin, another likely witness for prosecutors, will knock that down.Any weapons drills simply were to prepare for “potential civil unrest in the United States,” said Bellar’s lawyer, Andrew Kirkpatrick.
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