"... in a violent plot shortly before the 2020 election. The trial in Grand Rapids, Mich. has been closely watched as a test of the U.S. government’s ramped-up efforts to combat domestic terrorism, and the verdict is a partial defeat for the Justice Department. The men’s arrest in October 2020 raised alarms about the possibility of politically-motivated violence as the nation was increasingly divided over a bitterly contested presidential race.... A mistrial was declared for Fox and Croft, and federal authorities said they plan to go to trial a second time. The case marks one of the rare instances in which an entrapment defense was even partly successful in a terrorism case."
Top-rated comments over there: "Jury nullification, just like Kyle Rittenhouse. When even governors aren't safe, our nation has a cancer"/"Hoo boy this country is in trouble"/"If your peers are also sympathetic to domestic terrorism, then there is a problem. Obviously there is a problem in many parts of the US."
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Drain the swamp.
The top commenters are also noticing their featuring of feelings over structure, just praising themselves for it. The domestic terrorists are doing structure. The shutdown might be good but it's illegal.
Jury nullification? lol. The jury in Rittenhouse deliberated over several days. The State's best witness testified the first decedent lunged at Rittenhouse and the gun while yelling "Fuck you" after first chasing Rittenhouse for no reason. The second decedent had just struck Rittenhouse in the head with a skateboard. And the third person was pointing a gun at Rittenhouse when Rittenhouse fired. If that's not all self-defense, self-defense means nothing.
As for the Whitmer case - I haven't followed, but from what I've read these guys were encouraged every step of the way by undercovers and other unindicted conspirators. Finding merit in a defense is not jury nullification.
Doesn't sound like the reporting supports the theory that the jury in either case believed the defendants were guilty and acquitted anyway. What a bunch of dumdums.
OJ Simpson was jury nullification.
Kyle was found innocent because he was innocent.
The Left is not allowed to craft their own reality.
Another failed persecution. Perhaps the worm is turning…
Sigh. When I was a kid, I admired the FBI, the Secret Service, etc. as incorruptible. I was a dumb kid.
I think most people are comfortable with the police offering random people the *opportunity* to engage in a crime so long as there is a clear point where the offender commits to taking advantage of it, reasonably free from coercion. When they drive around the corner to meet the guy holding the drugs or the girl, or step into the hotel room, the jury can reasonably infer that there was a conscious decision to break the law.
There is also a distinction to be drawn with undercover information gathering inside an organizations suspected of involvement in lawbreaking based on their past behavior.
"Grooming" specific individuals and providing resources such that the only overt acts are barroom boasting don't quite cut it.
Assuming prosecutors will retry the 2 with no verdict. Wild card would be either side calling the 2 acquitted. Double jeopardy protects truthful testimony. But knuckleheads probably have hard time there.
I agree with the remark that “there are problems in many parts of the US”. For sure, in every part of the US where our corrupt FBI casts its shadow, the problems they cause, along with those problems they ignore, are now well known and understood by many of us, maybe even most of us. Who will step forward to clean our Augean Stables? I don’t know who it will be, but that person is out here somewhee, and I hope they have a good broom.
Remember those crazy olden days when people on the Left were skeptical of organizations like the FBI and the CIA? Yeah, crazy times.
Of course, that was before the Left realized that they could simply capture those organizations and turn them into their own party enforcers.
And now the FBI understands the priorities that it must enforce. Stealing Nancy Pelosi’s lectern is akin to treason, while destroying downtown Kenosha is a reasonable form of peaceful protest.
And on a more granular level, perhaps juries are not so impressed with FBI methodology these days. That their procedures don’t include taping or filming interviews, but instead we are all supposed to rely on the written reports compiled by agents hours, days or even weeks after the interview. How is that best practices in the 21st-century? To any reasonable observer or a juror, that seems like a system that is ripe for exploitation and abuse. Perhaps even a system designed to facilitate chicanery?
So if they want to put people in federal prison, perhaps it’s time to reform the way that cases are investigated and prosecuted.
Althouse poster Douglas B. Levene in the running for "Hardest Hit", though gadfly, Howard and Freder will probably garner the top prize in a 3-way tie.
Another Jussie fake crime show put on for the fake news media. Coming attractions should be really exciting pre Mid-terms.
A reality where the Governor was not going to be kidnapped isn't welcomed by some.
The Left doesn't like the jury system when it doesn't go their way. The Left hates our constitution and country.
From what I recall, there was a solid entrapment defense.
Given the grand ignorance of commentators on the Rittenhouse case, not even understanding the basics of the case or even having a clue to what happened, I am not sure why I should care about Washington Post's comment feed on criminal trials. It appears their audience is composed of well-educated ignoramuses, ultra-partisans who need their daily talking points to know what to "think" today, and bots.
It is amusing to see members of the left now having unwavering faith in the FBI. But then again they have always been at war with Eastasia.
The trial in Grand Rapids, Mich. has been closely watched as a test of the U.S. government’s ramped-up efforts to pretend that there is domestic terrorism as an excuse to stomp on civil rights
fify!
The Government prosecutors are the bad guys, and the defense lawyers are the good guys !
The good guys are winning !!
=======
Maybe most of the jurors thought that kidnapping Governor Whitmer would have been a noble act -- not a crime at all.
"If your government are the ones instigating the domestic terrorism, then there is a problem
fify!
This was a very strange case, unusual for how far the FBI ventured into financing and encouraging this endeavor. It appears that the "plot" would not have existed in any form, nor progressed past some drunk guys bullshitting about the guvmint, unless and except for heavy FBI participation directly and through "associates." True, none of us here would have acted in such a manner, but none of us here listened to all the testimony, same as the WaPo top commenters, who are apparently unable to see the nuance and facts the same way the jury did.
Nullification? What's the evidence for that? Sounds as bullshitty as the plan itself.
The real concern for progressives is that this is a foreshadowing of the eventual outcome of all the J6 hysteria. The parallels are there for the seeing. Maybe if the FBI stopped trying to gin up plots against the government they'd have more time to stop the 2500 cyber attacks per hour that Corporate America has to endure, and more time to look into actual crimes. At this point I'm not sure why we should even have an FBI, because if they aren't actively breaking the law they are encouraging others to do so.
I have pity and a little scorn for those who feel a need to fantasize about violent revolution and what they perceive to be their heroic roles in sounding the alarm. There appears to be no shortage of these sad sack readers/commenters of the WaPo or NYT.
"If your peers are also sympathetic to domestic terrorism, then there is a problem."
Or maybe they don't agree with you on what's actual domestic terrorism. Maybe they see the government's hand in the creation of this mess.
This is what many Americans felt while watching Democrats fund and bail out BLM and Antifa terrorists who did actual damage, committed actual murder, and burned and looted actual businesses and homes. Including our current Speaker of the House and Vice President. To the tune of over a dozen lives and billions of dollars in damage. Some areas of the cities will take years to recover, if they ever do recover.
Our DoJ is a mess. A politically staffed mess that looks at it's own citizens as the enemy and the law as the tool with which to beat or incarcerate them. Change will be coming.
When "real life" approaches The Big Lebowski.
The Dude:... look, man, I've got certain information, all right? Certain things have come to light. And, you know, has it ever occurred to you, that, instead of, uh, you know, running around, uh, uh, blaming me, you know, given the nature of all this new shit, you know, I-I-I-I... this could be a-a-a-a lot more, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, complex, I mean, it's not just, it might not be just such a simple... uh, you know?
The Big Lebowski : What in God's holy name are you blathering about?
The Dude : I'll tell you what I'm blathering about... I've got information man! New shit has come to light! And shit... man,...
Link to The Big Lebowski scene
"Obviously there is a problem in many parts of the US."
Yep, ya got that right, pal. Problems abound when Democrats are in charge.
Hey FBI! Here's an earth-shattering idea: instead of trying to create crimes, see Whitmer and Jan. 6, how about trying to prevent and solve crimes? Brilliant!
WaPo commmenters are . . . different!
This is NOT like the Rittenhouse case. In Rittenhouse, the defendant asserted (successfully) that what he did was not illegal, it was self-defense. In this case (if I understand it correctly), the defendants assert that the Government, through their undercover agents, was the impetus, the driving force, behind the plot to do something which would otherwise be illegal.
"When even governors are not safe . . .". When governors behave imperiously, asserting pandemic-derived powers to control daily life that were previously unimagined, yes, people sometimes react rather harshly. The pandemic lockdown regime has caused a rash of suicides and rampant drug and alcohol abuse, so political violence is not that surprising. Don't play God with other people's lives, governors. It's not safe.
"Domestic terrorism" is an overplayed formulation. Along with "white supremacy" and "white nationalists." Readers of the WaPo have bought into too much of their gaslighting. Even the PTA is a bunch of domestic terrorists, if you believe our Attorney General Garland.
Why is the benefit of the doubt given to the government rather than the accused by these commenters?
Shouldn't the outrage be that if a jury acquitted these men, it was for good reason and the government has seriously overstepped its bounds?
The FBI does not serve the nation's best interests. It should be dismantled, and the ground salted.
Good Friday!
Didn't the jury saying the "violent plot" was on the part of the FBI?
A plot such that "[t]he men’s arrest in October 2020" was intended to "[raise] alarms about the possibility of politically-motivated violence as the nation was increasingly divided over a bitterly contested presidential race," and was timed just prior to the election in order to influence the outcome of that election?
"apparently agreeing to some degree", huh? Like, to the degree that they wondered why the FBI creeps weren't on trial, maybe? "We find the prosecution Guilty As Hell!"
Wapo/NYT Democrat Party aren't leftist. They are Liberal fascists. that is a correct description of them. Same with the WaPo comments.
I'm shocked all 4 men weren't found "Not guilty" given the FBI entrapment and prosecution misconduct. Of course, the jury might have been 1/3 libtard aka Liberal fascists.
"Jury nullification, just like Kyle Rittenhouse. When even governors aren't safe, our nation has a cancer"/"Hoo boy this country is in trouble"/"If your peers are also sympathetic to domestic terrorism, then there is a problem. Obviously there is a problem in many parts of the US."
The backlash is coming for these fascist shitheads.
It is going to be fun watching the executive branch twist and wither under the investigations.
Biden will probably resign before he dies.
Either way he will not be president in 2024.
The acquittal should surprise no one. The FBI does this shit all the time.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/29/politics/aby-rayyan-fbi-terror-sting-pizza-man/index.html
https://www.google.com/amp/s/fox11online.com/amp/news/state/mother-of-man-accused-in-shooting-plot-says-fbi-set-him-up
They find a group of losers essentially radicalize them and then arrest them. It's easier to manufacturer plots and stop them than it is to actually investigate real crimes.
The political left has a new religion. "Domestic Terrorism." This along with describing anyone who doesn't want World War III as a Russian sympathizer.
If someone wants to see a good explanation of Russian culture and mind set, Read this from someone who knows what he is writing about.
Comment from WaPoo: "When justice becomes political, there is no justice."
None of the January 6 detainees were available for comment. Some wanted to comment, but have been placed in solitary.
If this is the way special agents spend their time perhaps we have too many special agents.
You know, the FBI was so pleased with the asshole who cooked up and orchestrated this act of "domestic terrorism" that they brought him to DC in 2020 to manage their Jan 6 "insurrection".
"If this is the way special agents spend their time perhaps we have too many special agents."
Well, no, this isn't all they do. The agent in charge of this particular fiasco, Robert Trask, no longer works for the FBI. He got fired after being arrested for beating his wife after they got home from a wife-swapping party. It's not clear whether she did not enjoy the "party" enough to suit him, or maybe she enjoyed it too much, but when he got her home he smashed her face in. Hey, maybe you wouldn't hire him, but the FBI did.
From CTH: "Six total suspects were arrested of the group of 18 total plotters. Twelve of the eighteen were feds. Two men took a plea deal for lesser char,ges leaving four men to stand trial."
Twelve feds? That is an expensive operation by the FIBs with virtually nothing to show for it.
This FBI sting operation occured to hurt the Republicans and Trump during the election year 2020. The whole thing would NEVER have happened if the FBI assets hadn't planned and entrapped these men.
It was akin to meeting some loud mouth at a bar, blaring about how much they hate politican so and so. And then encouraging them to form a conspiracy, and helping them get weapons, and helping them plan the whole thing. It only became a Conspiracy because YOU created one. Without YOU = it would've remained bar talk.
Mike (MJB Wolf): "The real concern for progressives is that this is a foreshadowing of the eventual outcome of all the J6 hysteria. The parallels are there for the seeing."
As noted elsewhere:
The FBI agent in charge of the Detroit FBI field office (Feds involved in the Whitmer entrapment attempt), Michael D’Antuono, was promoted to the DC field office right after the Whitmer case and is now ‘handling’ the January 6 Capitol Riot cases.
Recall also how the FBI/DOJ conspired in 2016 in their Huttaree militia hoax which also collapsed in court....but not until long after the Corruptocrats had served their primary purpose: serving Democrats, and provided the dems/Hillary (of hoax dossier fame...sorry Freder/Inga) with a key hoax talking point during the 2016 campaign.
Have the 50 former intelligence officials checked in yet? Asking for a friend.
Comments like those are what happens when people are not allowed to say the truth because it might offend someone else. The left does not want truth, they want safe spaces where fantasy reigns. The commenters probably don't know the facts of the case and don't know civics. They simply want to impose their will on others and call it doing justice. They are hoping KJB will be the first of many SCJs that will begin to operate in this fashion.
Law enforcement agencies used to be the good guys.
At least that's what the propaganda led us to believe.
Now the default is every agency, especially every federal agency, is lying to you.
The FBI, the Democrat run Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice are all learning that credibility, like virginity, is, once lost impossible to recover.
Now certainly in the swamp and along the blue coasts, an average juror might find FBI testimony credible---out amongst the deplorables and flyower country not so much.
It is pretty simple- there were 18 people involved and 12 of them worked for the FBI. That fact alone would lead me to acquit on all the charges.
Regardless of the possible entrapment defense, one has to acknowledge that these alleged perps were basically idiots in terms of their planning, execution, and, above all, understanding operational security -- or lack thereof.
"When even governors aren't safe, our nation has a cancer"
Defund the FBI :)
These fucking Democrats. When they’re not grooming children, they’re killing the youngest in the womb.
When their FBI operatives aren’t initiating criminal conspiracies, they’re performing other misdeeds in their ongoing efforts to show how low what once was the nation’s premier law enforcement agency is willing to go.
One of the reasons I come to the Althouse blog (and a few other sites) is to hear others affirm and articulate my own views. Otherwise I'd go insane.
I grew up in a very liberal home. The skepticism and even hostility to the FBI, the CIA, and other agencies was palpable. But then my views began to change. Ironically, when I became a conservative, and developed a "limited government" perspective, those agencies became very respectable in my mind.
Remember the Beatles song "Dig It"? John Lennon blurting out, "And the FBI! And the CIA!" I grew up with that. But gradually I became more appreciative of these agencies' value to society. The people who worked there were the cream of the crop. We needed them.
The contempt I now have for virtually every agency of our government is a genuine surprise to me. I never expected this. The American government has become adversarial to regular people. And if I were on a jury, I would have a knee-jerk assumption that anyone from the FBI should be assumed to be lying, until proven otherwise. I consider it a very healthy development that these four men defeated the FBI's attempt to entrap them.
The "Ringleader" was a lonely unemployed guy who lived in the cellar of vaccum cleaner repair shop in Grand Rapids. He didn't have a toilet or running water.
The FBI asset sent him over 1,000 emails over the period of six months, and offered him a $5,000 credit cards (which were refused). This FBI asset was the guy's only real "Friend" in his life.
BTW, the prosecutors charged them with having "Weapons of Mass Destruction" - and they were found not guilty. Insane!
The X-Files showed us in the '90s that the FBI was hopelessly corrupt and compromised. Why didn't we listen?
The "Ringleader" was a lonely unemployed guy who lived in the cellar of vaccum cleaner repair shop in Grand Rapids. He didn't have a toilet or running water.
The FBI asset sent him over 1,000 emails over the period of six months, and offered him a $5,000 credit cards (which were refused). This FBI asset was the guy's only real "Friend" in his life.
BTW, the prosecutors charged them with having "Weapons of Mass Destruction" - and they were found not guilty. Insane!
The X-Files showed us in the '90s that the FBI was compromised and hopelessly corrupt. Why didn't we listen!?
R C Belaire: "Regardless of the possible entrapment defense, one has to acknowledge that these alleged perps were basically idiots in terms of their planning, execution, and, above all, understanding operational security -- or lack thereof."
Ridiculous comment.
The FBI hoaxers did ALL of the planning and execution while taking a few near autistic low IQ types along for the ride in order to corruptly support democratical electoral campaign narratives.
Get a clue R C.
I think of the two that agreed to a guilty plea to testify against the others, knowing not the screws were turning, bought into the America of our youth. What we were taught.
Anyone that still thinks guilty people plead guilty, guilty people "confess" is still living in the America we were told exists, or refused to come to grips with the fact America is the most corrupt country on Earth.
Not our laws or structure. The people in them. What makes them the "most" corrupt?
Because they still, with a straight face, insist we're the most fair and honest of all the lands. Knowing what sinister bastards they really are.
. Double jeopardy protects truthful testimony. But knuckleheads probably have hard time there.
Like the double jeopardy used on the Rodney King cops? Melanie Singer, the CHP officer who was about to shoot Rodney King when the LAPD arrived, testified against them at both trials then retired on "stress disability."
Rusty said...
If this is the way special agents spend their time perhaps we have too many special agents.
This is the FBI. Agents do what they're told.
They've been dong this for decades There's a reason there are so many "FBI" shows on tv. It's fucking propaganda.
Yes, in pains me to point this out, but I no longer choose to believe something I know isn't true just because I want to.
Andrew @5:31pm…
Well said, sir!
The FBI was part of the Clinton Russian Hoax. One of their lawyers forged a document used in the first FISA warrant. They knew by December 2016/January 2017 that there was no there there. They staged an interview with Mike Flynn as just a conversation and wrote on their Form 301s that Flynn had been honest with them. Then someone altered to forms to say the opposite. They ban the use of video cameras in interviews, that way they can lie about the interview results.
It's no surprise that they would create a plot to make Republicans and Donald Trump look bad. Just like they encouraged the J6 crowd to enter the Capital.
Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. Disband the FBI.
Dongs for decades, Browndog. No doubt!
Richard Jewell smiles.
"reasonable doubt" begins with the appearance of the prosecutor in the court room. No more is needed. Although the presence of fibbies reinforces it.
Whitmer-closet was a plausible, probable FBI collusion and cover-up of excess deaths at planned parent/hood facilities in several Democrat districts, including Michigan, New York, etc.
Do the WaPo(D) hiveminders understand any of the facts of the case?
For Starters:
The 4 men who were arrested for "the plot" - THEY DIDN'T KNOW EACH OTHER.
The FBI agents found these men separately...
One of the 4 men, was paid 60,000 to partake in their gatherings.
Temujin 3:08
"This is what many Americans felt while watching Democrats fund and bail out BLM and Antifa terrorists who did actual damage, committed actual murder, and burned and looted actual businesses and homes. Including our current Speaker of the House and Vice President. To the tune of over a dozen lives and billions of dollars in damage. Some areas of the cities will take years to recover, if they ever do recover.
Our DoJ is a mess. A politically staffed mess that looks at it's own citizens as the enemy and the law as the tool with which to beat or incarcerate them. Change will be coming."
REally worth a repeat and a bold.
Again -
The 4 men - they didn't know each other. The FBI thru them together. Paid one of them 60,000 dollars.
Your tax dollars at work.
No wonder these corrupt F-tards cannot get Putin.
Perhaps the defendants can procure professorships like Bill Ayers. Then one day they can host Obama in their living room.
I don't know about this case, but I remember a similar case in Pennsylvania in the 1990s where the men supposedly planned to blow up a dam or something but the jury left them off.
I was astonished, but my blue collar friends just laughed and said the guys were just good old boys who liked to spout off at the mouth, and got trapped.
Another comment to me was that most of the guys knew if a person at a bar came up to them and started trying to get them interested in something like this, that it was probably the FBI, so apparently other men had similarly been approached.
As for entrapment: I suspect the Muslim community could tell similar stories.
That is some echo chamber they have going.
Planning to watch the 2020 documentary MLK/FBI this weekend. Suspect it won't leave me feeling warm and fuzzy about the Bureau.
Here is the thing: a couple of loopy losers affiliated with the militia movement blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. They killed 168 innocent people. One of them, Tim McVeigh, grew up in rural surroundings in NY and MI and sought revenge for the Waco Branch Davidian incident and the Ruby Ridge deaths.
We can understand that the way to glory in the FBI is to head off the next version of the Oklahoma City bombing or something similar. Will glory-seeking FBI agents entice loopy losers to commit obvious crimes in the name of a higher justice? Will the FBI entrap them? Well, what do you think?
The Great Whitmer Kidnap Plot is a monument to FBI careerism and stupidity.
As for entrapment: I suspect the Muslim community could tell similar stories.
Has any Muslim every been charged with conspiracy led by federal agents?
Good day for freedom, I’d say.
Extraordinary difficulty trying to post here last night. Blogger... much OOPS!
Whitmer was "going places" in the DNC. Maybe now, back to private life.
Now on to the infiltrated fake insurrection and the political prisoners still rotting in Joes DC gulag. Time to defund the FBI which is the Gestapo of the Progressive party now.
Best short-term solution is to automatically vote to acquit in any fed case. Can't be too careful.
Or possibly bench trials as with the one where the visitor was acquitted, or the Freddy Gray cases in Baltimore.
There is nothing wrong with jury nullification.
In fact, the jury exists precisely in order to nullify, in order to be a check on the government's prosecutor.
If the jury existed merely as a finder of fact, they could use computers or "experts."
Every once in a while, a leftist (it's always a leftist) accuses Althouse of being a crypto member of the right, because of her commentariat.
If this is a fair criticism, is it fair to also characterize the Washington Post as being crypto rabid left-wing hacks, like their commentariat?
Just asking questions here: I think I know the answers I would get.
1. The local lefty trolls will find the WP comments to be entirely sane and sensible.
2. The majority of Althouse readers will be confirmed in their notion that the WP panders to unhinged leftists.
To paraphrase Johnny Cochrane, "If the entrapment is shit, the jury must acquit."
Ray Epps, on film telling people to "go into the capitol" -explicitly- over and over again - as if on a mission. the left's cover story is that he is a registered republican. LOL.
zero journalistic curiosity from NBC affiliates or Stephen 105 million(D) Colbert.
Ray Epps, on film telling people to "go into the capitol" -explicitly- over and over again - as if on a mission. the left's cover story is that he is a registered republican. LOL.
zero journalistic curiosity from NBC affiliates or Stephen 105 million(D) Colbert.
Has any Muslim every been charged with conspiracy led by federal agents?
Is this a joke? Do a Google search because yes. I would bet most of the "terror plots" that the FBI boast about where plans they made, shopped around to lonely losers, and then "prevented" the attack. Of course, the media tone and coverage might be a bit different:
https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/29/politics/aby-rayyan-fbi-terror-sting-pizza-man/index.html
Here's one from Milwaukee:
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2019/10/22/entrapment-defense-center-trial-over-mass-shooting-plot/4012247002/
The FBI apparently loves to set up pizza delivery guys. I feel so much safer.
That lefties would be so surprised at the verdicts in this case just show brainwashed they are by watching only lefty news. They obviously don’t know the facts in the cases.
This is a very high profile case for the FBI and DOJ and the verdicts are a total humiliation of them. It also undercuts their policy of calling white supremicists the greatest threat for domestic terrorism when the jury does not even find the poster boys committed any crimes. Makes one wonder how many in that infamous FBI file of dangerous domestic extremists are similarly miscast by the FBI.
MLK FBI files release scheduled for 2027. What could go wrong?
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