Three men on trial for state charges related to the FBI entrapment scheme acquitted Friday on all counts by a Michigan jury.
In another blow to the FBI’s concocted plot to kidnap and assassinate Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, a jury in Antrim County today acquitted three men indicted on state charges for their alleged role in the scheme.
Michael and William Null, twin brothers, and Eric Molitor were found not guilty of providing material support for an act of terrorism and unlawful possession of firearms. Jurors began deliberations Thursday afternoon following a 14-day trial before Judge Charles Hamlyn.
The verdicts represent the second time a jury has acquitted individuals charged in the FBI-orchestrated plot. In April 2022, a Grand Rapids jury acquitted Daniel Harris, Jr. and Brandon Caserta on federal kidnapping and weapons charges. The jury hung on the remaining defendants, Adam Fox and Barry Croft, Jr.; both were convicted after a second trial in August 2022. (Two co-defendants pleaded guilty and testified for the government at both trials.)
During the course of the federal proceedings, defense attorneys uncovered an elaborate entrapment scheme that involved dozens of FBI informants, supervising agents, and undercover employees. “In this Case, the undisputed evidence…establishes that government agents and informants concocted, hatched, and pushed this ‘kidnapping plan’ from the beginning, doing so against defendants who explicitly repudiated the plan,” defense attorneys wrote in the December 25, 2021 motion. “When the government was faced with evidence showing that the defendants had no interest in a kidnapping plot, it refused to accept failure and continued to push its plan. The government’s exploitation of its virtually unlimited resources, poured into its investigation, further underscores entrapment as a matter of law.”
FBI agents and informants organized meetings and excursions including “reconnaissance” trips to Whitmer’s summer cottage, the scene of the fabricated crime; purchased food and alcohol for their targets; invented a “militia” group led by a longtime FBI informant; created encrypted group chats to fuel conversations about the kidnapping plot; and recorded their targets under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. “Collectively, the first three informants were directly involved in every aspect of this case, every meeting, every [field training exercise] and every significant event from the day the investigation commenced in March of 2020 until the Defendant’s arrests [sic] on October 7, 2020,” a defense attorney wrote in a February 2022 motion.
FBI agents and informants organized meetings and excursions including “reconnaissance” trips to Whitmer’s summer cottage, the scene of the fabricated crime; purchased food and alcohol for their targets; invented a “militia” group led by a longtime FBI informant; created encrypted group chats to fuel conversations about the kidnapping plot; and recorded their targets under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. “Collectively, the first three informants were directly involved in every aspect of this case, every meeting, every [field training exercise] and every significant event from the day the investigation commenced in March of 2020 until the Defendant’s arrests [sic] on October 7, 2020,” a defense attorney wrote in a February 2022 motion.
By Julie Kelly
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