The Whitmer Kidnapping Was a Setup

Michael Null (L) takes part in the American Patriot Rally, organized by Michigan United for Liberty, to demand the reopening of businesses on the steps of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, on April 30, 2020.
JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images

The Whitmer Kidnapping Was a Setup

A jury in Michigan agrees that the fbi was not looking to catch criminals as much as it was looking to recruit criminals. Was the same strategy used by the same agency on Jan. 6, 2021?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is supposed to uphold “fidelity, bravery and integrity,” as its motto says. Instead, G-men at the Bureau are manipulating citizens into perpetrating crimes in order to further the agenda of radical Democrats. On April 8, a jury in a federal district court rendered its verdict on two of the four men charged with conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer: not guilty.

The fbi initially charged 13 militiamen with plotting to kidnap Whitmer in retaliation for her covid-19 lockdown orders. But examinations of the case by BuzzFeed News and others showed that numerous fbi informants and agents did more than passively observe these militiamen. Instead, they infiltrated the Wolverine Watchmen militia and orchestrated nearly every aspect of the alleged kidnapping plot.

After deliberating for a week, jurors found no evidence of a concrete plan to abduct the governor. Rather, Brandon Caserta, Barry Croft, Adam Fox and Daniel Harris were drawn into heated political conversations by fbi undercover agents and said some things about Whitmer that they now regret. The jury officially acquitted Caserta and Harris and reached no unanimous verdict against Croft and Fox. The judge declared a mistrial, and Croft and Fox will likely face a new trial.

“The outcome of the trial is a stunning rebuke to the prosecution,” wrote BuzzFeed’s Ken Bensinger on April 8. “The split verdict calls into question the Justice Department’s strategy, and beyond that, its entire approach to combating domestic extremism. Defense attorneys in the case, along with observers from across the political spectrum, have argued the fbi’s efforts to make the case, which involved at least a dozen confidential informants, went beyond legitimate law enforcement and into outright entrapment. … As much as Fox, Croft, Harris and Caserta were on trial, so were the fbi and the Department of Justice.”

The militiamen on trial here are not necessarily American heroes. But what is far more significant, as that quote highlights, is the way the federal government manipulated these men and the much larger political goals it was trying to achieve by entrapping them.

The fbi and the Department of Justice provided the group with organization, finances, logistics and encouragement to carry out a kidnapping plot that otherwise likely would have remained idle talk. Then, when those men took action, fbi agents arrested them. But they weren’t just springing a trap on this group.

The arrests came at an interesting moment: less than a month before the 2020 presidential election. It was what you might call an October surprise, something that emerges long enough before the election to influence voters but not so long that they begin to forget about it. In this case, it was a deliberate attempt to link Wolverine Watchmen-types to everyday Americans who oppose Whitmer’s dictatorial-style lockdowns. It was an attempt to portray everyday Americans who care about the Constitution as possible kidnappers.

Whitmer immediately jumped on the opportunity. She tried to link the plot to the rhetoric of President Donald Trump.

Corporate media commentators also proclaimed the arrests to be proof that Trump supporters and lockdown skeptics are dangerous white supremacists.

It is amazing that the true details of this case came out at all.

Federal prosecutors presented audio clips, videos and text messages showing the defendants describing violence they would personally like to inflict on Whitmer. Many of those sentiments are, obviously, imprudent and immoral.

But what matters more is that the government systematically hid evidence and witnesses that might undermine the arguments of the prosecution. They did not want any of the militiamen’s shocking statements put into context, so defense attorneys had to work extra hard to show their clients were just loudmouth, anti-lockdown cranks who did not really intend to hurt anyone.

To their credit, journalists like Bensinger, defense attorneys like Michael Hills and, ultimately, the members of the jury saw through the federal prosecutors’ deception. But the Department of Justice came dangerously close to entrapping Caserta, Croft, Fox and Harris with its agents, then convicting them with its prosecutors, all for the sake of weakening support for President Trump prior to the election.

The Department of Justice, which includes the fbi, is one of the most powerful institutions in this country. It has a history of using its extensive power to investigate and, frequently, to entrap its targets. For more than a century, Americans have tried to keep it from exceeding its authority and violating the constitutional rights of citizens: Those efforts are now failing. The doj and the fbi have become perhaps more powerful than ever, more partisan than ever and more willing to violate the Constitution than ever.

Some have said that the fbi infiltration and entrapment of the Wolverine Watchmen could have been a “dress rehearsal” for its infiltration (and entrapment) of Trump supporters at the Capitol on January 6.

According to Revolver News, the fbi infiltrated three of the militia groups at the Capitol Hill protests—the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters—in a similar way to how it infiltrated the Wolverine Watchman. That means many of the January 6 protesters languishing in prison might have been entrapped in a similar way to Caserta and Harris. Who can forget Ray Epps, the fbi asset caught on video shouting to a crowd of Trump supporters that they should not just protest outside the Capitol but make their way inside. Some of the Trump supporters around him, booed him and immediately began chanting, “Fed, fed, fed!” Epps and others were apparently using the same strategy as the fbi agents in Michigan: manipulate people into committing a crime for a larger political goal.

The Oath Keepers were led by Stewart Rhodes during the Capitol protests. The Proud Boys were led by Enrique Tarrio until just prior. Both men are fbi assets. It is not a stretch to think that the fbi could have orchestrated the violence on that day.

Bensinger wrote in a recent update on the Whitmer case: “There was evidence of informants and fbi agents discussing ways to lure more suspects into the case, and extensive audio of defendants discussing absurd schemes involving stolen Blackhawk helicopters, 300-strong armies, and newly minted silver currencies that the defense believed showed the men were simply fantasizing.” Did you catch that? fbi agents were looking for ways to “lure more suspects into the case.” This wasn’t about preventing crime but accentuating and even instigating it. They were looking to recruit criminals, just like Ray Epps was doing.

The Whitmer case was a weapon to try to influence the election. When voters still cast their ballots for Donald Trump, radical liberals had to commit massive fraud to steal the election in real time. When many Americans sensed that Joe Biden winning 81 million votes (the most in American history and 11.8 million more than Barack Obama at his peak) was a lie, the radicals had a plan to force it through regardless.

As protesters gathered in Washington ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, to protest the joint session of Congress that would certify the election, a plan was in place for 100 members of Congress to object to that certification in the six swing states where the election was decided and where evidence of fraud had been reported. But when part of the Capitol Hill protest turned violent, they changed their minds.

If fbi assets posing as Proud Boys and Oath Keepers had anything to do with the violence at this protest, then the agency pulled off a coup d’état using the same techniques it used to entrap Caserta, Harris and the Wolverine Watchmen.

Anyone should be able to tell that the Wolverine Watchmen do not represent most Trump supporters. But the radical left is trying to stir up such groups, even painting them as more dangerous than they are, in order to smear Trump and his supporters. After January 6, the leftists in politics and the corporate media have fought investigations of voter fraud by slurring people as insurrectionists.

“[T]he unspoken truth is that Donald Trump had nothing to gain and everything to lose by the violent assault on the Capitol that day,” wrote Frank Miele at RealClearPolitics. “The only chance of keeping Trump in the White House was not by invading the Capitol, but by keeping it secure while our representatives debated the validity of the election using the entirely constitutional process taking place inside the halls of Congress. … So ask yourself who benefited from the supposed coup at the Capitol. Not Trump. Not the Republicans who had put themselves on the line to support him with evidence of voting irregularities in several states. Cui bono? Who benefits? None other than the very Democrats who for the last year have worked tirelessly to discredit Trump and to find some way to disqualify him from being elected president again in 2024.”

You can’t argue with that logic. Radical Democrats painted Donald Trump as a joke, slandered him as a white supremacist, went ballistic when he won in 2016, used government agencies to spy on him before and after he became president, raided his lawyer, launched a 22-month investigation into “Russian collusion,” resisted every policy he promoted, impeached him for a phone call with the president of Ukraine, impeached him again one week before his first term ended, and warned that he would refuse to leave the White House. Yet no evidence came forth for Russian collusion, abuse of power, obstruction of Congress, or incitement of insurrection. And on Jan. 20, 2021, President Trump left the White House—exactly as they said he wouldn’t.

The Democrats were the ones who had everything to gain from stirring up violence at President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6. We know there were fbi agents at that rally, and now we know that the fbi was entrapping people in militia groups like the Wolverine Watchmen prior to the election. This type of “deep state” involvement in the election steal shows just how much resistance Trump and his supporters face today.

In “What Will Happen After Trump Regains Power,” my father, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry, explained that President Trump was truly the legitimate winner of the 2020 election. He further explained that the Bible prophesies that Trump will return to power, because he is an end-time type of King Jeroboam ii. Yet this will not be easy. He “will have to fight for it,” my father wrote. “It doesn’t have to be military action, but it certainly could. President Trump could also lead some states to secede from the union.”

This astonishing forecast is based on an end-time Bible prophecy. “For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter: for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel. And the Lord said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven: but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash. Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, and all that he did, and his might, how he warred, and how he recovered Damascus, and Hamath, which belonged to Judah, for Israel, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?” (2 Kings 14:26-28).

Many think that Donald Trump can regain office by running again in 2024. Yet the level of fbi involvement in the Whitmer kidnapping scandal and January 6 insurrection hoax shows that things will not be that simple. President Trump is going to have to fight against impossible odds to return to the presidency that is rightfully his. God promises to restore stability to the U.S.—temporarily. For what purpose? To give people one last chance to repent of the sins that have allowed such corruption to take deep root in America!