“Thank you to the fearless FBI agents,” said Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer at a press conference on October 8, 2020, shortly after it came to light that a group of 14 knuckleheads calling themselves the Wolverine Watchmen had been busted by the feds for plotting to kidnap her.

We wonder, though: Would Whitmer still thank those “fearless FBI agents” if she knew that at no time was she ever in danger, and that the FBI itself was driving the plot to kidnap her? Because that’s the truth.

According to the state, the would-be kidnappers decided to plot against Whitmer because of her oppressive — and, as it turns out, deeply hypocritical — COVID lockdown policies. Six of them were charged in connection with the plot, and one of those six, 26-year-old Ty Garbin, has already pleaded guilty and been sentenced to six years in prison. Garbin is expected to testify against his fellow plotters. In addition, the state has charged eight others with aiding a terrorist plot.

The group’s lawyers claim that FBI agents and federal prosecutors invented a conspiracy and entrapped their clients. So far, though, their claims have fallen on deaf ears. As The Detroit News reports: “A federal judge Tuesday refused to dismiss the indictment against five members of an alleged plot to kidnap and kill Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, calling defense claims of entrapment and government overreaching a ‘heavy burden to carry.’ U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker filed his order less than two months before the five men are scheduled to stand trial on kidnapping conspiracy and weapons of mass destruction charges that could send them to federal prison for up to life.”

Up to life in prison? Really? For the crime of — what? — being gullible enough to let some overzealous FBI agents push them toward a criminal conspiracy that the feds themselves had concocted? Since when does being duped by the FBI warrant a life sentence? As Reason’s Robby Soave notes:

The government’s case against these 14 alleged extremists relies on work done by at least a dozen government informants and undercover FBI agents whose extensive involvement in the plot calls into question whether it would have moved forward at all without the government’s prodding. Some of these government actors took lead roles in organizing the supposed plot — one of the informants was even paid $54,000 by the FBI for roughly six months of subterfuge.

The recipient of that FBI largesse, an Iraq War vet and postal worker named “Big Dan,” had alerted the feds to the anti-cop and anti-government discussions of the Wolverine Watchmen Facebook group he’d stumbled upon. After agreeing to become an FBI informant — one of as many at least 12 in the case, as well as several undercover agents — he then went on to train the other men in military tactics and led two separate trips to surveil Whitmer’s northern Michigan vacation home.

So that’s “Big Dan.” As for his FBI handler, an agent named Jayson Chambers, he has credibility problems of his own. It seems Williams had a side hustle going during the investigation — an effort to build a security consulting business. Talk about a conflict of interest. The more sensational the plot he foils, the better the case study for his consulting services.

Yet another government informant, a 58-year-old dirtbag named Stephen Robeson, has a rap sheet of felonies and other crimes dating back to the 1980s, and defense attorneys say it was Robeson who first suggested kidnapping the Michigan governor. Even The New York Times is troubled by the FBI’s strange bedfellows. Robeson, they report, has become so toxic that prosecutors want to bar some of his recorded statements from the trial.

If you don’t think this case could be any more troublesome, think again. As Soave writes: “The government’s star witness, FBI Agent Robert Trask, was fired by the agency after beating his wife following an orgy at a swingers party. Suffice it to say, it’s very hard to tell the cops from the criminals in this matter.”

What we have here, then, is a kidnapping plot that never materialized — a plot that appears to have been hatched and driven by FBI agents and their informants. Taken together with the bureau’s rigged investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server, its disgraceful conduct in the Russia collusion hoax, its willful inaction regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop, and its still mysterious role in the events of January 6, two things have become crystal clear: The FBI isn’t what it used to be, and Rule of Law is the worse for it.