The Patriot Post® · Whitmer Kidnapping Entrapment Case Goes Up in Smoke

What a relief it is that Attorney General Merrick Garland has made “domestic terrorism” an investigative priority within the Biden Justice Department. Otherwise, master criminals and violent extremists like the Whitmer kidnapping plotters would be running around loose.

Oh, wait.

On Friday, at the Gerald R. Ford Federal Courthouse in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the largest and highest-profile domestic terrorism trial in decades ended with exactly zero convictions. The result was a resounding slap in the face to the partisan zealots, political stooges, and easily manipulable milquetoasts on the seventh floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, which houses what was once the premier investigative and law enforcement agency in the world.

We get no pleasure in saying it, given that thousands of FBI agents and employees do their jobs faithfully and honorably, but the bureau is infected at the very top and has been for years. Comey, McCabe, Strzok — these are the types of Democrats we now see in high places of law enforcement, and they remind us that a fish rots from the head. Thankfully, the jury saw through it.

After 20 days of trial for four defendants alleged to have plotted the kidnapping of Michigan Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the jury acquitted two men of all charges and failed to reach a verdict on the charges against the other two. Federal prosecutors say they’ll retry the latter pair of defendants, but it’s hard to imagine them securing a conviction the second time around, especially given what we know about the FBI’s well-documented efforts to entrap the alleged plotters.

“Obviously we’re disappointed with the outcome,” said U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge, who didn’t have much of anything else to say.

Think about this: More than a dozen FBI agents and informants had infiltrated this group, and all they could get were two earlier plea deals, two hung juries, and two outright acquittals. Your tax dollars at work.

What all this tells us is that without the FBI’s extensive involvement, and without its continuous prodding and pushing, the plot never would’ve moved forward at all. As for those two who caved to prosecutorial pressure, copped plea deals, and testified against their co-defendants, what must they be thinking now?

“I think what the FBI did is unconscionable,” said defense attorney Michael Hills. “And I think the jury just sent them a message loud and clear that [they’re] not going to condone what they’ve done here.”

The case has been beset by scandal from the beginning, given that the arrests were made less than a month before the 2020 election. As usual, the mainstream media — whether through laziness or malevolence — made the Left’s best and most damning case right at the onset, while the rest took up the far tougher task of digging for the whole truth. That whole truth included the aforementioned charges of entrapment, the huge cash payments to some of the bureau’s informants, and the charging of the FBI’s lead agent, Richard Trask, for domestic violence.

As we noted at the beginning of the trial, this case seemed far less like one of wild-eyed domestic terrorists and far more like a politically trumped-up case in which a disparate bunch of misfits and knuckleheads were entrapped by an overzealous and politically motivated FBI.

But this wasn’t just a case of entrapment. As investigative journalist Julie Kelly noted, this was election interference. “Wall-to-wall headlines blaming Trump for the Whitmer plot coincided with early voting across the country,” she writes, “including an unprecedented volume of mail-in ballots. It’s impossible to know how the coverage, including Whitmer’s nonstop publicity tour and Biden’s campaign temper tantrums on the subject, influenced voters in swing states such as her own.”

Remember: This is the same disgracefully partisan bureau that wanted you to believe Trump’s Russia collusion was real and Hunter’s laptop was fake.

Once again, it’s time to investigate the investigators.