Rogue Agency, by Julie Kelly

Shared hotel rooms. Fake militias. Booze and pot. Planted evidence. Phony bomb makers. Criminal FBI informants. Wife-beating wife-swappers.

No, that’s not the latest iteration of the “X Files” but the real-life drama of the FBI-concocted scheme to “kidnap” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. The better-than-television saga is again unfolding in a Grand Rapids courtroom this month as the Department of Justice retries two men charged with conspiring to kidnap Whitmer right before the 2020 presidential election.

In April, prosecutors failed to win a single conviction in one of the government’s biggest domestic terror investigations in decades. A jury acquitted two men—Brandon Caserta and Daniel Harris—on every count after defense attorneys successfully argued their clients were entrapped by the FBI.

The jury did not reach a verdict for two other men; Adam Fox, the alleged ringleader of the plot, and Barry Croft now face a second trial as prosecutors desperately attempt to save face just as the DOJ’s credibility is cratering. (Two other defendants pleaded guilty and are witnesses for the government.)

Shocking headlines in October 2020 blared the alleged details of the conspiracy: white supremacists tied to local militias loyal to Donald Trump planned to abduct Whitmer from her summer cottage and possibly kill her, the public was told. The day after several men were arrested in an FBI sting, Whitmer claimed her life had been endangered and Trump was to blame. ”When our leaders meet with, encourage, or fraternize with domestic terrorists, they legitimize their actions and they are complicit,” Whitmer said in a video message on October 8, 2020. “When they stoke and contribute to hate speech, they are complicit.”

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris frequently mentioned the kidnapping plot on the stump in the final weeks of the 2020 campaign as evidence as to why the president was unfit for office; news outlets gave the plot wall-to-wall coverage.

Reporting on the kidnapping story fizzled after Election Day. And after BuzzFeed (yes BuzzFeed) published a bombshell investigation exposing the FBI’s deep involvement, including the use of at least a dozen undercover FBI agents and informants, interest in the story among once-enraged politicians and journalists evaporated.

But that didn’t stop defense attorneys representing six men facing federal kidnapping charges from digging into what really happened. And what they uncovered is one of the most egregious cases of FBI entrapment and election interference in the bureau’s history. “The government’s agents actively planned and coordinated its efforts to induce the defendants to engage in incriminating behavior and statements, even going so far as designing the objective and structural components of the conspiracy alleged in the indictment,” defense attorneys wrote.

Anatomy of a Plot

Starting in March 2020, the FBI hired an informant named Dan Chappel, an Iraq war veteran and U.S. Postal Service truck driver reportedly alarmed by social media chatter related to Michigan’s harsh pandemic lockdowns. Working under the nickname “Big Dan,” he stitched the muddled group together over a period of a few months. His primary target was Adam Fox, at the time living in the dilapidated cellar of a vacuum repair shop without running water or a toilet in a Grand Rapids strip mall.

“Big Dan” visited Fox and others at their homes, took them out to eat, and drove them to various excursions in the Midwest while secretly recording every interaction. He talked to Fox, who viewed Chappel as a father figure since he had none, on a daily basis, sometimes several times a day. On a few occasions, Chappel offered Fox a credit card with a $5,000 limit to buy firearms, ammunition, or other supplies needed for the kidnapping plot, Chappel testified this week, but Fox declined each time.

At one meeting, Chappel proposed shooting rounds into the official mansions of several governors, including Whitmer. He also suggested firing bullets into Whitmer’s vacation cottage and making it look like a hunting accident.

None of his targets took the bait.

His main FBI handlers, Jayson Chambers and Henrik Impola, working out of the Detroit FBI field office, directed Chappel’s every move. In the summer of 2020, Chambers advised Chappel to lure a man in Virginia to plan a similar operation against Governor Ralph Northam. “Mission is to kill the governor specifically,” Chambers instructed Chappel.

For about seven months’ work, the FBI paid Chappel about $60,000 in cash and prizes including a smart watch, a laptop computer, and new tires for his vehicle. In December 2020, a few months after the men were arrested, the FBI handed Chappel $23,540 in cash as a bonus for a mission accomplished.

Sparing no expense, the FBI deployed numerous assets to assist Chappel. Another FBI informant, a man named Steve Robeson, pretended to head the Wisconsin chapter of the Patriot Three Percenters, a fake militia created by the FBI. Robeson made Fox the head of the Michigan chapter of the imaginary group. (Chappel was later sworn in as commanding officer of the FBI’s bogus militia, which had a corresponding Facebook page also created by the FBI.) “His role within the investigation has ranged from arranging meetings and providing conference rooms to coordinating [field training] for the defendants to attend, and transporting weapons, defendants and explosives across the country,” defense attorneys wrote in March 2022. “Robeson is a, or in most cases the only, direct link that the defendants have to the alleged conspiracy because of his actions, coordination, and planning on behalf of the government.”

The week after nationwide rioting in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, Robeson hosted a national “militia” conference in suburban Columbus on June 6, 2020 and invited Fox and Croft to attend; the FBI leveraged rage over the Floyd riots and lockdowns to induce the defendants to make inflammatory comments and threats which were recorded and fed in real time to the FBI. Robeson hosted field training camps in Wisconsin, gatherings in Ohio and Delaware later that summer, and a surveillance trip to Whitmer’s upstate Michigan vacation cottage in September.

Everything was paid for by the FBI.

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