The DOJ’s new pardon attorney said he is going to take a “hard look” at two men who are serving long prison terms for leading a conspiracy to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
“On the pardon front, we can’t leave these guys behind,” Ed Martin Jr. said.
“In my opinion these are victims just like January 6. I have complete confidence that we’re going to get a hard look at it. The president will want to know the facts about it,” Martin said, pledging to “get on it as quick as I can, I promise.”
Barry Croft Jr. and Adam Fox, considered the leaders of a team of extremists plotting to grab Whitmer at her vacation home and start a civil war, are being held at a prison in Colorado — the most secure in the federal system.
Fox, 40, was convicted on conspiracy charges and was sentenced to 16 years.
Croft Jr., 49, was convicted in federal court on conspiracy and weapons charges, and was sentenced to almost 20 years.
In April an appeals court affirmed their convictions in a 3-0 ruling after defense lawyers argued that an entrapment case was weakened by the rulings of a trial judge in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Martin called it a “fed-napping” plot, not a kidnapping plot, referring to the theory that numerous FBI agents and informants worked on the case to entrap the group, and called it the “weaponization of government.”
In 2020, 13 men were charged by state and federal authorities connected to the kidnapping plot.
- Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, both pled guilty to conspiracy charges and cooperated with prosecutors in the other federal trials. Garbin was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison. Franks was ordered to serve 4years.
