One of the leaders of a foiled 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and kick off a partisan civil war has been sentenced to nearly 20 years in federal prison, with prosecutors describing defendant Barry Croft as akin to a terrorist leader.
“He’s the spiritual leader of this group, this movement, the same way some sheikh in ISIS might be,” federal prosecutor Nils Kessler told a Michigan court on Wednesday, the New York Timesreports.
The plotter was sentenced to 19 years and 7 months in prison, the longest federal sentence of those arrested in the conspiracy.
Croft, a truck driver from Delaware, made frequent trips to the Midwest to train and plot with Wolverine Watchmen, a self-styled militia group seeking to kidnap and potentially execute Ms Whitmer in protest of her Covid policies, as well as blow up infrastructure to stop officials from rescuing her.
Defence lawyer Joshua Blanchard argued Croft, a father, was struggling with mental illness and sobriety at the time of the plot, eventually falling “conspiracy rabbit hole,” but had changed his ways.
“The government has painted a picture, perhaps fairly, of Mr. Croft as a radical in the time leading up to the summer of 2020. He’s said some horrible, awful things. But I can tell the court a sober Mr. Croft finds those things difficult to listen to,” Mr Blanchard said in court on Wednesday, the Washington Post reports.
Federal Judge Robert Jonker declined to give the Delaware man the life sentence that prosecutors were seeking, noting that the plot, foiled by FBI informants, never came to fruition or lead to any people or infrastructure being harmed.
Croft’s anti-government views appear to have persisted despite the prosecution against him.
In an interview with a YouTuber from prison the night before his sentencing, the Delaware man said America was now a “police state” and “a stone’s throw away from communists,” Insider reports.
"I love my people," Croft said in the interview. "I’m not a domestic terrorist. I never had any intentions of taking violent actions against anybody American, but you know it is important that Americans wake up. It is important that they see the writing on the wall."
The day before Croft’s sentencing, fellow plotter Adam Fox was given 16 years in prison.
