GOP Crime Blotter
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A man who prosecutors said had planned to travel from Delaware to Michigan to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer at her vacation home and possibly assassinate her was sentenced on Wednesday to 19 years and seven months in prison, less than the life term that prosecutors requested.
The man, Barry Croft, a truck driver who had spoken of wanting to foment civil war and had traveled repeatedly to the Midwest for training and planning sessions in the months before his arrest, was the last of the men convicted in federal court to learn his prison term. Judge Robert J. Jonker of the Federal District Court in Western Michigan delivered his sentence just four days before Ms. Whitmer, a Democrat, was scheduled to be sworn in for a second term as governor.
In court on Wednesday, Nils Kessler, a federal prosecutor, told the judge that Mr. Croft provided the ideological impetus for the plot, and that his conduct was similar in many ways to the actions of foreign terrorists.
“He’s the spiritual leader of this group, this movement, the same way some sheikh in ISIS might be,” Mr. Kessler said. Later, he added that “what ISIS or Al Qaeda calls a mujahedeen, he calls a patriot.”
Barring a successful appeal, Mr. Croft’s sentencing brings an end to one of the most closely watched federal domestic terror prosecutions in recent history, though some men accused of related crimes in state court are still awaiting trial.
Since Mr. Croft and his co-defendants were arrested more than two years ago, during the tense run-up to the 2020 presidential election, the case has been seen by many as an example of the rising threat of right-wing domestic terrorism. Those concerns became more tangible a few months after the arrests, when supporters of Donald J. Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol and tried to block the certification of that election.
