Analysis by Joe Schaeffer
The truth is starting to fully emerge about the always-suspicious alleged plot to kidnap Michigan's authoritarian leftist Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last year. Arrests were made less than one month before the 2020 presidential election and duly hyped to the skies by big-box media outlets.
As many suspected all along, the entire affair appears to be another case of massive entrapment by a rogue Federal Bureau of Investigation that creates more domestic terrorists today than any other radical organization in America.
Thirteen men were arrested on Oct. 8, 2020 in the nefarious scheme to nab Whitmer. A lengthy article at progressive BuzzFeed News details the extent of the FBI’s dominant role within this small group of would-be homegrown terrorists:
For six months, the Iraq War vet had been wearing a wire, gathering hundreds of hours of recordings. He wasn’t the only one. A biker who had traveled from Wisconsin to join the group was another informant. The man who’d advised them on where to put the explosives — and offered to get them as much as the task would require — was an undercover FBI agent. So was a man in one of the other cars who said little and went by the name Mark.
BuzzFeed emphasizes that a lot more than eavesdropping was going on here:
An examination of the case by BuzzFeed News also reveals that some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported. Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.
A longtime government informant from Wisconsin, for example, helped organize a series of meetings around the country where many of the alleged plotters first met one another and the earliest notions of a plan took root, some of those people say. The Wisconsin informant even paid for some hotel rooms and food as an incentive to get people to come.
The Iraq War vet, for his part, became so deeply enmeshed in a Michigan militant group that he rose to become its second-in-command, encouraging members to collaborate with other potential suspects and paying for their transportation to meetings. He prodded the alleged mastermind of the kidnapping plot to advance his plan, then baited the trap that led to the arrest.
A longtime government informant from Wisconsin, for example, helped organize a series of meetings around the country where many of the alleged plotters first met one another and the earliest notions of a plan took root, some of those people say. The Wisconsin informant even paid for some hotel rooms and food as an incentive to get people to come.
The Iraq War vet, for his part, became so deeply enmeshed in a Michigan militant group that he rose to become its second-in-command, encouraging members to collaborate with other potential suspects and paying for their transportation to meetings. He prodded the alleged mastermind of the kidnapping plot to advance his plan, then baited the trap that led to the arrest.
The publication also noted the massive amounts of money the FBI spends on informers:
Between 2012 and 2018, the FBI spent an average of $42 million a year on payments to confidential informants, which it officially calls confidential human sources, according to a recent audit of the program by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
One of the informants in the Whitmer ring, a man called “Dan,” was generously compensated for his part in the production:
The grand total for his seven months of work, including reimbursement for expenses, was $54,793.95, considerably more than most families in Dan’s part of Michigan bring home in a year.
What is so remarkable about these findings is how precisely they mirror previous actions by the FBI in its war against American citizens in the name of uncovering “domestic terrorists.”
John W. Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute wrote the following about the bureau in 2016. His remarks read like a play-by-play account of the Whitmer charade:
One method to the agency’s madness involves radicalizing impressionable young men in order to create and then “catch” terrorists. Under the guise of rooting out terrorists before they strike, the FBI targets mentally ill or impressionable individuals (many of whom are young and have no prior connection to terrorism), indoctrinates them with anti-American propaganda, pays criminals $100,000 per case to act as informants and help these would-be terrorists formulate terror plots against American targets, provides them with weapons and training and then arrests them for being would-be terrorists. This is entrapment, plain and simple, or what former FBI director Robert Mueller referred to as a policy of “forward leaning – preventative – prosecutions.”
The Whitmer case also is reminiscent of FBI scheming against an activist loosely associated with the Cliven Bundy protests against federal land grabs last decade. William Keebler allegedly tried to blow up an uninhabited Bureau of Land Management cabin – also described in some accounts as a shed – in June 2016. The Deseret News reported his defense attorney’s description of how this dangerous domestic terrorism incident went down:
"Of course, the FBI built the bomb, drove Mr. Keebler to the cabin, placed the bomb on the cabin, and handed him the detonator," court document says. "His case raises grave concerns about the FBI’s tactics in a post-9/11 world and gives newfound meaning to the phrase 'manufacturing crime.'"
Keebler finally accepted a plea deal to get out of jail more than two years later. A judge sentenced him to time served plus probation. But his case was not a waste of time to federal agents. Far from it. As Whitehead presciently wrote five years ago:
[W]hat we’re witnessing is the case being made for the government to shift even more aggressively into the business of pre-crime: monitoring all Americans, identifying which individuals could become potentially “anti-government,” and eliminating the danger before it can pose a threat to the powers-that-be.
In this way, whether fabricated or real, these attacks serve a larger purpose, which is to give the government even greater powers to wage war, spy on its citizens, and expand the size and reach of the government.
In this way, whether fabricated or real, these attacks serve a larger purpose, which is to give the government even greater powers to wage war, spy on its citizens, and expand the size and reach of the government.
The old motto of establishment regime operatives was “never let a crisis go to waste.” It was never a long step from that to the new motto we are seeing today: “Why wait for a crisis to happen when you can manufacture it yourself?”
