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Two extremists convicted in Gov. Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot
A Michigan jury handed down convictions for Barry Croft Jr. and Adam Fox after they plotted to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.
Anthony Jackson, USA TODAY
It was a bad week for armed self-styled militia groups in America.
On Monday, a member of an armed group in San Francisco was sentenced to 10½ years in prison for obstructing justice in the case of a murdered officer and enticing a minor to engage in sexual activity.
On Tuesday, after a two-year prosecution fraught with controversy, the Department of Justice secured convictions against two men accused of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in the months leading up to the 2020 election. The men were members of the “Michigan Militia.”
On Wednesday, authorities arrested and charged five members of another self-styled group, the “B-Squad,” for their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
It’s the week in hate.
For subscribers: Threats toward FBI, law enforcement were already on the rise. Then came Mar-a-Lago
Monday: ‘Grizzly Scout’ sentenced for destroying records
Robert Blancas, a member of a gun-obsessed group in San Francisco called the Grizzly Scouts, was sentenced to 10½ years in prison for destroying records connected to the investigation into a fellow member of the group.
- Prosecutors said the Grizzly Scouts was an armed network connected to the Boogaloo Boys, a gun-obsessed movement that flared up in popularity in 2019-21 around the idea that America was headed towards another civil war.
- Blancas and three others admitted destroying records including group chats in which a fellow member of their group, Steven Carillo, admitted he had “offed a fed.”
- Carillo was sentenced in June to 41 years in prison for shooting a federal officer who was guarding the U.S. courthouse in Oakland, California, during a 2020 racial justice protest. He also faces state charges in the killing of a local deputy during a shootout in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California. During that attack he scrawled phrases tied to the Boogaloo movement in his own blood on the hood of a car he allegedly hijacked.
- Blancas also admitted to exchanging thousands of phone messages and videos with a girl he knew to be a minor at the time. He admitted the girl sent him “more than one hundred pornographic photographs and videos,” according to the Justice Department.
Where’d the Boogaloo movement go? Not much has been heard about Boogaloo since Jan. 6. The movement, which began online and grew out of meme culture, appears to have largely fallen out of favor among young, gun-obsessed extremists.
Tuesday: A guilty verdict in Whitmer kidnapping case
Federal prosecutors scored a win in the long, convoluted case against members of the Michigan Militia who engaged in a conspiracy to kidnap, and possibly kill, Michigan’s governor.
A jury convicted Barry Croft Jr. and Adam Fox of conspiring to kidnap Whitmer. Prosecutors said Croft and Fox were the ringleaders of a gang that staked out one of the governor’s homes and planned to blow up a bridge to aid their escape.
Four months ago, a different jury acquitted two of the men charged in the case but couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict on Croft and Fox, which resulted in the new trial.
Under pressure: The guilty verdicts come at a time when the federal government is under scrutiny from conservative groups accusing it of overreaching in the search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home in Mar-a-Lago. Many conservatives believe the Michigan case, like the Trump investigation, is unmerited.
Wednesday: B-Squad in trouble
Federal officers arrested five members of a group that called themselves the B-Squad who are accused of planning to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6 and engaged in the riot.
The name “B-Squad” appears, from federal court records, to refer to a “Plan B” to be enacted in the case that Congress didn’t certify the election results on Jan. 6. The criminal complaint also references a man known as “B-Leader” who was in charge of the group.
Bigger movement: The B-Squad was affiliated with the Three Percenters, federal officers alleged. This loosely organized movement was inspired by the false belief that only 3% of Americans took up arms against the British in the Revolutionary War. Another group of suspected Three Percenters is the focus of a separate Jan. 6 conspiracy prosecution. Unlike the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters don’t have a clear leadership or organizational structure.
Last week: Threats spike; Pence urges calm; Jan. 6 turns profits: The week in extremism
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