Biden Cites the Farcical FBI-Assisted Plot To Kidnap Gretchen Whitmer as an Example of Political Violence
The plot to kidnap the Michigan governor was in large part concocted and encouraged by paid FBI informants and their Bureau handlers.
President Joe Biden's condemnation of political violence Sunday night following the attempted assassination of his Republican rival, Donald Trump, listed a number of recent such incidents, but it also included the curious case of the alleged plot to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
"We cannot—we must not go down this road in America," Biden said. "We've traveled it before throughout our history. Violence has never been the answer, whether it's with members of Congress in both parties being targeted in the shot, or a violent mob attacking the Capitol on January 6th, or a brutal attack on the spouse of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, or information and intimidation on election officials, or the kidnapping plot against a sitting governor, or an attempted assassination on Donald Trump."
The inclusion of the would-be Whitmer kidnappers is a bit of continued gaslighting by the Biden administration, because the plot was in large part concocted and encouraged by paid FBI informants and their Bureau handlers.
The arrest of six Michigan militia members who plotted to kidnap Whitmer before the 2020 presidential election grabbed national headlines and stoked fears of rising right-wing extremism. However, the federal case against the plotters unraveled as court documents and news investigations revealed that the FBI used no less than a dozen of confidential informants and two undercover agents to gather intel on the group.
As Reason's Jacob Sullum noted, "During a June 2020 meeting highlighted by the FBI, for example, it was an informant who argued that kidnapping was necessary."
"We have a saying in my office," one FBI special agent told a confidential informant in the case. "Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story."
That's why two of the defendants charged in the Whitmer conspiracy were acquitted, and two others were only convicted after a mistrial that stunned and embarrassed the FBI.
As I explained in a 2022 Reason magazine feature, "It's (Almost) Always the Feds," the FBI has a long history of using its sprawling network of paid informants to locate and egg on would-be radicals.
Despite persistent criticisms from civil liberties groups that the FBI is manufacturing terror plots to ensnare young men with limited to no ability to carry them out, the federal government has been enormously successful in prosecuting these kinds of cases because of the high bar to prove entrapment.
The near-collapse of the Whitmer kidnapping prosecution didn't put the spotlight on domestic extremism and political violence but rather the FBI's eagerness to turn the stoned fantasies of radicals into terror plots involving bombed bridges and assassinations.
"You know, the political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated," Biden said. "It's time to cool it down. And we all have a responsibility to do that."
That presumably applies to the FBI as well.
