Off to prison they go.
A little story of justice, finally, as three men who are members of a Michigan militia were sentenced to a minimum of 7 to 12 years in prison for their involvement in the plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic Governor, Gretchen Whitmer.
The three men, Paul Bellar, 24, Joseph Morrison, 28, and Pete Musico, 45, were found to have provided material support for a terrorist act, gang membership involved with the plot to kidnap the Michigan Governor, and a gun crime.
The FBI arrested 13 suspects on October 8, 2020. They were thought to have planned a domestic terror plot to kidnap the Democratic Governor and overthrow the Michigan state government.
They were convicted in October.
The Detroit News reported on Thursday: “The jury determined that the three men, who all were members of militia group Wolverine Watchmen, aided plot ringleaders Adam Fox and Barry Croft, who were both convicted of kidnapping conspiracy and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction in federal court. Prosecutors said the men were early joiners and founders of Wolverine Watchmen, which helped train Fox and Croft for their plot to kidnap Whitmer.”
“If our elected leaders must live in fear, our representative government suffers. A plan to kidnap and harm the governor of Michigan is not only a threat to the officeholder but to democracy itself,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler wrote in a filing on December 5th, 2022.
Political violence and plots to overturn the government and force it into doing what this faction wants it do as we have seen with the attack on Speaker Pelosi’s husband by a man who wanted to wheel her into Congress as a threat to other members. He also expressed Q-Anon type thinking, with a juvenile resentment of authority mixed with Covid conspiracies, complaints about censorship, and the usual toxic mix: “information against women, content against the Jewish community, federal law enforcement, you know, pizza gate, even the pyramids on the dollar bills.”
Physical attacks, plots to kidnap, attacks on the U.S. Capitol, plots to hang the Vice President if he doesn’t do what they want him to, plots to kill the Speaker, plots to kidnap the Governor of Michigan — all of these things share a common theme. They are all motivated by conspiracies, lies, and hate. This is why misinformation and disinformation are dangerous.
Hate against women, hate against Jewish people, being fed election lies, feeling controlled by being asked to stand a few feet apart and wear a mask during a pandemic so we don’t kill others — all of this combined suggests Q, suggests radicalized, suggests far Right.
All of this violent extremism and terrorism, the armed hysteria and militia identification, the perceived persecution when asked to follow rules were allegedly over…
being told what to do during a pandemic.
If that’s not the definition of snowflakes, I don’t know what is.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.