Defense Lawyers Ask Judge To Toss Whitmer Kidnap Case, Claim Evidence Shows Defendants Had No Interest In Plot But Fed Agents and Informants Kept Pushing
100 Percent Fed Up – The defense team for the “radical extremists” who are being accused of participating in a plot to kidnap Michigan’s unpopular Governor Gretchen Whitmer are calling on the judge to throw out the case against their clients.
Detroit News – The 20-page motion, filed Christmas night by all five defense lawyers, asks U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker to dismiss the conspiracy charge. The move would effectively dismantle the government’s case and remaining charges, which are intertwined and based on the conspiracy charge, the lawyers wrote.
“Essentially, the evidence here demonstrates egregious overreaching by the government’s agents, and by the informants those agents handled,” defense lawyers wrote. “When the government was faced with evidence showing that the defendants had no interest in a kidnapping plot, it refused to accept failure and continued to push its plan.”
On October 8, it was announced that six men had been arrested over an alleged plot to kidnap MI Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) and turn her over in Wisconsin for trial on the charge of treason. The unsealed complaint in a federal court charged six men. Five of the men are Michigan residents Adam Fox, Ty Garbin, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris, Brandon Caserta, the sixth man, Barry Croft is a Delaware resident.
During an interview with Paul Egan of the Detroit Free Press, Governor Whitmer, with no evidence of her unproven accusation, attempted to tie the group of men accused of plotting to kidnap her to President Trump and white supremacy.
The truth is, the more the public discovers about the men involved in the plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer, the more it’s clear the anti-police, anti-government, anti-Trump radicals were more aligned with the Marxist BLM movement and violent domestic terrorist group, Antifa.
When the story first broke about the alleged kidnapping plot, the alleged target of the plot, Michigan’s tyrannical governor, was auditioning to become Biden’s vice president but was losing support from Michigan residents of every political party over her handling of the COVID pandemic that included tyrannical lockdowns and the intentional placing of COVID positive patients into nursing homes.
In July, a 39-year-old FBI agent involved in the so-called kidnapping plot of the unpopular Democrat governor was arrested for a violent domestic incident involving his wife and charged with assault.
FBI special agent Richard Trask was charged Monday with assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder following a domestic incident with his wife.
MSN – The Detroit News reported on details of the allegations against Trask, which were reportedly outlined in an affidavit from the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office: Trask and his wife allegedly attended a swingers’ party at a hotel in Oshtemo Township on Sunday, where they reportedly had several drinks and then got into an argument on the way home. Once home, Trask allegedly got on top of his wife in bed and “then grabbed the side of her head and smashed it several times on the nightstand,” the News quoted the affidavit as saying.
According to the affidavit, Trask also allegedly began to choke his wife, who grabbed his testicles. Trask allegedly left the couple’s home in his wife’s car and was found in a supermarket parking lot.
Trask’s wife was reportedly covered in blood and had a bloody laceration on the right side of her head and bruises on her neck following the incident, according to the affidavit reported by the News.
Trask was arraigned and then released from custody Monday on a $10,000 personal recognizance bond.
Even before the specifics of the allegations against him were disclosed, Trask’s arrest spelled trouble for the kidnapping case, which is set to go to trial in October.“It’s the last thing you want for a major case like this,” Andrew Arena, former special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit office, told the Detroit News Monday. “Any time you give the defense any ammunition, it’s not good.”
Post Millennial reports – Trask’s arrest comes at a critical juncture in the criminal case against the five men charged in federal court with plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Trask has worked for the FBI since 2011 and served as the law enforcement agency’s public face in the Whitmer case, testifying in federal court about the investigation and providing context about multiple undercover recordings.
A lawyer for an alleged bombmaker charged in the Whitmer case raised questions last Sunday about whether the FBI is trying to sabotage the defense ahead of trial. Delaware resident Barry Croft’s attorney filed excerpts revealing the existence of a recording in which lead investigator FBI special agent Henrik Impola discussed creating “utter disarray and chaos” for defense lawyers, whom he labeled as “paid liars” whose jobs are to “take the truth and portray it in a different sense.”
Trask’s legal issues weren’t the first to affect participants in the kidnapping investigation: One of the lead prosecutors handling a parallel state case, Gregory Townsend, was reassigned in May as the state’s attorney general audited his work in past cases. And Stephen Robeson, an FBI informant considered an important witness in the federal case, was indicted in March on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Robeson was one of several confidential informants, in addition to undercover FBI agents, who were involved in the case as the kidnapping plot came together. A lengthy report from BuzzFeed News Tuesday found that “some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported,” raising questions — as defense attorneys for several of the accused have done in court — “as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.”One of the six men charged federally for the kidnapping plot, Ty Garbin, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in January.
Trask was arrested one week after defense lawyers revealed in court filings the team’s defense strategy that claims that FBI informants entrapped the accused suspects. Trask is prohibited from possessing a firearm, bond conditions stipulate.
