Homegrown Militias in the US : FBI busts militia 'plot' to abduct Michigan Gov Gretchen Whitmer

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The FBI says it has thwarted a plot to abduct and overthrow Michigan's Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Mrs Whitmer has become a target for coronavirus sceptics after enacting strict measures that were overturned by a judge last week.

Officials say the kidnapping plot involved six men who planned to hold a "treason trial" for her.

"Hatred, bigotry and violence have no place" in Michigan, Mrs Whitmer said, describing the accused as "depraved".

According to a sworn FBI affidavit, an undercover law enforcement source attended a June meeting in Dublin, Ohio, where a group of Michigan-based militia members discussed overthrowing state governments "that they believed were violating the US Constitution".

"Several members talked about murdering 'tyrants' or 'taking' a sitting governor," the charging document states. In one video, a suspect denounced the state's role in deciding when to reopen gyms during the coronavirus lockdown.

The men met in a basement that was accessed by a trapdoor hidden under a rug, investigators say. Their phones were gathered and placed in another room to avoid secret recordings, but the undercover FBI source was wearing a separate recording device.

Thirteen people were arrested by investigators.

Six men - five from Michigan and one from Delaware - are accused in federal court of plotting the kidnap. They allegedly planned to hold a "treason trial" against Mrs Whitmer.

These six were named as Adam Fox, Barry Croft, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris, Brandon Casert and Ty Garbin. Mr Garbin's residence, in a trailer park, was raided by authorities on Wednesday.

The other seven face charges of terrorism and gang-related offences in state court in connection with the alleged abduction plot.

They are Paul Bellar, Shawn Fix, Eric Molitor, Michael Null, William Null, Pete Musico and Joseph Morrison.

The group wished to gather about "200 men" to storm the capitol building and take hostages, including the governor. They hoped to enact their plan before the November presidential election. If that failed, they planned to attack the governor at her home, officials say.

The accused "co-ordinated surveillance of the governor's vacation home", said the US Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, adding that they also planned Molotov cocktail attacks on police officers, purchased a taser, and pooled their funds to purchase explosives and tactical equipment.

The accused held weapons training in several states, and at times attempted to create bombs, the FBI says, adding that their training was captured on video.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said that separate to the kidnapping charges seven members of the "wolverine watchmen" militia will be charged by the state with gang affiliation and providing material support to terrorists. Ms Nessel said the arrested militia members hoped to start a civil war.

It's been reported that these men have links to a militia group called the Boogaloo Bois. This is a movement that has grown online.

It's actually quite hard to describe the motives of the group. It's not "right-wing" in a traditional sense. Members of the movement are vehemently against law enforcement - some have been arrested for killing police officers.

Broadly speaking, they are extremist libertarians - think Timothy McVeigh, but with guns.

The term "Boogaloo" is usually a reference to a civil war. They have an entrenched hatred of big government - confusingly they are also often pro-Trump, though not exclusively. Hence why their ire is often focused on state rather than federal government.

Social media took a long time to act on Boogaloo. Facebook removed a number of Boogaloo groups in June - including the group that these men were allegedly part of. I showed TikTok of a series of Boogaloo videos that were on its platform back in July. Even now it's very easy to find Boogaloo videos on social media - the hashtags they use often change so it's hard to keep up.

This story shows how important it is to monitor social media platforms for extremist content - before it leads to violence.

Who are Boogaloo Bois, Antifa and Proud Boys?

"Michigan law enforcement officers are united in our commitment to rooting out terrorism in any form and we will take swift action against anyone seeking to cause violence or harm in our state," Colonel Joe Gasper, director of the Michigan State Police, said in a statement announcing charges against the "wolverine watchmen".

In a press conference on Thursday, the governor tied the plot against her to the rhetoric of President Donald Trump, who she said had spent the last several months "stoking distrust, fomenting anger and giving comfort to those who spread fear and hatred and division".

In April, Mr Trump implied support for the protesters, tweeting "LIBERATE MICHIGAN". A month later, armed protesters opposed to the lockdown stormed the state capitol.

Michigan's attorney general confirmed on Thursday night that two men photographed at that May protest are among the arrested plot suspects.

On Thursday night, Mr Trump, a Republican, sought to take credit for federal investigators eliminating the alleged threat to the governor.

"Rather than say thank you, she calls me a White Supremacist - while Biden and Democrats refuse to condemn Antifa, Anarchists, Looters and Mobs that burn down Democrat run cities," he tweeted.

The Midwestern state of Michigan could prove pivotal in the outcome of next month's US presidential election.

Joe Biden, the Democratic White House challenger to Mr Trump, condemned militias as "a genuine threat" and said Mr Trump's "liberate" tweet encouraged militias. "The words of a president matter," he said, adding: "Why can't the president just say stop, stop, stop, stop?"

Numerous violent incidents have been linked to citizen militia groups across the US in recent years. Adherents, who are often white men, sometimes brandish weapons during protests. The Department of Homeland Security warned this week in an annual report that violent white supremacy was the "most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland".

Mrs Whitmer's lockdown orders drew thousands of protesters to the state capitol, where many compared her to German dictator Adolf Hitler.

"None of us has faced a challenge like Covid-19," Mrs Whitmer said on Thursday. "We are not one another's enemy. This virus is our enemy, and this enemy is relentless."

Last Friday, the state's Supreme Court ruled that Mrs Whitmer did not have the legal authority to issue emergency executive orders and that that responsibility belonged to the state's legislature.

Following the ruling, the attorney who argued the case before the top court advised citizens to "burn your masks", which health officials say are necessary to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54470427

 

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Michigan's governor was kept updated about a plot to abduct her and was moved around as the FBI tracked her would-be kidnappers, the US state's attorney general has revealed.

On Thursday the FBI said it had thwarted the plot by alleged militiamen who planned to hold a "treason trial" for Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

A total of 13 men have been charged.

Strict measures against coronavirus in Michigan have made Governor Whitmer a target for Covid-19 sceptics.

On Friday Attorney General Dana Nessel told CBS news: "At times, she and her family had been moved around as a result of activities that law enforcement was aware of."

Ms Nessel said the Democratic governor had been kept updated about the investigation in recent months.

The suspects came close enough to executing their plan that police had to move in "before anybody lost their lives", she added.

 

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Y'all Quaida )

 

[Markhor]

Y'all Quaida )

Far-right group also discussed kidnapping Virginia Governor Ralph Northam.

Funny how those barking about BLM/left-wing violence over the summer (which shouldn't be condoned) have no comments to make over this terrorist plot.

 

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We will hear more of these if Trump loses.

 

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I wonder what was the religion of these people. Do you think that if they had been Muslim, we would have found out?

 

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I wonder what was the religion of these people. Do you think that if they had been Muslim, we would have found out?

Certainly would have made a bigger news splash.

 

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Donald Trump has verbally attacked Michigan's governor Gretchen Whitmer, despite warnings about the effect his words can have.

During a rally in the state, Mr Trump called on Ms Whitmer, a Democrat, to axe the remaining restrictions aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus.

He called her "dishonest" and joked about an extremist plot recently uncovered by the FBI to kidnap her, saying: "Hopefully you'll be sending her packing pretty soon".

His words prompted the crowd to chant: "Lock her up!"

Ms Whitmer wrote on Twitter: "This is exactly the rhetoric that has put me, my family, and other government officials' lives in danger while we try to save the lives of our fellow Americans."

Source Skynews

 

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On 6 October Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, released his department’s annual assessment of violent threats to the nation. Analysts didn’t have to dig deep into the assessment to discover its alarming content.

In a foreword, Wolf wrote that he was “particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years. [They] seek to force ideological change in the United States through violence, death, and destruction.”

Two days later, the FBI swooped. It arrested 13 rightwing extremists who had allegedly been plotting to carry out a range of attacks in Michigan, including the kidnapping of the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

Later revelations revealed that a group of anti-government paramilitaries that included some of those arrested had also discussed kidnapping the governor of Virginia.

The double strike, just days apart, of the threat assessment and the Michigan plot arrests marked an important moment in America’s tortured history of racist terrorism. US authorities appeared not only to have woken up finally to the extent of the white supremacist threat but were actually doing something about it.

As the FBI director, Christopher Wray, told Congress in February, “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists” have become the “primary source of ideologically motivated lethal incidents” in the US. The danger overshadowed the jihadist threat that has dominated the security debate since 9/11.

Last year was the deadliest on record for domestic extremist violence since the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. White supremacists were responsible for most of that bloodshed in 2019 – 39 out of 48 deaths, including 23 people who died at the hands of an anti-Hispanic racist in El Paso, Texas, and a Jewish worshipper murdered at Poway Synagogue in California.

While federal authorities may be showing a new resolve to tackle the problem, experts on white supremacy warn that the extremists are showing even greater determination. The movement is stirring, nationwide.

“The threat is serious and intense,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a terrorism and extremism expert at Brookings. “It is by far the most serious domestic danger in the US on many levels – the frequency of attacks, the level of recruitment, the scope of ambition of the groups and the wider political capital they are building.”

If 2019 was the deadliest year in a quarter of a century for domestic terrorism in America, 2020 is shaping up to be the year that white supremacy spreads its wings. Groups are showing a degree of confidence unparalleled in the modern era.

Agitators have seized the dual opportunities of the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests to come out of the shadows and on to the streets. Even before the start of the pandemic, they were flexing their muscles.

Felbab-Brown recalls attending the gun rally in Richmond, Virginia, in January that attracted thousands of extremists carrying semi-automatic assault rifles. “There were militia members from all across the US, Trump supporters with guns, gun rights supporters, all mixing together in large crowds. They drew energy from each other, enlarged their networks and emboldened their thinking – and that was before Covid.”

Since the pandemic struck in late January, the rightwing surge has gathered pace. Armed groups of extremists have presented themselves as vigilante security guards, ostensibly protecting property during anti-police brutality protests but in reality confronting peaceful protesters and sowing chaos and violence that has culminated in loss of life.

Though studies have noted the rise of far-right violence in the US as far back as 2007, there is one aspect of today’s political climate that makes the current threat level uniquely dangerous: Donald Trump. In the recent presidential debate with Joe Biden he notoriously declined to denounce the extremist group the Proud Boys, exhorting them to “stand back and stand by”.

Trump has done far more than refuse to criticize white supremacist groups – he has actively communicated with them through his Twitter feed and dog-whistles blown on the campaign trail. “He may not be talking to them in person, but he definitely is talking to them through the frequency,” Felbab-Brown said.

Trump has issued calls to arms to domestic terrorist groups during pandemic lockdowns in Democratic-controlled states. In April his cry of “Liberate Michigan!” was interpreted by militant groups as an invitation to storm the state capitol with their weapons.

His incendiary “law and order” posture in the wake of largely peaceful protests has had similar effect, as did his defence of Kyle Rittenhouse, the white teenager charged with killing two people amid anti-police brutality protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

On Thursday, and again over the weekend at his rallies, Trump returned to the theme of the enabling of extremists during the NBC town hall in which he effectively endorsed the toxic pedophilia conspiracy theory espoused by QAnon, the rightwing movement identified by the FBI as a potential domestic terrorism threat. The president also renewed his attacks on Whitmer – an astonishingly rash act given the terrorist plots against the Michigan governor.

“Trump’s messages to the groups have been egregious and disastrous, on a par with the behavior of Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines,” Felbab-Brown said. “They have been enormously harmful to the US.”

Michael German, a fellow of the Brennan Center for Justice who worked in the 1990s as an undercover FBI agent infiltrating white supremacist and militia groups, has studied how Trump’s racist appeals and implicit encouragement of violence have played with far-right militants. “Now they feel sanctioned. They think, ‘my violence is no longer criminal, it’s allowed, it’s what the president wants us to do’,” he said.

German has watched too as the groups have grown more methodical and practiced in their tactics over the past four years of Trump approbation. The tacit approval they have received from the Trump administration has rendered them far more effective and dangerous.

“As an undercover agent, I was present in the room when militants tried to convince a recruit to carry out a violent act and either go to the grave or become a fugitive. That’s a hard hump to get over. If you feel the president of the United States has authorized you to engage in this activity, it’s a lot easier.”

With white supremacy showing a new vitality, German is skeptical that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are serious about taking on the threat. The recent acknowledgments of the extent of the danger from Wolf and Wray are a step in the right direction, but much more urgency is needed.

“I want to see it in data. I want to see the arrests, the investigations, I want to know what the FBI is actually doing. I suspect the data would show that there have been a lot of deaths caused by white supremacists, but disproportionately few investigations,” German said.

The FBI’s use of resources tells its own story. The agency divides its counter-terrorism pie up 80 to 20: 80% goes on fighting international terrorism, 20% domestic.

The bureau’s own figures compiled for 2008 to 2018 indicate that the balance of threat is the exact reverse – some 73% of all extremist murders in the US in that period were by far-right terrorists, only 23% by Islamist terrorists.

At least at the federal level, the FBI is having some success in infiltrating extremist groups as the arrests of the alleged Michigan kidnap plotters attested. The record among state and local law enforcement looks far less impressive.

Among local police forces, the pattern is less likely to be infiltration of far-right groups by officers than the other way round – extremists are inveigling themselves into police forces. German’s work for the Brennan Center, drawing on FBI policy documents, has pointed out that white supremacist and anti-government groups often have “active links” with law enforcement officials.

Yet the justice department has no national strategy for spotting and removing white supremacist police officers.

On Thursday, armed members of the Boogaloo Bois – extremists agitating for a second civil war – illegally assembled outside the police headquarters in Newport News, Virginia. Instead of arresting the men for violating a ban on firearms on city property, the police chief handed their leader a bottle of chocolate milk and allowed him to address his ranks through a microphone and sound system that the force provided.

An insight into the world that is being created by this heady combination of a supportive president and fraternizing local police amid the turmoil of the pandemic and a fast-approaching volatile election is afforded by a new podcast from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Baseless takes listeners inside the leadership of the Base, a domestic terror group dedicated to destroying US democracy and sparking a race war that they believe and hope will transform America into a white ethno-state.

Drawing on 83 hours of secret recordings of top leaders inside the Base, including its founder Rinaldo Nazzaro whose true identity was revealed by the Guardian in January, the podcast conveys with chilling intimacy the scale of the white supremacists’ ambitions.

The militants describe the intricate vetting process that they follow for all new recruits. Potential new members are required to fill out a questionnaire that asks them whether they have had any military training.

Promising applicants are then invited into the “vetting room” in which a panel of five or six Base extremists, headed by Nazzaro, quiz them through an encrypted phone app. If they pass that stage, they are then given a task such as posting flyers around schools and college campuses that say “Save your race, join the Base”; and “Learn, train, fight, organize”.

The Base perceives itself not so much as an organization, but as a web of like-minded violent extremists. “We see ourselves more of a network,” Nazzaro is heard saying on the tapes.

But the one quality above all others that the terrorists crave is military experience. One in five of the 100 individuals who make an appearance on the recordings have had combat training as former or serving military personnel.

“This is a clear target,” said Jamila Paksima, co-producer of the Baseless podcast. “They are looking for people with military experience who can then train other recruits. So the US government is equipping people with the skills of warfare that are then potentially being turned back against the American people.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...cist-domestic-terror-threat-looms-large-in-us

 

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Very concerning indeed.

Good job from FBI. It could've been bad.