GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A man convicted in a plot to abduct Michigan’s Democratic governor from her vacation home was sentenced on Tuesday to 16 years in prison, the longest sentence yet for a federal defendant in one of the country’s most closely watched domestic terrorism cases but far less than the life term that prosecutors sought.
At two trials earlier this year, prosecutors repeatedly showed recordings and online posts in which the defendant, Adam Fox, called Gov. Gretchen Whitmer a “tyrant,” railed against her Covid-19 restrictions and mused about a second American revolution. Prosecutors described him as a threat to the governor’s safety and to democracy itself.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A man convicted in a plot to abduct Michigan’s Democratic governor from her vacation home was sentenced on Tuesday to 16 years in prison, the longest sentence yet for a federal defendant in one of the country’s most closely watched domestic terrorism cases but far less than the life term that prosecutors sought.
At two trials earlier this year, prosecutors repeatedly showed recordings and online posts in which the defendant, Adam Fox, called Gov. Gretchen Whitmer a “tyrant,” railed against her Covid-19 restrictions and mused about a second American revolution. Prosecutors described him as a threat to the governor’s safety and to democracy itself.
“The conspirators might easily have killed the governor in a botched kidnapping, killed unsuspecting law enforcement during a traffic stop or other unexpected encounter, or blown up innocent bystanders with a negligently constructed bomb,” federal prosecutors said in a sentencing memo.
At trial, Mr. Fox’s lawyer, Christopher Gibbons, described his client as an unimpressive dupe who talked a big game but had no real chance of pulling off an attack. Mr. Gibbons said undercover F.B.I. agents preyed on Mr. Fox, pretending to be his friend and luring him into a plot he was incapable of planning himself. In arguing for a lesser sentence, Mr. Gibbons wrote that prosecutors used “exaggerated language to create the false narrative of a terrifying paramilitary leader.” 