Washington, Aug 23 (EFE).- A US federal jury on Tuesday found guilty two men accused of planning the kidnapping in 2020 of the governor of Michigan, the Democrat Gretchen Whitmer.
The verdict ends one of the most high-profile domestic terrorism trials in the United States in recent years.
The defendants are Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr., two white men whom the Prosecutor’s Office described as far-right extremists who pose a danger to American democracy.
Both were accused of having planned the July 2020 kidnapping of Whitmer from his vacation home on Mackinac Island, Michigan, in retaliation for the restrictive policies he had adopted to curb the covid-19 pandemic.
The two men allegedly even went so far as to make plans to obtain a bomb with the aim of blowing down a bridge near the governor’s residence and delaying the police response.
The jury deliberated for more than eight hours to reach its verdict and must now determine the exact sentence for the two defendants, who could spend the rest of their lives in prison.
This is the second trial for the plans to kidnap Whitmer.
A first trial, earlier this year, ended with the acquittal of two other defendants -Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta-, while a verdict could not be reached on Fox and Croft, so it was declared null and another process was held.
Whitmer, one of the best-known Democratic governors in the United States, reacted in a statement to the outcome of the judicial process.
He considered the verdict proof that violence and threats have no place in US politics and that those who seek to divide the US will be held to account.
“I will not let extremists get in the way of the work we do. They will never shake my unwavering faith in the goodness and decency of our people,” the governor stressed in her statement.
During the toughest months of the pandemic, Whitmer was criticized by conservative groups and far-right militias, and even by then-President Donald Trump (2017-2021), for imposing the closure of commercial activity and crowds in the been due to covid-19.
Trump has come to sow doubt about the attempted kidnapping of Whitmer. Earlier this month in a speech in Texas, he lied and called the allegations “false.” EFE
bpm/pamp/psh
� EFE 2022. The redistribution and redistribution of all or part of the contents of Efe services is expressly prohibited, without the prior and express consent of Agencia EFE SA