Sunday, January 21, 2024

Guns, Girls and Greed: A look into how modern wars are fought

Mr. Lerette’s candid and gritty look at modern war, full of the profanity and humor used by soldiers and contractors alike, gives a view into the Global War on Terror.


History is written by the victors but rarely gives the view of the people who fought it. Politicians and military generals talk about war in platitudes, while the ones they send to combat rarely get their stories out. Guns, Girls, and Greed; I was a Blackwater Mercenary in Iraq flips this paradigm by giving the reader a ground-level perspective of the war in Iraq.

In the vein of Catch-22, the author is unrelenting in calling out the insanity of combat and diplomatic missions in Iraq in 2004–05. Lerette shows how military and political hubris collide to create a new way to wage combat—using private military contractors under the guise of diplomacy to wage war.

The author has the reader ride along as a passenger in his convoys, showing the emotions, thought processes, and abject fear that haunted him each mission. The text starts with a bang, taking the reader through shooting at a vehicle as it approaches the convoy and the diplomat his team is protecting. Later, he describes the party at Saddam’s pool, where contractors get drunk and rowdy on a nightly basis. It was all just another day in Iraq.

The book doesn’t slow down as Lerette makes repeated trips down Route Irish– the most bombed road in Iraq, and battles the infamous “Baghdad Bug” like so many other US service members. Like many service members, dark humor is used as a coping mechanism to alleviate the daily stress of dodging mortar fire and the debilitating fear of driving around IED-infested streets.

His hubris and naivety begin to fade as the book moves on, and he starts to take a harder look at the war and how it’s being fought. After several traumatic events, the human toll of it settles over him. He becomes jaded toward military leadership, talking about how well the war is going on the news while hearing car bombs explode outside the gate nightly, before deciding that if the people of Iraq don’t care enough about their country to secure it, why should he?

He begins to feel the effects of PTSD (not knowing what it was) as he becomes short-tempered and angry. The lure of money keeps him in Iraq at the expense of his relationships with his family back home. At one point, he says Iraq feels “more like home” than his native Arizona.

This is a story about coming of age in war. On its surface, Girls, Guns, and Greed is full of harrowing tales and dark humor, but if the reader looks deeper, they cannot ignore the human toll that combat takes on those who wage it. It takes a hard look at how the Iraq war was poorly planned and executed by political and military leadership, which led to the need for “civilians” to take on traditional military roles. It’s up to the reader to decide if private military contractors are a net benefit or detractor in Iraq.

Private military contractors have become a mainstay of US foreign domestic policy since Iraq. They are currently being used in combat zones like Ukraine and Syria to train local militias to fight at the behest of US interests. They are being used to traffic unaccompanied minors from the US-Mexico border into the US. They’ve become a stopgap for politicians to use when they don’t have the political capital or resources. Is this how we want the US to operate?

Mr. Lerette’s candid and gritty look at modern war, full of the profanity and humor used by soldiers and contractors alike, gives a view into the Global War on Terror and how private military contractors continue to operate in foreign and domestic lands today. This is a must-read for those wanting to understand how contractors and service members struggle with the morality of war and where PMC’s fit into it. 

Guns, Girls, and Greed may be the most important book about the reality of one of America’s longest and most controversial wars—and how America still operates in the gray in hot spots and wars around the world.



at

X22, And we Know, and more- January 21

 




at

Under the radar: Data show big shift in voters’ favorable perception of Trump


While a 2020 presidential rematch appears almost inevitable, a majority of voters express disapproval for either Biden (61%) or Trump (53%) running again, according to the latest HarrisX poll.  This marks a significant shift from an August 2022 report, where Biden had 60% disapproval and Trump had 70%.  Favorability statistics further indicate an increasing acceptance of Trump's potential return to the White House in November.

In a head-to-head comparison, Trump is gradually surpassing Biden's favorability ratings, a trend rarely observed before.  Real Clear Politics reports the current spread:

Joe Biden Favorable 38.9 Unfavorable 55.6 (-16.7) and Donald Trump Favorable 39.9 Unfavorable 55.3 (-15.4).

Simultaneously, the generic congressional vote is trending toward Republicans (+1.5%), and Trump leads Biden by 1.6 points in current head-to-head polling.  This shift is remarkable, considering that Trump lost the popular vote by 4.5 points in 2020.

The August figures for Biden were influenced by concerns about the economy, his handling of foreign policy, and his age.  Voters’ personal economic perceptions remain stagnant, with 59% advising that Trump would do a better job than Biden at 39%.  Biden faces foreign policy challenges from various factions, on the left and right, and Biden's age and perceived cognitive decline persist as significant factors.

Contrastingly, Trump's image was tainted by the events of 1/6 and his confrontational demeanor.  Over time, the impact of 1/6 has diminished, and Trump is perceived to have moderated his approach, despite ongoing court cases.  Republicans view these legal challenges as attempts by the left to unfairly remove him, contributing to Trump's rise in primary polling and favorability.

With Trump's seeming inevitability as the Republican candidate and anticipated support from various quarters, negativity surrounding his potential return may further dissipate.  The acceptance factor of his return to office is poised to become entrenched, shaping the dynamics of the upcoming presidential race.

If the betting odds, where people put actual money down, not X comments, can further be taken of an indication of Trump’s changing fortunes, his striking leap into a double-digit lead over Biden after the Iowa caucuses may be another reinforcement.




at

Is America in an Irreversible Decline?


Every story has an ending. Whether men or nations, all things end. As with Rome, all nations eventually decline and die. And, someday, our beloved United States will wither and fall. It may be next year or it may be in a hundred years, but it will happen. 

The question is, are we seeing it happen now? 

Myra Adams, who served on the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John McCain, is not sanguine about our prospects. In an op-ed article published Friday at The Hill, she presents us with five reasons America may be in an irreversible decline; let's have a look at those five reasons.

1.Uncontrollable U.S. Debt: The U.S. Debt Clock displays the inevitability of American decline — a “ticking time bomb” of data and financial evidence — especially the following three.

The U.S. government’s total unfunded liabilities — the combined amount of payments promised without funds to recipients of Social Security, Medicare, federal employee pensions, veterans’ benefits and federal debt held by the public — stand at $212 trillion, and are rapidly increasing. For context, that number was just $122 trillion as recently as 2019 and is projected by the Debt Clock to reach $288.9 trillion by 2028. 

This is the elephant in the room that neither party is particularly anxious to talk about. But if anything brings America down, it's this; imagine the impact an American default would have on the global economy. No nation will survive unscathed; the United States is the world's largest marketplace, and the primary global counterweight to the United States - China - is dependent on sales of Chinese goods to Americans. This debt is no longer something we can grow our way out of. We can inflate our way out of it, and that seems to be the tack the Biden Administration was pursuing, whether through intent or incompetence; but that administration has utterly lost the confidence of most Americans, and they are, candidly, on their way out. No matter what the GOP does, it's hard to believe the Democrats will stick with "'Weekend at Bernie's' Joe" as their candidate.

The other avenue out is the default -- repudiation of our national debt. And that is a recipe for global economic calamity, and very likely a global war as desperate nations grab for resources. Here's Adams' second point.

2. Low student achievement: If our nation is to dig itself out of that harrowing debt trap, it will need successive generations of superstar students, armed with skills and creativity. Someday, they will invent and harness technologies to manufacture state-of-the-art products and related services, fueling an economic boom that boosts the GDP.

It's not just low student achievement, although that's a huge issue. Our education systems have utterly failed, and worse, too many of our nation's youths have been absorbed into a toxic, brutal, misogynistic "thug" culture that demeans education and praises random violence. The perpetrators often face little or no consequence for their acts,

Our government-run education system is in free fall, and our justice systems are broken. Next, she talks about wealth.

3. Increasing income and wealth inequality: Sub-par educational achievement will probably only increase the gap between the rich and poor. Moreover, it will shrink the once-vibrant middle class — the pride of post-war America.

Wealth inequality in and of itself is nothing. It is the polarization of wealth by the gradual destruction of the middle class, that is concerning. The middle class is a fairly recent innovation, arising out of the Industrial Revolution; before that, wealth was the province of a few elites, while the vast majority lived in grinding poverty. While the United States has little or no abject poverty, we have relative poverty, which breeds envy.

This is a self-perpetuating cycle. Politicians play on envy to campaign as Santa Claus, promising the voters more and more free stuff, which requires punitive taxes on the productive, or borrowing or printing money, and all of those are drags on the economy; This diminishes the middle class, which breeds envy, which perpetuates the problem. And you can't convince me many pols don't know this; they just don't care. The next point is on patriotism and the American culture.

4. Loss of American identity and patriotism: The once-great American “melting pot” is an outdated concept for many Americans. Traditionally, immigrants with different languages and cultures assimilated and became distinctly American. The current trend is toward a heterogeneous culture.

Teddy Roosevelt warned us against the danger of hyphenated Americans. He was correct; to survive, a nation needs to have a high-trust culture. Social harmony arises from shared values.

And shared values come from homogeneity. I don't mean homogeneity of skin color, or ethnic background, but homogeneity of ideals. A nation - a people -  cannot survive without this. And America was intended to be a nation, not of ethnicities, but of ideals, and we are losing those ideals. Next, she talks about the state of our political system.

5. Widespread belief that our political system is broken: Americans’ disdain for the political system has been captured in numerous polls, showing voters are dissatisfied with a potential Biden-Trump rematch — “a uniquely horrible choice,” as the headline quote from one voter put it.

This may be the worst one, and the one that may lead to collapse. Our political system, while still technically a republic, has declined into a combination of oligarchy and kakistocracy.

The federal government in particular seems, to paraphrase Lyndon Johnson, unable to fart and chew gum at the same time. The budget process has devolved into a never-ending stream of continuing resolutions. Our tax code makes "War and Peace" look like a kid's comic book. Our military, which once strode the earth like a Colossus, has been rendered impotent by politicians who see it as a great, social experimentation laboratory. Congress has become one of the largest assemblages of grifters, con men, bunkum artists, mendicants, and nincompoops ever to walk the halls of government.

But things aren't hopeless yet. It's common -- I've used it a lot myself -- to point out this old cycle:

  • Hard times make tough people.
  • Tough people make good times.
  • Good times make weak people.
  • Weak people make hard times.  <-- You are here.

Hard times we may be in, but with any luck at all, we're making tougher people.

Here’s where I’m skeptical. Sure, bad times are coming, and yes, if there is any sanity left in the country, the Democrats and, particularly, the Biden Administration, will be held to blame for it. But the rock upon which I founder in this assessment is the statement “…if there is any sanity left in the country.” Some days, I have a hard time convincing myself that the electorate in general is much smarter than a sheep.

But I might be wrong. I hope I am, and here's why I might be wrong. There’s a story about a young man buying a mule from an old man, who assured the buyer that the mule was “…the most biddable creature ever birthed.  Just tell him what you want him to do and he’ll do it.” So the young man pays for the mule, takes hold of the headstall, and says, “OK, come with me.” The mule doesn’t budge.  “Come on,” the buyer says, pulling harder. “You’re coming with me.” The mule ignores him. Then the old man says, “Oh, wait.” He picks up a nearby two-by-four and shatters it across the mule’s skull. The mule looks up and starts to follow the buyer. The old man calls after them as they leave, “He’ll do anything you want, but first you have to get his attention.”

The coming few years may be enough to get the American people’s attention. And it may take that metaphorical two-by-four.



at

Electric Vehicles Enter the 'Total Failure' Phase of Their Existence


Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Is it time to start asking whether electric vehicles have any redeeming value in 2024? Given the recent spate of bad news surrounding them, the answer to that question is becoming clearer. 

As RedState reported, Ford has cut the production of its "Lightning" electric pickup truck in half. Why? Mainly because no one wants to buy them. Why do they not want to buy them? Because they are overpriced, unreliable, and impractical. 

Ford Slashes Electric Truck Production Because Nobody Wants Them

Who could have guessed that paying $55,000 (and that's with EV subsidies) for a stripped-down, base-level truck that overheats when you tow things and can't drive over 300 miles on a single charge wouldn't appeal to the average F-150 buyer? Certainly, people who use their trucks for work have found little to no use for such a pointless monstrosity.

It's not just the Lightning, though. The entire EV industry is getting hit by reality right now. 

There is no better example of government idiocy than the top-down push for electric vehicles, which at this point has cost American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. They were a solution to a problem that didn't exist, and even then, they turned out to not be a solution at all. It's not just about cost either. How useful is a car that loses most of its range when it gets below freezing? How useful is a car that can't be driven for more than a few hours in a row, even in perfect conditions?

Ford and GM aren't cutting EV production because they want to. They are doing so because the market is forcing them to. People want reliable vehicles that meet their needs. They don't want to pay a five-figure repair bill for a new battery or because an electric motor failed. Gas-powered cars are not only far more capable, they are cheaper when it comes to acquisition, maintenance, and operating costs. The nexus of spending money on fuel vs. electricity is so far apart that you'll be buying the aforementioned new battery long before you approach any actual savings. 

So again, it's worth asking whether EVs have any redeeming qualities in their current iteration. They aren't renewable, and rely on toxic chemicals mined by literal child slaves in Africa that eventually require replacement. They are less capable than your average gas-powered vehicle. They typically cost more new but don't hold their value because the batteries are so expensive to replace, meaning buyers get hit coming and going. The list goes on.

Aren't they saving the planet, though? I'd suggest not given they still rely on power largely created by fossil fuels anyway. So, what's the point? All EVs are doing is empowering China, which produces 70 percent of the world's EVs and controls most of the mining of the materials needed to build them. How many billions of dollars are American companies going to continue to throw away pursuing this government-pushed pipedream? The answer is likely quite a few billion more. Eventually, the market always wins, though.



at

I Bought A Bible, Slingshot, And Sports Gear. So I’m Probably On A ‘Domestic Terrorist’ Watchlist

All-American consumerism by a completely peaceful and law-abiding citizen somehow threatens the people running my own country into the ground.



Americans who shopped at sporting goods stores and bought religious books “like a Bible” were flagged through their banks as potential domestic terrorists, Rep. Jim Jordan revealed Jan. 17.

The federal government also flagged as potential criminals any transactions that involved the terms “MAGA” or “Trump,” the House Judiciary Committee chairman said. These Americans were tagged as possible “violent extremists” with zero due process or even notification of this criminalization of their constitutional rights to property, free speech, consent to their government’s activities, and religious exercise. The federal government even asked for surveillance of Americans’ messages on private payment apps like Zelle, a competitor to Venmo.

So if you’ve shopped at a sporting goods store, including Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops, Dick’s Sporting Goods, or myriad gun retailers, you could be flagged to law enforcement as “Lone Actor/Homegrown Violent Extremism.” All these retailers and dozens more appeared on a list Jordan found that a federal financial crime agency distributed to instruct bank employees in how to criminalize their fellow Americans’ religious and political ideas.

“In other words,” Jordan writes in a letter released yesterday, the federal government “urged large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression.”

In the last year, I’ve shopped at multiple sporting goods stores. We have an active family, and I especially buy my kids outdoorsy Christmas gifts. This year, that included a tetherball set from Dick’s Sporting Goods and some camping gear for my oldest son.

A younger son received a $15 slingshot purchased at a local gun store this Christmas, so he can hunt squirrels. I also bought a son a pair of hiking shoes from Cabela’s a few weeks ago. Ooooh, look at the terror! He could kick people soundly with those!

Oh, and I can’t forget the other item of treacherous samizdat I bought in the last year: last Lent, I bought myself a Bible from ChristianBook.com, a terrorist-sounding site if I ever heard one. They sell other “extremist” gear like Bible commentaries, devotionals decorated with hearts, artsy Bible journals complete with marker sets, plush dolls, craft kits, and Jesus stickers.

When I — wearing snow boots, a winter hat, and mom jeans — went shopping at these retailers, I had no idea it could flag me as a “domestic terrorist” to my bank or federal law enforcement. I was just shopping, for completely legal goods. The only terror I meant was to squirrels. We don’t live in communist China, do we?

Turns out, benign, all-American consumerism by a completely peaceful and law-abiding citizen with zero criminal record or activity somehow threatens the people running my own country into the ground. What are they afraid of, and why do they hate Jesus so much?

Amazing how a totally nonthreatening mom of little kids scares these people, but they have zero qualms about the actual terrorists and foreign military plants certainly embedding themselves into the United States thanks to our wide-open border. But, you know, flagging moms buying hiking boots for their middle schoolers only takes a few keystrokes and PowerPoint presentations. Easy to pad the “terrorist” numbers with people like us and make a nincompoop-filled Congress believe they need to give lots more money to these power-mongering freaks who send the FBI after compliant daddies with seven kids and surveil devout Christians and angry moms and dads at school board meetings.

It’s way harder to go after the international drug cartels coordinating with communist China to infiltrate and destabilize our country via our southern border. That would take a lot more than a few keystrokes and secret fascist orders to highly cooperative “private” financial institutions. It might require going after high-level corruption rings within our own government. Nah. Go after the moms instead.

Take note, too, of the connection between the federal government searching for “MAGA” goods purchasers and President Joe Biden’s insistence that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” He is not exaggerating the Democrat Party’s views. They believe that peaceful political opposition to them equals terrorism. “Silence is violence,” right?

The deepest opposition to Democrats comes from serious Christians, because Democrats’ cornerstone policies blatantly violate the Ten Commandments (and lots more, including much of the Bible’s book of Romans). This is why it makes sense for them to connect Bible-buying with dissent from their politics.

And Democrats want to criminalize dissent. You disagree with them, so you are a thought criminal needing punishment. This bank flagging system puts the massive weight of federal resources behind leftist cancel culture — that is to say, behind bloodthirsty mobs.

How different is this from Canada’s debanking of its own citizens attempting to have their voices heard by the government allegedly representing them? How is this different in kind from China’s social credit system? It’s certainly laying the groundwork for such totalitarian acts in this country. You have to identify the citizens infected with wrongthink before you can start punishing them.

All this is blatantly unconstitutional, but almost all federal agencies are intrinsically unconstitutional, and they control the federal government. Harshly worded letters and congressional hearings are better than nothing, but they are not even close to the horsewhipping Congress needs to give these agencies they allegedly oversee.



at

Federal Judge Frees 'Newburgh Four,' Exposing FBI's Role in Fabricating Terror Scheme


In an interesting turn of events, a federal judge has released individuals from prison who were convicted of participating in a conspiracy to carry out terrorist acts against Jewish synagogues and other targets.

The alleged plot was supposedly foiled by the FBI. But, according to the judge’s ruling, the Bureau was more involved in concocting the scheme than actually stopping it.

The news is the latest revealing how the FBI has been weaponized against certain groups of people, orchestrating faux terrorist plots in order to get arrests and give the appearance that they are working to stop actual terrorism.

A federal judge on Friday ordered that a New York man be freed from prison because a “most unsavory” government informant had duped him into an “F.B.I.-orchestrated conspiracy” focused on attacking an upstate Air Force br and Jewish sites in the Bronx.

The scathingly worded decision by the judge, Colleen McMahon, granting the man, James Cromitie, “compassionate release” was the latest twist in the case of four Hudson Valley men who were convicted of terrorism charges in 2010 despite arguing that they had been entrapped.

In July, Judge McMahon, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, ordered the release of Mr. Cromitie’s co-defendants, Laguerre Payen, David Williams and Onta Williams, for the same reasons. The men, the so-called Newburgh Four, had each been sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2011.

As with the others, the judge’s order called for Mr. Cromitie’s sentence to be reduced to time served plus 90 days. The order did not reverse his conviction.

Judge McMahon, in her ruling, noted that “nothing about the crimes of conviction” had been of the “defendants’ own making.”

Mr. Cromitie was portrayed at trial as the key player in the bogus plot, having been recruited by Shahed Hussain, a longtime F.B.I. informant whom Judge McMahon called “most unsavory” and a “villain.” Mr. Hussain later gained notoriety as the owner of a limousine company that rented a flawed vehicle to a group of partygoers in 2018, leading to 20 deaths.

In the Newburgh case, Judge McMahon wrote, Mr. Hussain’s role was to infiltrate upstate mosques and identify potential terrorists. Mr. Cromitie, who met Mr. Hussain in a mosque parking lot, “pretended to be” a potential terrorist despite actually being a “small time grifter and petty drug dealer with no history of violence,” the judge wrote.

The fake scheme also involved plans to fire Stinger missiles at U. S. military aircraft, and the judge noted that the feds concocted the scheme in a way that made sure the men got "long prison terms."

In addition to the Bronx targets, the plan involved firing Stinger missiles at military planes at Stewart Air Force undefined near Newburgh.

“The F.B.I. invented the conspiracy; identified the targets; manufactured the ordnance,” Judge McMahon wrote, adding that officials had “federalized” the charges — ensuring long prison terms — by driving several of the men into Connecticut to “view the ‘bombs.’”

This story is reminiscent of the case involving men seeking to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. News of the plot, which was also allegedly foiled by the FBI, shocked the nation until it was revealed that the FBI engaged in the same conduct, orchestrating the plot and encouraging these men to participate.

If you’ve followed the saga of the supposed plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, you’ve been privy to a variety of twists and turns over the last year or so. Those include the high probability that the FBI orchestrated the entire thing to entrap people and reinforce a politicized narrative, i.e. that the “right” is a domestic terror threat to Democrats. That fit right into what was being pushed prior to the 2020 election.

Sure enough, several different pieces of evidence emerged showing that FBI agents, including one who ended up being arrested for physically abusing his wife, were central to organizing and goading vulnerable, disturbed men to go along with the plot. Why did that happen? Again, it sure feels like politics was at the center of everything.

Now, we’ve got the verdicts in the trial of two of the men charged over the ordeal, and they represent a massive blow to the FBI’s credibility.

The Bureau also used this tactic during the George Floyd riots, sending a violent felon to infiltrate groups of activists protesting against police brutality. In this case, the FBI tried unsuccessfully to get key members to carry out an assassination and other acts of violence.

The issues surrounding these cases center on the ethical and legal boundaries of sting operations conducted by the Bureau and other law enforcement agencies. The objective of these agencies should be to prevent crime, not to create criminals. Unfortunately, it appears that, in many ways, the FBI is focused more on the latter than the former.

The judge’s ruling underscores a troubling pattern in which individuals who are marginalized by their socioeconomic status are lured into plots by FBI agents seeking to get another conviction under their belts. Goading these people into committing crimes they might not otherwise commit, the agency shows a disturbing penchant for ruining people’s lives in order to make itself appear to be more valuable.



at

Inside The FBI-Tainted Whitmer ‘Kidnap Plot’ You’ve Heard Almost Nothing About


‘This isn’t how our justice system is supposed to work.’



In a fiery exchange last month, CNN anchorwoman Abby Phillip told GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy that there was “no evidence” to support his claim that federal agents abetted protesters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Ramaswamy shot back that the FBI conspicuously has never denied that law enforcement agents were on duty in the crowd. He argued that federal officials have repeatedly “lied” to the American people about not only that investigation but one that has gotten much less attention: the alleged failed plot to kidnap and kill Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan in 2020.

“It was entrapment,” Ramaswamy said. “FBI agents putting them up to a kidnapping plot that we were told was true but wasn’t.”

His zeroing in on the Michigan case highlighted an uncharacteristic development in contemporary politics, where progressives vigorously defend law enforcement power while conservatives view it with deep suspicion. Further, Ramaswamy’s linking of Jan. 6 and the Whitmer plot resonated with many on the right who want similarities between the two episodes exposed to the general public, especially the FBI’s reliance on informants and other paid operatives.

On Oct. 8, 2020, Whitmer announced the shocking arrests of several men accused of planning to kidnap and possibly assassinate her. The case produced alarming headlines just weeks before Election Day; Democrats, including Whitmer, used news of the plot to blame Trump for inciting violence.

Joe Biden commended the FBI for thwarting the abduction plan and, in a written statement issued the same day, claimed that “there is a through line from President Trump’s dog whistles and tolerance of hate, vengeance, and lawlessness to plots such as this one.” Biden continued that line of attack during campaign speeches in Michigan, a swing state that voted for Trump in 2016, and one Biden needed to capture to win the presidency.

In the years since the election, the national press has given little attention to the case since the initial arrests, even though court documents have recast the episode as something more sinister. Instead of a heroic effort by the FBI to safeguard the country from domestic terrorists, it now appears to have been a broad conspiracy by law enforcement to entrap American citizens who held unpopular political views.

The FBI’s tactics were first exposed by BuzzFeed in July 2021, when reporters Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison disclosed startling details based on court filings as the matter headed to trial. They found that the number of FBI confidential human sources involved in the scheme was equal to the number of defendants.

“An examination of the case by BuzzFeed News also reveals that some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported,” they wrote. “Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.”

Six men ranging in age from 22 to 44 — Adam Fox, Barry Croft Jr., Brandon Caserta, Daniel Harris, Ty Garbin, and Kaleb Franks — faced federal charges of conspiring to kidnap and use a weapon of mass destruction. Eight others faced state charges. BuzzFeed recreated much of the defendants’ movements between March and October 2020, including attendance at “field training” exercises and the surveillance of Whitmer’s properties.

While BuzzFeed offered the first account of the entrapment operation, further reporting by RealClearInvestigations, along with details revealed in court filings and trial proceedings, make the operation sound like something out of a Hollywood script. It features secretive cash payouts; drug- and booze-fueled parties; a convicted wife-beating FBI investigator; a career felon revealed as a longtime FBI asset and later accused of acting as a “double agent”; and a dramatic takedown scene at the end.

Public defenders representing the accused have identified at least 12 FBI informants and three undercover FBI agents managed by FBI officials in numerous field offices responsible for framing the men.

“In this Case, the undisputed evidence … establishes that government agents and informants concocted, hatched, and pushed this ‘kidnapping plan’ from the beginning, doing so against defendants who explicitly repudiated the plan,” defense lawyers wrote in a Dec. 25, 2021 motion. “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.”

At the center of the action was the FBI’s ringleader, Dan Chappel, 34 years old at the time, an Iraq war veteran and contract truck driver for the U.S. Postal Service. Chappel, the official story goes, joined a group called the “Wolverine Watchmen” in early 2020 to burnish his firearms skills. Members generally interacted on social media. The government claimed Chappel became alarmed at alleged online chatter about killing police and took his concerns to a friend in law enforcement in March 2020.

A week later, the FBI hired Chappel as an informant.

Over the course of the next seven months, Chappel “ingratiated” himself with the men, as one defense attorney described his method, with his eye particularly on Fox, 37, the reported mastermind of the plot. While the media portrayed Fox as a military leader prepping an army of “white supremacists” to overthrow state governments across the country, he was, in reality, a homeless man living in the dilapidated basement of a vacuum repair shop without running water or a toilet in a Grand Rapids strip mall. One co-defendant referred to him as “Captain Autism.”

Fox’s lawyer, Christopher Gibbons, said Chappel took on a “father figure” role to his fatherless and destitute client. Fox and Chappel exchanged thousands of texts. Chappel drove Fox, who did not own a car, to various meetups and staged events while recording every moment to preserve as evidence against him. On at least three occasions, according to testimony offered at trial, Chappel offered Fox a prepaid credit card authorized by the FBI with a $5,000 limit to help him buy guns and ammunition; Fox, despite being broke, declined each time.

Chappel, known as “Big Dan” to the group, created encrypted chats and gave real-time access to his FBI handlers working out of the Detroit FBI field office as the farfetched plan unfolded.

Informants and targets mulled over how to blow up a bridge outside Whitmer’s summer cottage; kill her security detail; take her to a nearby boat launch; and either abandon her in the middle of Lake Michigan or bring her across the lake to Wisconsin to stand a “citizen’s trial” over her Covid-19 lockdown policies. One discussion involved the implausible use of a military helicopter.

From appearances, a demonstration at the Michigan state Capitol in Lansing on April 30, 2020, might well have been a law enforcement dress rehearsal for Jan. 6. Chappel traveled to the event with three members of the Watchmen later held on state charges. Some protesters were clad in military gear and carried firearms but could not enter the building. When Chappel told his FBI handler what was happening, the FBI ordered the Michigan State Police to stand down and allow protesters inside. News photographers captured the moment when protesters “stormed” the Michigan Capitol and called out for Whitmer, resulting in the same sort of optics produced on Jan. 6.

The incident took on greater significance when it was revealed that Steven D’Antuono, head of the Detroit FBI field office during the Whitmer caper, was promoted to head up the Washington, D.C., FBI field office three months before the events of Jan. 6.

In exchange for his work, the FBI paid Chappel at least $54,000 in cash. Part of that haul included an envelope, handed over by his primary FBI handler in December 2020, filled with $23,000 in cash as payment for a mission accomplished. (Department of Justice policy requires informants to be paid in cash.) The bureau also supplied Chappel with other personal items, such as a laptop computer and tires for his car. Chappel also used a rented SUV, again funded by the FBI, to drive his targets to various locations as part of the trap.

Other informants were involved, too. A longtime FBI source named Steve Robeson, from Wisconsin, organized a “militia” meeting in Ohio in June 2020 and pressured the government’s targets, including Fox and Croft, to attend as he wore a wire to record what was said during the event.

Robeson arranged other events throughout the summer including at his remote property in Cambria, Wisconsin. He constructed a so-called “kill house” for the men to practice shooting. At one point, Robeson suggested the exercises could be used to “storm” a state Capitol building or governor’s residence. Robeson is a convicted felon several times over, including on charges of sex with a minor, with a rap sheet spanning at least nine states. He was paid roughly $20,000 for his involvement in the Whitmer caper. Prosecutors later accused him of acting as a “double agent” for allegedly tipping off one of the defendants that his arrest was imminent.

At least two other informants were tasked with managing Croft, who had been under FBI surveillance since 2019 for his “extremist” views, according to documents.

It was later revealed that the informants, including Chappel, violated FBI protocol by getting drunk and high on drugs with their targets numerous times, sleeping in the same hotel, and suggesting ways to advance the kidnapping plan. At one point, Chappel took an oath to join a separate group called the “Three Percent Patriot Militia” group — one fabricated by the FBI — then convinced Fox to become the head of the Michigan chapter, all in an effort to have the men believe Chappel was part of a nonexistent “militia” movement.

Defense lawyer Gibbons described the ruse during the April 2022 trial as “free money, free bombs, daily contact for months, fake militia, build up vulnerable adult with a fake militia and a title of commanding officer, send him a federal agent to join his militia.”

More behind-the-scenes machinations were disclosed when the defense uncovered hundreds of communications between the agents and informants that showed how they guided the plot every step of the way. One text suggests that the FBI and Chappel attempted to lure a disabled Vietnam War veteran named “Frank” into initiating a similar plan against Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam. “Mission is to kill the governor specifically,” Chappel’s FBI handler texted him in August 2020.

Despite the FBI’s best efforts, the group of so-called kidnappers started to disband by August 2020. Chappel asked his handlers how to “put more pressure” on the individuals so no one would break off. To rally the increasingly uninterested group that month, Chappel proposed firing live rounds into Whitmer’s cottage and the residences of other governors, then sending the shell casings to news reporters. “Look at you bringing people together,” one of Chappel’s FBI handlers texted to him after he successfully kept the group intact.

Even that wasn’t enough to solidify a kidnapping scheme so, according to numerous exchanges between the FBI assets and trial testimony from one cooperating witness, the FBI ran another undercover agent into the plot in September 2020 to tempt the men into trying to purchase bomb-making material. During a get-together in mid-September, an FBI undercover agent known as “Red” showed the group a video of a Chevy Tahoe being blown up as a way to demonstrate his credentials.

The video had been produced by the FBI.

At the same get-together, several FBI informants and “Red” took their targets on a reconnaissance mission to stake out Whitmer’s vacation cottage, the scene of the alleged prospective crime. It was the second time Chappel drove Fox to the property. (The governor and her staff were in communication with authorities for months as the entrapment scheme was under way; the FBI installed pole cameras and 3D devices around her property to record any activity to be used as evidence.)

Chappel also drove the men to the location of the FBI arrest point in Ypsilanti, Michigan, on Oct. 7, 2020, under a ruse to meet “Red,” who promised to sell them military-style garb, not explosive materials. Members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, whose missions include “high-risk arrests,” were there waiting.

But things went downhill for the government after that. Richard Trask, one of the main FBI investigators on the case, who signed the complaint against the federal defendants, was criminally charged in July 2021 for brutally assaulting his wife after a swingers’ party in Kalamazoo. Police body cam video showed a partly clothed, bloody, and apparently intoxicated Trask talking with police during his arrest. Reporters also found profane anti-Trump posts on Trask’s social media account.

Trask was removed from the case and fired by the FBI in September 2021.

Prosecutors removed Chappel’s two primary FBI handlers, Henrik Impola and Jayson Chambers, from the government’s witness list after defense attorneys accused Impola of committing perjury in a previous case and discovered that Chambers was moonlighting as head of a security firm on the side and posting inside information about the pending arrests on social media as a way to attract business.

Robeson and his wife, Kimberly, were charged with fraud in December 2021 for convincing a couple to purchase a used SUV and donate it to the Robesons’ nonexistent charity, a crime committed while Robeson was working the Whitmer plot.

Robeson also was charged separately with illegally purchasing a firearm as a felon; he threatened to plead his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, so he also was not called as a witness.

By the time the federal case went to trial in western Michigan in March 2022, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks had accepted plea offers and planned to testify against their remaining four co-defendants: Fox, Croft, Harris, and Caserta.

Judge Robert Jonker allowed the defense to raise the entrapment issue but only after the government presented its case. That plan, however, did not last beyond the first day as defense attorneys struggled during opening remarks to explain their clients’ behavior without mentioning the key role of FBI informants and agents. Jonker suspended his own order — at which point the FBI essentially went on trial.

The trial lasted four weeks. Prosecutors insisted the defendants were solely responsible for conceiving the plan, but the defense argued the group’s activities amounted to little more than “crazy, stoned talk.” Chappel took the stand for the prosecution, but his testimony appeared to backfire as his central role in the plot came into view. He also admitted he became an informant to pad his resume in hopes of pursuing a job in law enforcement.

During closing arguments, the four defense attorneys emphasized the FBI’s misconduct while asking the jury for not-guilty verdicts.

“[This] is unacceptable in America,” Gibbons said during closing arguments on April 1. “That’s not how it works. They don’t make terrorists so we can arrest them.”

On April 8, 2022, after nearly four days of deliberation, the jury found Caserta and Harris not guilty on all charges; after 18 months behind bars, both men went free.

The jury, however, could not reach a unanimous verdict for Fox and Croft, resulting in a mistrial.

It was a shocking blow to the government. In what the Justice Department considered its biggest domestic terror case over the past few decades (until Jan. 6), prosecutors did not yet have a single conviction — an outcome practically unheard of for a department with a more than 90 percent conviction rate. “It felt so good, I was so happy. We did it, we beat them. We got justice,” Caserta told me in a post-trial interview in 2022.

Prosecutors immediately announced they would retry Fox and Croft. A different version of Judge Jonker appeared on the bench in August 2022; the trial was marked by open hostilities between the judge and defense attorneys.

At one point, Jonker took the rare step of setting a time limit for cross-examination of a key government witness. He also refused to allow defense attorneys to interview a juror suspected of bias against the defendants based on comments he had made to co-workers during jury selection and his affiliation with Black Lives Matter. Jonker repeatedly admonished both lawyers in front of the jury, accusing counsel of causing jurors to “tune out” and rushing them through important lines of questioning. Over objections by the defense, Jonker kept the man on the jury. He became the foreman.

Croft and Fox were convicted on Aug. 23, 2022, of conspiring to kidnap and use a weapon of mass destruction, and are serving out multi-year sentences in supermax prisons reserved for the country’s worst criminals.

They are now appealing their convictions. In an August 2023 brief, Croft’s new appellate attorney, Timothy Sweeney, wrote: “It is staggering the extent to which the FBI and its agents/informants used excessive pressure, exploited the anger from COVID lockdowns and destructive summer riots, and manipulated emotional issues among vulnerable and excitable citizens. This included: nearly constant real-time monitoring of FBI’s communications with Fox, plus thousands of government-initiated texts/chats; the deployment of multiple paid agents/informants who sought to elicit and encourage extremist and violent behavior; and the FBI’s instigating, planning, promoting, and conducting of nearly all key events.”

In response, the government wrote in a December 2023 motion that “there was no evidence that government agents or informants suggested the plot or offered more than opportunity and facilities.”

Sweeney and Fox’s new appellate attorney, Steven Nolder, further accused Jonker of severely hamstringing the defense by refusing to admit into evidence the hundreds of messages that showed extensive communication between FBI agents and informants as they advanced the plot. Jonker, in both trials, denied defense motions to allow the jury to see the communications.

“These communications — constituted relevant evidence of the shocking degree to which Chambers, Chappel, and the other FBI agents/informants orchestrated this scam and generally engaged in incessant and oppressive inducement,” Sweeney wrote.

A recent verdict for the last three defendants charged in the Michigan state case may add weight to the appeal. An Antrim County jury in September 2023 found Willam Null, his brother Michael Null, and their co-defendant Eric Molitor not guilty of providing material support to an act of terror and illegally possessing firearms.

The acquittals represented another blow to the overall case and a poor showing for the government; of the 10 defendants who went to trial, five were found not guilty and two were convicted after a second trial. Four others pleaded guilty — outcomes that represent a poor showing for both the DOJ and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. Nessel was so infuriated by the acquittals for the Null brothers and Molitor that she publicly criticized jurors as coming from “a very, very right-leaning county (were) seemingly not so concerned about the kidnapping and assassination of the governor.”

Fox and Croft and the DOJ have asked for oral arguments. An appellate court in western Michigan could render a decision by mid-2024. “When I look at what happened in this case,” Croft’s public defender, Joshua Blanchard, said during closing arguments in the April 2022 trial, “I am ashamed of the behavior of the leading law enforcement agency in the United States. This investigation was an embarrassment, and we have to tell them this isn’t how our country operates. This isn’t how our justice system is supposed to work.”



at