Jury deliberations underway in Michigan Gov. Whitmer plot

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — A jury in Michigan started its deliberations Monday in the trial of four men accused of designing a plan to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

The jury picked a leader Friday and went home for the weekend, following hours of closing arguments from lawyers on the 15th day of trial.

Adam Fox, Barry Croft Jr., Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta can be found guilty of conspiracy, even if they didn't pull off a kidnapping in fall 2020, U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker said during jury instructions.

A key factor, if the jury finds it, would be a “mutual understanding either spoken or unspoken” between two or more people in the group, the judge said.

Fox, Croft and Harris also face charges related to weapons.

“Deciding what the facts are is your job, not mine,” Jonker told the jury.

Prosecutors said the plot was simmering for months, leavened by anti-government extremism and anger over Whitmer's COVID-19 restrictions. With undercover FBI agents and informants embedded in the group, the men trained with a crudely built “shoot house” to replicate her vacation home, prosecutors allege.

There is no dispute that the alleged leaders, Fox and Croft, traveled to Elk Rapids, Michigan, to scout the governor's property and a nearby bridge that same weekend in September 2020.

Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, who pleaded guilty and testified against the four men, were on the same road trip, along with covert investigators.

Garbin said the goal was to get Whitmer before the fall election and create enough chaos to create a civil war and stop Joe Biden from winning the presidency. Much of the government's case came from secretly recorded conversations, group messages and social media posts.

“You heard them in their own voices over and over again,” Assistant U.S. Attorney...