Last year, FBI agents uncovered an extensive plot by far-right extremists to kidnap and murder Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) over COVID-19 mandates, as well as blow up a bridge to cut off police from pursuing them.
But a year later, BuzzFeed News reports that the case is facing serious difficulties — as the alleged misconduct of FBI agents threatens to derail the whole prosecution.
The problems start with FBI agent Jayson Chambers, who was to have been a key witness. According to the report, he "incorporated a private security firm and had spent much of 2019 trying to drum up business — in part by touting his FBI casework. The bureau won’t say if Chambers had gotten permission to set up his new venture, as agents would be required to do, but just five days after BuzzFeed News revealed its existence this August, federal prosecutors announced that he would not be on the list of witnesses testifying in the upcoming trial."
"Meanwhile, the challenges facing the prosecution mount," continued the report. "A second FBI agent, who had served as the case’s public face, was charged with beating his wife when they returned home from a swingers party. He was fired soon thereafter. A third agent was accused of perjury. A state prosecutor in a related case was reassigned and then retired in the face of an audit into his prior use of informants. And an informant whose work was crucial to the investigation was indicted on a gun charge and is now under investigation for fraud."
The kidnapping plot has implicated 14 people, including many tied to a right-wing group called the Wolverine Watchmen. One of these men, Ty Garbin, pleaded guilty and is testifying against the others.
All of this controversy comes as Republicans have spent years trying to discredit the FBI over its investigation of former President Donald Trump's ties to Russia — and as special prosecutor John Durham, appointed by former Attorney General William Barr, has sought to prove the former president's "Deep State" conspiracy theories.
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