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If somebody says the right words, promises the right things, anybody can become a victim. Since the early 2000s, millions of handwritten letters were landing at people's doors all across America. She truly believed that this was going to save her mind from going further.
into the depths of demand shut. I'm investigative journalist Rachel Brown, and I'm going to tell you the story of a scam unlike anything I've ever seen in the shape-shifting mastermind who evaded capture for more than 20 years. We never in our wildest dreams thought that these schemes were at this scale. They'd been without water for two months. All they wanted in return was whatever it was that Maria Duval was promising them.
From ITN Productions and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to The Greatest Scam Ever Written. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now, or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, show me what you got. This is Chameleon, Season 7. The Michigan Plot. A production of Campside Media. The Binge.
It's late at night on October 7th, 2020, at the Morrison house on the outskirts of Munith, Michigan. For the last few months, Joe Morrison has taken a step back from the group he founded, the Wolverine Watchmen, to spend more time at home with his kids and his wife, Jada. It was around like midnight. I was actually working. I was logging off and Joe was laying in the bed. He was watching a war movie and I'm like, "Dude, like turn that down." I'm like, "Payton's sleeping." And he's like, "That's not the TV."
And all I hear is, "FBI, come out with your hands up. Your house is surrounded." I thought his friends then came out, fucking bullshit, and I thought they were playing jokes on us. I look out my window and I'm like, "Joe, no, they're not bullshitting. That's the FBI." Through the window, Jada could see swarms of FBI agents and Michigan State Police. A helicopter buzzed overhead, and two armored vehicles equipped with battering rams capable of knocking down walls were positioned against her house.
Right in the corner of the top of my house, above my daughter. I run to the door. I was the psycho that ran to the door. I came out like a lunatic, telling them that they're gonna kill my fucking daughter. They told me that I needed to come out with my hands up and of course I looped back around. I went back in my house. I started screaming the FBI's here. What went through your mind as to why they might be there? I knew why. Because of the group.
And that's exactly what I told Joe. I said, they are here because of Wolverine Watchmen. I went outside. They grabbed me. They slammed me down on the back of the transport truck. They put me in handcuffs and everything. I got put in a blacked-out SUV with my children. I got questioned by MSP and the FBI. Towards the end, like, I was just tired of it. I was like, get me the hell out of this car because I'm done fucking talking.
In the meantime, Joe, along with Jada's father, Pete Musico, were dragged out of the house, handcuffed, and driven away. Jada's house was now a crime scene that FBI agents were tossing upside down to search for evidence. She and her kids had nowhere to go. And they took us to the most ranky-dank hotel. The door didn't even lock. There was a big red bloodstain-looking stain in the carpet. And that's where we got dropped.
I did not sleep that night. I didn't. Jada tossed and turned, not knowing what had happened to her husband or her dad. But by the next morning, the whole world would know. I literally flipped on the TV.
I had it on the local news and they were literally standing in my front yard. An armored vehicle and SUVs, the FBI rolling in to raid the home of a young man with a wife and kids now charged in this alleged plot. One person here saying... Me flipping on that news was probably the most terrifying shit I've ever had. I mean, it was just very shocking to me. There was no plot to kidnap the fucking governor.
And if there was, it was not nothing to do with my guys. The FBI had arrested Adam Fox, Ty Garbin, Caleb Franks, and Daniel Harris the night before, in a takedown facilitated by the informant, Dan Chappell. The FBI moved in yesterday because members of the group met yesterday to exchange money for apparently explosives and to exchange some tactical gear. And at the same time, agents mobilized to bring in other Wolverine watchmen and their associates.
They executed search warrants across multiple states. A blown-out window of this mobile home in Heartland. Photo showing the FBI inside. FBI raids going down all over Metro Detroit and all over the state targeting multiple men. Paul Ballar, who had left town in early August, was arrested in South Carolina and would soon be extradited back to Michigan. FBI agents picked up Barry Croft at a truck stop in New Jersey.
By the time Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel took the podium at 1 p.m., 13 suspects in the kidnapping plot were in custody. Well, good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for this important update on our efforts to keep Michigan safe. Joe Morrison, Pete Musico, Paul Ballar, and five others would be charged in state court with providing material support for terrorism, among other crimes.
The government alleged they had helped Adam Fox and others in the kidnapping plot. Our efforts uncovered elaborate plans to endanger the lives of law enforcement officers, government officials, and the broader public. Adam Fox, Barry Croft, Ty Garman, Caleb Franks, Daniel Harris, and another watchman named Brandon Caserta each faced federal kidnapping conspiracy charges. If convicted, they faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.
As crazy as 2020 had been, the plot by militia groups to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer seemed to fit right in. And in those first days and weeks after the arrests, the media simply reported what the government was saying about the case.
More than 200 state and federal agents had been monitoring this group for months, and it took a paid informant to dismantle a plot that... Incredible, mind-blowing alleged plot to actually kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The plot, though shocking, made a warped kind of sense in those divided times. But later, as the defendants prepared for trial, another narrative would begin to emerge. This case was a lot more complicated than it first appeared.
My name is Jessica Garrison. And I'm Ken Bensinger. From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Chameleon Season 7, The Michigan Plot, Episode 7, A Conspiracy of One. The following interview is being videotaped at the Dade County Public Safety Department, Miami-Dade County, Florida. And sir, would you identify yourself? My name is Ronald F. Proud of 30th.
In 1976, a man in Florida tells a cop he has a confession to make. But instead of becoming his victim, I became his confidant, one of the people closest to him, as he recounted and was tried for his horrific crimes.
From Orbit Media and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to My Friend the Serial Killer. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts.
This morning, the death toll in New York State is nearing 1,000. Back in the spring of 2020, like a lot of people, I was locked down in my house. The deaths here keep coming. I was working as an editor for BuzzFeed News, trying to stay on top of an increasingly insane news cycle. With the pandemic going full steam, it was one unthinkable twist after another. And then came April 30th at the Capitol in Michigan. BuzzFeed!
I remember not really being able to process what I was seeing. These people stormed into the Capitol, armed to the teeth, yelling and screaming at cops and politicians. This is what we're doing now? When the news broke a few months later about the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, it was shocking. But it also felt kind of inevitable. Some of the guys arrested had been at the Capitol in Lansing that day.
Taken together, it seemed like a new escalation of a far-right extremism that had been simmering for years. A few months later, at the dawn of 2021, it boiled over. January 6th looked like a bigger, more violent version of what happened in Lansing. Thousands of so-called patriots storming the Capitol in D.C. to stop the certification of a presidential election.
Jessica and I filed a number of stories about January 6th and some of the people involved. And as we struggled to understand what had happened that day in Washington, we began to talk more about Michigan. It seemed like a dry run for the insurrection, a sign of darker things to come. We thought a deeper look at what happened in the Whitmer kidnapping case could shed light on what the far right was thinking and what might happen next.
But as we delved into the court documents coming out of Michigan, we were stunned to find that there were a ton of informants in this case. At least 12, as well as multiple undercover agents. What was even more amazing was how involved they were. Setting up meetings, pushing the suspects, and taping everything. This time we would call bad news.
We started getting up really early on the West Coast to listen to court hearings that were happening in the case over in Michigan. Well, one of us did. I'm sorry. I'm not a morning person. In any case, in one of those early hearings, we heard this guy testify for the first time. The
The main informant in the case. The Zoom feed of his testimony was blacked out to protect his identity, and they only called him by his first name. Hearing him tell his story in the stand, it felt like we weren't getting the whole picture. Like it didn't quite add up.
I watched it later, at a more civilized hour, once I'd had coffee. And I understood what Ken meant. It was clear that Dan was far from just a passive observer. As this progressed and you were leading this group, I had a leadership role with the Bureau. Fair enough. We kept digging and discovered that other informants, like Steve Robeson, had taken on leadership roles too. But Steve had also been breaking the law right under the Bureau's nose.
Eventually, prosecutors alleged that Robeson was a double agent who had been playing both sides and violating his duties as an informant. They threatened to charge him with perjury if he testified in a way that hurt their case. To us, it seemed like they were trying to erase Robeson from the case altogether. That made more sense later, when we learned that they were worried that some of what Robeson did as an informant could be construed as entrapment.
In July of 2021, we filed our first big story looking behind the curtain of this investigation. And it blew up. BuzzFeed has this article out, at least 12 confidential FBI informants, 12, assisted in this investigation. Suddenly, our work was being talked about all over cable TV, and the Michigan case quickly turned into a kind of political litmus test. If you were left-leaning, you probably took the plot seriously.
If you were on the right, you probably saw the whole thing as egregious government overreach. There's like twice as many FBI agents involved in this plot than there were plotters. Why does the FBI keep having to create its own plots? Why aren't they finding ones that they themselves aren't orchestrating? Right-wing media like Fox News offered the Michigan case as a prime example of a government witch hunt against conservatives.
It seemed like a terrorism plot was in fact a setup by the government to make a group of ordinary people in Michigan look like terrifying right-wing extremists. All of this was pretty strange for us, to suddenly have our reporting touted by Tucker Carlson. So it's a shocking story, really. But the details of that story are even worse than that. They are beyond belief. And we'll take a look.
In time, the Michigan case was used to fuel a growing conspiracy theory about the January 6th attack, that both had been created out of whole cloth by the FBI as a false flag operation against conservatives. What did the FBI know about the planning of the January 6th attack? How embedded were they in these groups? The federal trial was set to begin in March 2022, and it was starting to have the look of a political tinderbox.
There were plenty of challenges ahead, both for the government and the defense. My reaction when I see big crimes hitting the news is I have a little bit of dread for the lawyer who's going to get the case. It seemed like a mess. It was going to be a mess for some attorneys.
This is Josh Blanchard, one of the defense attorneys who would inherit the mess that was the Whitmer kidnapping federal trial. Blanchard runs a criminal defense practice with his wife in the tiny town of Greenville, Michigan. The defender's office reached out to me and asked if I would represent one of the people. And then later they told me it was going to be Barry. Barry Croft had bounced around federal detention centers for three months before finally arriving in Michigan in January 2021.
That's when Blanchard, who by then had been sorting through evidence in the case, finally got to meet his client in person. It's a really strange relationship to start out when you show up and say, essentially, the government sent me here to help you. I'm from the government and I'm here to help is not something people really trust, particularly when they've just been put in a cage by the government, right?
The narrative that we were getting through the discovery was that these guys were, you know, sort of sovereign citizen fringe on the flag folks. And he didn't present the way I expected. He was really pleasant and polite and thankful that somebody was trying to figure out why he was locked up and what was going to happen next.
The defense had some big hurdles to clear in the federal case. The first task was to get through the massive amount of evidence the government had handed over in discovery. Tens of thousands of pages of documents, FBI reports, phone records, Facebook data, and a vast library of all the encrypted chats the Watchmen and others had sent. It all arrived out of order and uncategorized. I mean, the organization was just wild.
Some people might have wondered if it was intentionally disorganized. Getting through the discovery was a massive task. Blanchard and the other defense lawyers started to get the evidence in order.
The biggest challenge was to organize the hundreds of hours of audio that had been recorded by the case's informants and agents. There were so many confidential informants present, we would have a recording of the same conversation from four different angles. Kyle, are you fucking drinking a beer back there? No.
Kyle, are you fucking drinking a beer back there? No. You know, because everybody's wearing a recorder in their pocket and it's mostly the same, but maybe somebody walks away at one point. I've been doing this with Wisconsin for six years now. Somebody's moving around so it's rustling real loud and you can't hear it in this one, but you can hear it in the other one. I've been doing this with Wisconsin for six years now. We're just now in the last year and a half. And so it's this process of just listening to the same stuff over and over.
You know, we started putting together a plan on figuring out what was real and what wasn't. What Blanchard and his team were listening to as they pieced the timeline together was some of the tape you've heard throughout this series. Hours and hours of guys talking about and shooting guns, smoking weed, telling jokes, and farting. But there were also these moments peppered in where the guys were talking about committing violence.
Blanchard mostly heard Adam Fox conspiring to carry out a kidnapping with Dan, a confidential informant. You can't have a conspiracy of one, and you can't have a conspiracy where it's all FBI agents and informants and one person. And Blanchard heard something you've also heard, FBI informants coaxing the group to come up with a plan, sometimes providing ideas of their own to the group or pledging to provide support. Blanchard thought he heard evidence of entrapment.
The crux of the whole trial was, was this something that was really going to happen? Or was it stoned ramblings? Was this a plan these guys had? Or was it something that was pushed by the FBI? In pretrial motions, Blanchard and the other defense lawyers argued that the FBI had entrapped their clients and the case should be thrown out. But entrapment is actually extremely hard to prove in court. So hard, it almost never succeeds.
You have to show that the government coerced, enticed, or otherwise overwhelmed the will of a defendant to get them to commit a crime. But you also have to prove the defendant had no predisposition toward the crime before meeting the government agent. And with all the violent rhetoric Barry Croft and others had spouted long before meeting Steve Robeson or Dan Chappell, it was tough to argue they weren't predisposed.
In the end, the judge, Robert Jonker, rejected the motion to dismiss based on entrapment. The case would be going to trial. Special Agent Jason Chambers was under scrutiny for promoting his private company, Exintel, while working for the FBI. He wouldn't be called to testify for the prosecution. And under threat of perjury charges, Steve Robeson was out too.
And then, a massive blow to the defense. A series of pretrial rulings by Judge Jonker determined that the vast majority of audio made by the FBI during its investigation would never be heard by the jury. They would never hear what you've heard. Like the meeting where a bunch of the guys said they were against offensive measures. — I am not about fucking being on the offense and attacking. — We are not going to be the aggressors in Michigan.
They would never hear Barry, confused about where they were going on the night recon. "Alright fellas, where the fuck are we going?" "It's a destination." And they wouldn't hear a lot of the moments where Dan appeared to be pushing the action. "We need to get a list of what we need. Get yourself a little notebook and just start writing them ideas down." "Give me an objective or whatever you want to label it as a goal. Are we going for brick and mortar or are we going for disruption? What are we thinking?"
Adam Fox, Brandon Caserta, Barry Croft and Daniel Harris go on trial in federal court and the stakes could not be higher. And if convicted, each face life in prison. The stage for the trial is set to be a battle. On the morning of March 7th, 2022, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Roth stood up to give his opening statement.
Roth knew what the defense planned to say. That yes, their clients had said some terrible things, but that it had always been just talk, nothing serious. The government's case hinged on proving otherwise. There are no recordings in federal court, so this is an actor reading an excerpt of Roth's statement. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this was not just talk. Their actions were louder than and just as disturbing as their words.
It is their actions that show you how serious they were about doing this. They performed reconnaissance at her house twice. They gathered the gear they would need to break into her home and violently kidnap her. Guns, ammunition, flex cuffs, explosives. But it was when they were trying to buy the bomb that they needed to blow up the bridge near the governor's home that investigators stepped in and stopped the tragedy the defendants promised.
What you have is that the defendants agreed, planned, trained, and were ready to break into a woman's home where she slept with her family in the middle of the night, and with violence and a gunpoint, they would tie her up and take her from that home. And to accomplish that, they would shoot, blow up, and kill anybody who got in their way. And for that, at the conclusion of this trial, we will ask you to find each of the defendants guilty for the crimes with which they are charged.
Throughout the federal trial, the government would play countless audio clips of the defendants' harsh words. Videos made by Barry Croft. There is not one motherfucker serving in this bullshit government that I don't want to take, stick to a motherfucking tree and dangle until they ass— And Adam Fox. This is the only way that we take back our country is right here. By brute fucking force. Physical violence.
While what they're talking about is not okay, it clearly wasn't serious. Josh Blanchard again. It was a bunch of really strange, dark fantasy or roleplay. These folks absolutely lacked the ability to kidnap the governor. One of the candidate plans...
was hatched at a meeting Sean Fix was at. And Sean Fix's persona in this group was that of a former Navy SEAL. As it turns out, Sean Fix was never in the military.
And the plan involved, he actually has access to a Black Hawk helicopter that he could steal. And they could fly the Black Hawk up to Mackinac Island, accomplish the kidnapping. This is hatched at a meeting where one of the participants gets so stoned that the undercover agent becomes concerned for her safety. She almost becomes catatonic. And the agent's like, is she okay?
There wasn't a helicopter pilot. Nobody had a Blackhawk. I mean, it's just ludicrous. But prosecutors argued that the conspiracy to kidnap the governor didn't actually have to be workable for the men to be convicted. They just had to agree on a plan, however crazy, and then someone had to take a step toward it. The government planned to prove their case with a testimony of their star witness, Dan Chappell.
I was in the courtroom the day that Dan took the stand, and I had my eye on Adam Fox. But Adam just sat there, stone-faced. He mostly just stared straight ahead while Dan told his story to the jury. Guided by lead prosecutor Nils Kessler, Dan took all the different times the defendants talked about the governor and put them in a cohesive, linear narrative.
Videos of the guys speed loading their rifles, of them jumping out of cars to shoot, or working through a kill house added color to one central idea. This was a long-running, well thought out plan. What the jury didn't hear is how much the informants struggled to get this group of guys to formulate even the vague outlines of a plan. That it took months of constant prodding.
Dan was always pushing, we need something we can practice and repeat, and you give me a plan, and we work back from the goal. You had meetings where it was majority informant. You wonder who's driving it.
You know, in some of the meetings, you know, the agendas were set out by informants. Here's what we're going to do today. And the informant leads the discussion and then passes the speaking stick around, so to speak. And OK, now it's Barry's turn. Barry, what's your plan? No, we need a concrete plan. You know, that kind of thing. The government had free reigned a cherry pick incriminating clips using Dan's testimony to give them context. The audio clips that were played for the jury were
little snippets, you know, sometimes, you know, 40 seconds out of a four hour meeting was played and we weren't able to play the next several minutes. You know, they proposed to play a clip of Barry saying, we'll go wherever we can amass first. And he describes it as this will be the last act of my life. We heard Mr. Croft saying, go wherever we can amass first. Yes. What did that mean?
pertaining to which governor we could take. Blanchard says that quote might have been taken out of context. It was a long rambling conversation about starting a school that teaches the Constitution and they would go wherever they could get enough students first. There was plenty of bad things said here, plenty of bad evidence, and it was just, they should have been ashamed of themselves for playing it in the first trial.
We think of criminal trials as these laboratories for justice, where the truth is painstakingly extracted from all the evidence. In reality, criminal trials are more like cooking competitions. Each side is handed the same ingredients, the evidence they have to work with. And whoever cooks up the story that's most convincing to the jury wins.
And in this trial, prosecutors had the secret ingredients up their sleeves. Two star witnesses were ready to take the stand to corroborate the government's story. Two members of the Wolverine Watchmen. I think it's right there. I guess. Oh. Oh. This is Daniel Harris, a one-time member of the Wolverine Watchmen, leaning into the mic and mimicking the sound of an air conditioner. Oh.
We met Harris and his attorney, Julia Kelly, at a hotel in Traverse City, Michigan. That might be a sign for him to tell me to shut up. You never know. He's a skinny young guy, which earned him his Watchmen nickname, Beaker, after the Muppet. He turned 26 a couple of weeks ago. So, almost 30. He has a mustache and wears cowboy boots. We ask him to describe himself. Animal lover, gun lover, pervert.
Person, liker, simple little dude that thinks he's a redneck but lives 45 minutes from the city but also like 10 minutes from a farm. Harris is under strict orders from his attorney to not talk about his time with the watchman. Anytime he gets close to talking about anything, she reins him in. I was still like super disgruntled. I was still super angry. And then came the pandemic. Okay. Yeah.
I wasn't getting a container of cheese. No, that's where I was at. I didn't get cheese, lady. You can't talk about any of the watchman stuff. No, I wasn't saying the watchman stuff, but during jail time or something. Kelly is being careful with her client. Like a lot of the watchmen, Harris is a big-time talker. And during the federal trial, his mouth almost got him into a terrible amount of trouble.
It all started on March 23, 2022, when Harris' fellow watchman and former good friend, Ty Garbin, was called to the stand to testify against him for the government. Garbin had been at the first VAC-SHAC meeting and the training in Cambria, Wisconsin. He'd hosted the weekend training in Luther and had even been in the car that went past the governor's lake house during the night recon. Simply put, he was in deep shit.
He flipped early, agreeing to plead guilty and cooperate in the hopes of a lighter sentence. But on the stand, he had to hold up his end of the deal.
Garbin said that kidnapping Governor Whitmer had been the goal from the beginning. Prosecutor Nils Kessler walked Garbin through all the steps the group had taken to develop their plan. And Kessler used Garbin to shoot down any arguments of entrapment. Were you in any way convinced by Dan Chappell to join this conspiracy? I was not, no. How about Steve Robeson? No. Did you ever hear Mr. Fox say that he was convinced by Dan Chappell? No.
In this plot that you pled guilty to, who did you consider the leader? Adam Fox and Barry Croft. On cross-examination, Adam Fox's lawyer Chris Gibbons had a go at Garbin's assertion that Adam was their leader. He had Garbin review text messages Garbin had sent about Adam. And do you recall calling him Captain Autism? I do, yes. You didn't have a lot of respect for Adam or his skill set or his person. Is that correct?
I had respect for him. I respected his skill set for what it was, even though it wasn't perfect, but I respected him. Okay. And I wanted to kind of take you forward in time to October 6th, the day before your arrest. Do you recall Adam Fox posting a picture of himself with his new helmet? I do, yes. And he has kind of a goofy look on his face, correct? Correct. And what did you post to the group?
I was. Compared him to a special needs person. And what else? He looked like he'd be the kind of person to use the bathroom and his pants in public. But you didn't use the word "go" in your pants. You said, "shit yourself in public." Correct? Correct.
And then Gibbons moved in for the kill. It's your testimony today that Adam Fox and his ideas inspired you to join his desire to kidnap the governor, correct? Correct. The next day, Caleb Franks, another watchman, took the stand for the government. Franks had proclaimed his innocence up until a couple of weeks before the trial. He'd flipped at the last minute.
On the stand, his testimony was mostly in step with Garbin's. But there was one key difference. He said that he and Garbin had gone on a hike together with their good friend, Daniel Harris, and that on that hike, they made a pact to kidnap the governor. A sort of all-for-one, one-for-all oath, like the Three Musketeers.
An agreement like that would be a big win for the government. But there was a problem. In his testimony, Garbin didn't mention any kind of pact like that. The jury would have to decide if they could believe these guys at all. Daniel Harris sat in the courtroom and listened as his two former friends turned on him to save themselves. Now he had a decision to make. Stay quiet or take a big risk and take the stand to tell his side of the story.
On March 31st, Harris stepped into the witness box. His lawyer, Julia Kelly, walked him through his time with the Watchmen. Harris told the jury about the first time he hung out with the group at Joe Morrison's house. Pete Musico decided to throw it at the time I perceived an explosive to where I would say there was a pucker effect, as in my body tensed up.
And then immediately after that, he said, "Do you want to meet my squirrels?" Is that the last time you went inside the house? That is the absolute last time I walked into that house. Kelly asked him about all the events where the plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer was supposed to have progressed. "Did you agree to kidnap the governor?" she asked him again and again. And again and again, Harris gave an identical answer: "Absolutely not."
Then, Kelly asked him about that mysterious hike with Garvin and Franks. Do you recall a hike that you took with just Caleb and Ty? No. Okay, even if it was just the three of you, would you have agreed to kidnap the governor of Michigan on a hike? No. Okay, so the three musketeers idea that I presented didn't happen.
Yeah, I'm not French. I would never call myself a Three Musketeer or a candy bar. So the three of you didn't agree that day? Never agreed. To kidnap the governor? No agreement whatsoever. And looking at this group of guys, would you consider Adam the leader of the group? No. Who would you consider the leader of the group of guys that you were spending time with in the summer of 2020? Dan Chappell.
Harris said his piece, but he wasn't out of the woods yet. Now he had to face cross-examination from a federal prosecutor. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Roth was locked and loaded. He had all these vile chats the watchman had shared. Memes about killing cops and federal agents. Posts about killing Governor Whitmer.
Dark things the watchman found hilarious, but surely the average juror would not. He grilled Harris. Why would he keep hanging out with a group of people who were posting all this violent stuff?
You heard testimony that Dan Chappell, he's so bothered by the things that are going on in the chats, he immediately calls the police. Well, he's a bitch, yes. Sir, I'm sorry, what was that? He's a bitch? Tell me about that, sir. Next question. No, tell me about it. Why is Dan Chappell a bitch?
You get scared by memes. People that- What kind of memes? Just memes. I don't know what memes they were sending. I wasn't in the group yet, correct? Sir, you just told me that he is a bitch for being scared of these memes. Tell me what was going on with these memes, that he shouldn't be afraid of them. How am I supposed to know if I'm not in the group? He was in the group before me, correct? Sir, you just told me that he is a bitch. Tell me why he's a bitch.
You're scared by words, but yet you say that you saved Chris Kyle, you went to Iraq, came out, right? Hurt, but words hurt you? Words scare you? You are a bitch. Words are words. I was listening to this testimony live by phone. It seemed like it would be a disaster for Harris. But on the other hand, the prosecutor, Roth, lost his cool to such an extent that I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for Harris, like he was being bullied by the government.
It had been a complex and exhausting four-week trial. But finally, the defense rested its case. The jury went into deliberation. The first day went by. Then the second. And the defense was left to wonder how the jury would see it. Did these guys really conspire to kidnap the governor? Or were their words, as Daniel Harris said, just words?
Finally, on the fifth day of deliberations, the jury announced that it was hung on some counts and decided on others. The jury couldn't agree on a verdict for Barry Croft or Adam Fox. Barry and Adam would have to do the whole trial over again. But the jury had come to a decision on Daniel Harris and fellow watchman Brendan Caserta. Both men were found not guilty on all charges.
This was one moment that Harris' attorney would let him tell us about. The moment when he walked out of the courthouse after 18 months in custody. So I hugged my sister in the parking garage up off the ground. We get in the truck with mom and dad. I don't really remember too much of that drive. I had the window down for a little bit just to get some fresh air because I was paler than I've ever been and just wanted fresh air on my face.
I had like the biggest hankering for Chick-fil-A, but we stopped at Cracker Barrel instead. But yeah, Cracker Barrel is just, man, they're cheesy grits with the bacon on it. Where it's at. Drive home, my dog about had a heart attack the second he saw me. Because, you know, 18 months without his boy. I just kind of sat outside and just sat in my little rocking chair outside and just kind of let the sun hit me. And so, nice peaceful, peaceful day.
and then went to bed like it was nothing. No time to pass. Doc slept right next to me on bed like he always has and still continues to do. While Daniel Harris' life was beginning again, Adam Fox and Barry Croft stayed behind bars, awaiting a second trial.
Four months later, they returned to the same courtroom in Grand Rapids, and their lawyers made many of the same arguments they had made the first time. But the prosecution ran a tighter, more streamlined trial with fewer unforced errors. This time, the jury deliberated for less than two days before coming to a verdict. On August 23, 2022, Governor Gretchen Whitmer's birthday, both Barry and Adam were found guilty on all charges. There was no real reaction in the courtroom.
At least, not that I recall. I don't know what would have happened if we had got all the evidence in. I mean, we tried the case within the confines of, you know, the rulings, right? And I don't know which way a jury would have come down on it if they had heard everything. But they didn't get the opportunity to make that judgment.
Adam Fox was sentenced to 16 years in prison for his role in the Whitmer kidnapping conspiracy. And Blanchard was left wondering why all this had to happen. What was the point? I mean, you look at Adam Fox, he...
Don't get me wrong, he said some awful, terrible things. He had a rough childhood. I don't think Adam Fox has ever led anything in his life. And then all of a sudden he has people telling him what a good leader he is and reinforcing everything he does and encouraging him to make plans. And he had some vulnerability there. And Dan Chappell, the FBI, whoever was pulling those strings, really saw that.
Barry Croft's sentence was even harsher, in part because of the makeshift explosive he made out of a balloon filled with gunpowder and BBs at the training in Cambria. Somewhat ironically, at the sentencing, Judge Jonker called Barry the "idea guy" behind the plot. He was sentenced to 19 years in prison, away from his fiancée Chasity and his two daughters.
You know, part of what happens if you do this work, and I think if you try and do it well, you have to really get to know your client as a human. And you represent your client in a way that seems like you care. Because, I mean, you do, right? After you develop a connection with someone. What's interesting about Barry, I mean, you know, there was the audio clip that was played at trial. A little girl walks up to him and says, "Daddy, do you want a Dorito?"
And he replies something along the lines of, "Honey, you've got to go away. Daddy's making explosives right now." I mean, I get why the government played it. You've got all these bad things that are captured on recording. I don't think there's any question he genuinely cares for his daughters. He was very involved in their lives. And he was trying to be a good father. The tragedy of Barry Croft's life was that the things he said didn't match up with the things he actually did.
In the end, it seemed that it was mostly the things he said that cost him his freedom. The dust had finally settled on the federal trial. A mixed record of convictions and acquittals suggested the jury didn't fully see it the government's way, which begged the question: What would happen to Joe Morrison and Pete Musico, the founders of the Wolverine Watchmen?
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That's all episodes, all at once. Unlock your listening now by clicking subscribe at the top of the Chameleon Show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Never had a case with this amount of publicity, this many moving parts, and with people that I really thought were just so innocent. This case was going to be a dogfight.
This is Kareem Johnson, a public defender in Jackson County, Michigan. Johnson was used to defending low-profile cases, drug busts, convenience store robberies, even the occasional murder. But he had a feeling that this case with the Wolverine Watchmen was going to be massive. He knew it back in April of 2020, when armed men stormed the Capitol in Lansing, paused for a photo op in front of the governor's office, and made international news. I immediately thought of the Black Panthers.
in the 60s, taking the guns to the California state legislature and how everybody involved in that wanted to be the dead or in jail. When I saw that at Michigan, I said, "Well, somebody's going to jail and those people in front of that door are the prime people to wind up in prison behind this." When you do certain things to bring attention to yourself, the government's going to give you that attention. Johnson would ultimately be assigned to defend one of the six men who stood in front of that door.
Pete Musico. I had my own prejudices and biases about what he was going to be based on my own beliefs on militia groups. But when I met the person, realized all my assumptions were wrong. You have these people, you know, for 10 months talking in a cryptic chat and nothing racist, nothing homophobic, nothing xenophobic was ever said. I guess they were the...
the leaders in diversity and inclusion for militia groups. But Johnson's client, Pete, had said a lot of crazy things in those chats. And although Pete hadn't been in the loop on Adam Fox's plan to kidnap the governor, he was in big trouble. I saw somebody who, in my opinion, was like a deer in the headlights.
He had no idea what he had been wrapped up in. Pete, his son-in-law Joe Morrison, and Paul Ballar were all facing gang and weapons charges. But the most serious charge against them was that they provided material support for terrorism. The state alleged that they had supported and trained a would-be terrorist, Adam Fox.
You might remember that when Adam first entered the fold, Dan Chappell spent a lot of time trying to convince Joe and Pete to let him come to a training at their house. Joe and Pete thought Adam was crazy and wanted nothing to do with him. There was discussions about this guy and them not wanting him at the house and not wanting to train with him. And Dan again vouches for the guy.
In the end, Joe and Pete relented. Adam came to their property twice to train with the Watchmen. Afterward, they went their separate ways. Joe and Pete didn't go to any of the out-of-state meetings or trainings. They didn't go to the recons of the governor's lake house. They weren't part of Adam's plan at all. But because Adam had come to their trainings, something that likely wouldn't have happened without the FBI, they were looking at serious prison time. The Wolverine Watchmen had men and no plan.
Adam Fox had a plan and no men. And the FBI played a part in putting them together. I mean, I don't understand what else I could have shown to show entrapment than that. The defense's case focused not on denying that there was a kidnapping plot, but instead on the simple proposition that these men had wanted nothing to do with it.
The trial lasted three weeks. And then, after just a day and a half of deliberations, the jury came back with a verdict. "Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I understand you reached a verdict. If you could have your four-person rise and read your verdict, please." Pete and Joe joined over Zoom, looking exhausted and anxious. "Second defendant, Joseph Morrison."
Count one, gang membership felonies. We find the defendant guilty. Count two, providing material support for an act of terrorism. We find the defendant guilty. Count three, weapons, felony firearm. We find the defendant guilty. They were convicted on all counts. I think mostly the public perception was that this was BS. But the 12 people's opinions who mattered thought differently. Six weeks later, they were led back into court in chains for their sentencing.
The court played a victim impact statement from Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Do you want my advice about what to do with men like this? It's simple. Impose a sentence that meets the gravity of the damage they have done to our democracy.
At that point, found guilty, the men had little choice but to beg for mercy. Joe Morrison got up to make his statement. My sincere apology to the governor, to her family, and all law enforcement who were affected by what conspired with this whole thing, the whole conception of Wolverine Watchmen. If I could, Your Honor, I'd take it all back. And then, a tearful Pete Musico was given a chance to speak.
Your Honor, I had a lapse in judgment. I've been a good citizen. I've been a family man. I've taken care of my family for a very long time. I throw myself at the mercy of the court.
Pete Musica was sentenced to a minimum of 12 years in prison. Joe Morrison was given 10 years. Jada Morrison was in court that day, watching as both her father and husband were led away. And she remembered what she told Joe years before, when he started the Wolverine Watchmen. From the beginning, I told him flat out, I said, you're going to end up going to prison because of this. You're going to lose your family because of this. Because the wrong person is going to see this and take it the wrong way.
And where is he at now? Joe, Pete, and Paul Ballar were convicted in state court, but they were soon sent to federal prisons in other states to serve their time. Such a move is incredibly rare, and the government has refused to explain why the men were transferred. Pete Musico is in a federal prison in West Virginia, far away from his family. He said some pretty bullshit, stupid things, and he knows he regrets it, and he means that.
I mean, he literally is an old man sitting in prison and he's missed out. He's missing out on his grandkids' lives. Watching me and my sister finish growing up, it's just, I miss him. I do. But there's nothing I can do. I've been trying to basically ignore it because not only do I have two kids, I'm basically a single mom. I'm going through so much right now. I'm all over trying to stay sane.
We wanted to know what, if anything, Jada took away from all this. You can't really trust anybody. That's my biggest thing is you don't know who to trust. I can't trust the government. And anybody put in my position, put in my shoes and seen anything that happened that I have seen would probably feel the same way. Adam Fox and Barry Croft are both being held in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
It's known as the Alcatraz of the Rockies. They're housed among high-profile terrorists, including the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Zacharias Moussaoui, who helped plan the September 11 attacks. Clearly, the government views Adam and Barry as extremely dangerous. In Supermax prisons, inmate communications with the outside world are sometimes restricted. We were getting letters from Barry before they moved him to Florence, but haven't heard from him since. We haven't heard from Adam Fox at all.
We made several requests for in-person interviews. All were denied by the Federal Bureau of Prisons on the grounds of safety. But we have to wonder if the government just doesn't want these men talking to the media. Requests for comment from the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Michigan Attorney General's Office were all declined.
This story is still unfolding. Late this past August, a third trial began for the last of the 14 defendants caught up in this case. A group that included Eric Molitor, who went with Adam Fox on the first recon of the governor's vacation home, Brian Higgins, who drove one of the cars during the night recon, and Sean Fix, the fake Navy SEAL who claimed he could get a Black Hawk helicopter to carry out the kidnapping.
Fix and Higgins pleaded guilty, and in December 2023, Fix was sentenced to a minimum of three years in prison. But maybe he should have gone to trial. Because in the end, the jury acquitted Molitor and two others, twin brothers Bill and Michael Null.
Six weeks later, the Null brothers, both of whom went on the night recon of Governor Whitmer's house, were honored as heroes by a Republican Michigan state senator who hailed their contribution to, quote, keeping alive our cherished liberties. We're here to recognize today Bill and Mike Null for their unfortunate involvement in this scandal. The tributes honored the Nulls for standing up to, quote, government tyranny. A spokeswoman for Whitmer called the ceremony disturbing.
The political division over this case continues. With everything that's happened in this case, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that this all started not with heroes or villains, but with a bunch of disgruntled stoners talking bullshit. You may not agree with the things they said. You probably don't. But ask yourself, did their words and actions constitute terrorism?
FBI agents lie awake at night worrying about the thin line between violent words and violent actions. But how far should they go to get people to act on those words? Is this really the way for us as a nation to deal with the growing threat of domestic terror? Does what you've heard over the course of this story make you feel safer? Thank you for listening all the way to the end of our series.
We really appreciate you joining us on this journey, and we hope you found this story to be as fascinating as we did. Chameleon is a production of Campside Media in partnership with Sony Music Entertainment. The Michigan Plot is hosted by me, Ken Bensinker. And me, Jessica Garrison. The show is produced by Ryan Swickert. Callie Hitchcock and Henry Lavoie are associate producers. Story editing by Michael Canyon-Meyer.
Josh Dean is our executive producer. Voice acting by Levi Petrie, Julian Weller, Mark McAdam, Henry Lavoie, and Michelle Lance. Fact checking by Annika Robbins. Additional research by Julie Denichet. Sound design and mix by Ewen Lai-Tremuin. Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Epidemic Sound, and APM. A special thanks to our operations team, Doug Slaywin, Ashley Warren, and Destiny Dingle.
Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scher. If you're enjoying this show, spread the word and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps other people find the show. I'm Ken Bensinger, and thanks for listening.
