Overview

• President Trump told reporters he will “take a look” at pardoning men convicted in the failed 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and described their trial as a “railroad job.”
• Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s new pardon attorney, has launched a formal review of the cases and compared the convicted plotters to victims of government overreach.
• Barry Croft Jr. and Adam Fox were found guilty in 2022 as the ringleaders of the Wolverine Watchmen scheme and sentenced to nearly 20 years and 16 years in prison, respectively.
• Defense lawyers for Croft and Fox have accused the FBI of using informants and undercover agents to entrap the group, a claim rejected by courts but cited in pardon considerations.
• Governor Gretchen Whitmer has publicly opposed any clemency, warning that pardons would weaken accountability for politically motivated violence.