A federal judge in Delaware sentenced a Delaware man to 16 years in prison on Tuesday for his role in a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, rejecting the prosecution’s request for life in prison.
In August, Adam Fox was convicted of conspiring to commit kidnapping and using a weapon of mass destruction to attack Whitmer, who had drawn the ire of far-right groups for her efforts to combat Covid in 2020.
In April, jurors failed to reach verdicts against Fox and co-defendant Barry Croft, forcing a judge to declare a mistrial before a retrial.
U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker questioned whether Fox was the plot’s true “natural leader,” and deserving of a life sentence.
“I don’t think life is needed to achieve the important public deterrent factors,” Jonker explained of his 192-month sentence.
Fox, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler, was out to start a war and should be imprisoned for life.
“They wanted a second Civil War or a revolution,” Kessler testified in court on Tuesday. “They wanted to ruin everything for everybody.”
Whitmer’s actions at the start of the pandemic in 2020, when she ordered various lockdowns aimed at slowing the spread of Covid, sparked the plot.
Far-right organizations slammed Whitmer, and then-President Donald Trump appeared to back them up in an all-caps tweet.
