GRAND RAPIDS, MI – An informant in the alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is among several defense witnesses to invoke Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination.
Stephen Robeson, a Wisconsin man, on Wednesday, March 30, invoked Fifth Amendment rights before Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker.
Robeson, characterized in court records as a “double agent,” would be exposed to potential state and federal charges if he testified, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler told the judge.
The informant was accused of setting up meetings and field-training exercises and encouraging others to join in the alleged kidnapping plot. Then, he tipped off a defendant that arrests were going down and urged another to dispose of evidence, the prosecutor said.
“That’s the biggest problem I think he’s facing,” Kessler said.
The trial, now in its fourth week at the federal courthouse in Grand Rapids, resumes Thursday morning with potential testimony by one of the defendants, Daniel Harris, 24, of Lake Orion.
The judge told his attorney, Julia Kelly, to decide before the trial starts if he will testify so that Harris can be escorted to the witness stand and have handcuffs removed outside the presence of jurors.
He is on trial with Barry Croft Jr., 46, of Bear, Delaware, Brandon Michael-Ray Caserta, 33, of Canton, and Adam Fox, 38, of Wyoming.
They are charged with conspiracy to kidnap, a potential life offense. Croft, Fox and Harris are also charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. Croft and Harris are charged with possession of an unregistered destructive device while Harris is charged with possession of an unregistered short-barrel firearm.
Two others took plea deals and testified against the four remaining federal defendants. Eight others face start charges.
Attorney Josh Blanchard, representing Croft, and Christopher Gibbons, representing Fox, asked the judge to compel Robeson’s testimony.
They said he has been a confidential human source, or CHS, for the government since the early 2000s.
“Robeson is a, or in most cases the only, direct link that the defendants have to the alleged conspiracy because of his actions, coordination, and planning on behalf of the government. Robeson initially contacted defendant Croft and targeted him for the government.
“Additionally, Robeson would take defendants to riots and protests in an effort to get them worked up; then, using the recording device provided by the FBI, he would record them reacting to the situation in a state of anger,” the attorneys wrote.
FILE – Top row from left, Barry Croft Jr. and Brandon Caserta; and bottom row from left, Adam Dean Fox and Daniel Harris; are pictured this collage of images provided by the Kent County Sheriff and the Delaware Department of Justice. They are facing trial on federal charges accusing them in a plot to abduct Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. (Images provided by Kent County Sheriff, Delaware Department of Justice)
They said that Robeson’s FBI handler paid him throughout the investigation. They said he doesn’t face prosecution because he acted under the FBI’s authority.
Kessler said the FBI terminated Robeson because he broke the law – he illegally bought a firearm – and was “surreptitiously assisting the other conspirators.”
The government says the plan to kidnap Whitmer from her vacation home in Elk Rapids took hold in spring 2020 over the governor’s shutdown orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Two undercover FBI agents and a dozen informants, with access to encrypted chats and using hidden recording devices, provided investigators with real-time information, culminating in arrests on Oct. 7, 2020.
Defense attorneys, who claim entrapment, said the FBI and informants led the plot. They also claim their clients were drinking and smoking so much marijuana they could not have carried out any such plan.
Colleen Kuester, a Wisconsin resident, said she and her husband and their two children attended a “family fun day” in Cambria, Wisconsin, where the government said the alleged conspirators trained.
She heard nothing about plans to kidnap the governor – or anything threatening.
“It wasn’t very serious, I guess,” she testified, adding that many children were swimming in a pool.
Others didn’t want to take the witness stand.
“I would like to plead the Fifth,” a man subpoenaed by the defense said.
It came just after a prosecutor said the man had been at a field-training exercise in 2020. The man was recording saying “something to the effect, ‘I’m in.’”
Another man, who initially said he would testify, changed his mind. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Roth said the man, who took part in chats and training, once said: “’Nobody talks, everybody walks.’”
Related:
Alleged leader of Gov. Whitmer kidnap plot: ‘Dominoes will start falling’ with a governor’s hanging
Alleged leaders of plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen excited by bomb video, undercover FBI agent says
Guns, flexible handcuffs in home of defendant in alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer, FBI says
A ‘snitch,’ a liar and taking the Fifth: This week in the Gov. Whitmer kidnap plot trial
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