I'm Chris Farrell, and this is on Watch. Welcome to on Watch, everybody, the Judicial Watch podcast, where we go behind the headlines to report on issues that the mainstream media doesn't really want you to know about, where we try to recover some lost history and where we try to explain the inexplicable. Thank you for joining us. We appreciate you taking time. Whether you're watching us in the video version of this podcast or listening to us as we stream across any number of podcast platforms today, we have a real treat for you. 

If you're interested in insane levels of corruption and abuse by our Department of Justice and FBI, if you've ever had questions about some of these plots and conspiracy theories and these very convoluted cases where the FBI manufactures their own terrorists, then you're going to want to tune in and pay close attention. Joining us today is Christina Urso. And Christina is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. Christina, welcome to Onwatch. 

Thank you. So you have started to work on and you're almost ready to release what I think is a tremendous, very exciting documentary film that looks at the supposed Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot. And the minute that news broke back in October 2020, it smelled and looked rotten. It looked like it was a setup job. But you've really delved into this and you've done a tremendous investigation about this kidnap plot. 

What was your kickoff point? What got you interested in this supposed attempt by militia groups to kidnap the Michigan governor? Well, when they first announced the arrests and Whitmer did her press conference that she's smiling through. She's smiling, she's smiling through, but she just seems so arrogant. Right? And she referred to the guys as being like white supremacist extremist militia that had been radicalized by Trump. And so it wasn't just her, but Joe Biden and Kamala Harris also used the Whitmer plot in the last month of their campaign. 

They would use it to bring up why Trump wasn't fit for office. They brought up tweets he had made where he tweeted out, like, liberate Michigan and a couple other states to say that he had told extremist groups to stand back and stand by. And so when I saw the way the media was covering it, I immediately knew that that wasn't going to be the real story. And as soon as I started looking into it, it became very apparent that what we were initially told was not really what happened here. 

So the shorthand version of this case appears to me to be that the FBI went out and they've done this repeatedly. But in this particular case, they went out and identified a certain group of people that, in my estimation, are usually kind of on the margins of life. They're not necessarily the brightest light bulbs of the sharpest knives. They're not high achievers. Maybe they've got a little petty criminal background. 

They may not be terribly intelligent. There may be some drug and alcohol issues. They're sort of down and out, and that's the population that they seem to identify and target. And is that a fair assessment or characterization of the group that they went after? Some of them, yes. The guy who they called the Ringleader, Adam Fox, he was at the time this happened, he had just been divorced, and he was homeless, living in the basement of a vacuum repair shop that had no running water. 

If he wanted to brush his teeth, he had to go to the mexican restaurant next door. This is not somebody who had resources. And he also didn't have a lot of friends. He didn't have a father, even. So, when the FBI set upon him with a network of informants and agents, they used one of their agents to befriend him and become that father figure. So for him, for sure, Brandon Caseerta, who was acquitted at the first federal trial, he was a machinist from Detroit. 

These were working class people that were in many cases very vulnerable and like you said, kind of like the fringes of society, firearm culture, things like that. So the FBI, they've looked at a group of people that they seek to recruit. They have confidential human sources of their own, informants that they use to make contact with and recruit these people. And that's in this case, essentially, they used a number of sources to recruit a group that they then trained, equipped, gave direction to, and then said, aha, we caught people trying to kidnap the governor. 

I mean, it's preposterous, but they did this. I mean, give us some of the details as to how this case, how they developed the relationships, and how they got the kidnap plot even rolling. Well, according to the government, the investigation began in March of 2020 when a postal worker and veteran, Dan Chapel, was looking for pro two a groups online. And he claims he stumbled across a Facebook page for a group called the Wolverine Watchmen. 

The page was private at the time with just a few members in it, but he joins the group, and he claims to see what he called threats of violence against law enforcement. And that was never documented. We've never seen any evidence of those threats. But basically, within a week, he's made an informant and then very quickly, he becomes essentially the leader of the. So he infiltrates the group, then reports to the FBI that he's made this contact. 

And then I guess the FBI directs him to take charge of it or to become the leader. He becomes the executive officer who is the one that leads the tactical training at what they would call field training exercises, ftxs, that were all basically sponsored and paid for by the FBI. And so you have various guys. There were 14 total that were arrested. There were six charged federally with conspiring to kidnap Whitmer. 

But there were eight men who were charged with providing material support, gang affiliation, and felony firearms. So essentially, these people would not have even met each other without the FBI's network of twelve informants, two to three undercover agents stitching the group together. Barry Croft, who was also called one of the ringleaders, they actually called him the spiritual leader, which I never even heard of before. That was a thing that you could be a spiritual leader of. 

A. The only person I've heard referred to as a spiritual leader was the spiritual leader of the 911. Right. Well, they did compare him at his sentencing to the blind sheik, which is wild, but he was a middle aged truck driver from Delaware with three daughters he was raising as a single dad. There was an effort also, he's not from Michigan. These people, the FBI created the meetings and events that they'd invite these people to, and that's how these guys met each other. 

And I also understand that there was another meeting that was sort of, I guess they build it, or they advertised it as sort of like a militia conference in Dublin, Ohio, where they tried to get even more people involved in this somehow. So I guess you say it starts in March, but it sort of progresses along. What were some of the big benchmark events? I guess there's. This conference begins in March of 2020. 

Unofficially, we know that one of their informants, Steve Robeson, who is a convicted child sex offender and career criminal, he became an informant in October of 2019. They claim that he became an informant because he heard chatter amongst three percenter groups of, again, threats of violence against law enforcement. So he sets upon Barry Croft in January of 2020. So this is well before the official investigation begins. And, in fact, from people I have interviewed associated with this case, the FBI in 2018, it seems they are involved in some kind of operation to infiltrate militia groups. 

Midwest militia groups. Okay. They create a group called the Midwest Coalition through one of their informants. But from what I've been told, essentially in 2018, the FBI approached different leaders of militia groups and was asking them for contact information of membership lists. Not everyone wanted to provide this information. So some of those leaders of the militia group stepped down. And we believe at that point, the FBI put a lot of their informants and leadership roles in militias. 

So that goes back to the Midwest in 2018. Then we have Robeson in October of 2019. He's meeting Barry in January of 2020. So this is not a three year thing. Like they said, it didn't begin in 2020. It goes back further than that. Okay. There's this conference in Dublin, Ohio. I guess they tried to bring more people in March. After Dan joins the group in March of 2020, they're trying to bring various people from different states together from different militias or whatever. 

So they have what the FBI claims. Barry Croft called and chaired this meeting in Dublin, Ohio. It came out at trial. That's not true. Their informant, Robeson, called and chaired the meeting, and they haven't provided the receipt for who paid for the hotel conference room at the Druurian in Columbus, Ohio. But we all know who's going to be on that. And again, this guy Robeson, is a career criminal, a felon, a sex offender. 

And that information, by the way, was kept off his criminal record during this time because some of these militia groups, they will run background checks on people. And so these men had this guy around their children. They didn't know, but the FBI knew the entire time. So essentially, the FBI called and chaired the meeting. They invited different people from different states, different militia groups, and these were all people that the FBI had decided they wanted to target. 

Now, in their documentation, they claim they gave Robeson the informant, access to a database of Americans they wanted to target. We don't know who's in that database. Claim. Yeah. So restate that one more time. What was done. So, in his file, Robeson, they discussed that he was given access to a database of people, Americans. That the FBI. FBI gave Robeson access to a database. Yes. And that database was an FBI database of persons that they wished to target. 

Yes, that's right. And so that is, we believe, how Robeson knew to make contact and befriend Barry Croft on Facebook, posing, is somebody who knew a friend of Barry's who had just passed away. So Barry's in a very vulnerable place. He thinks this person's attending the funeral of his friend, and this is how they become friends. Yes. So I'd like to know what the criteria is for getting really creepy in that database. 

Right. And so the Dublin meeting, Robeson calls and chairs it. He invites these various people to it. And essentially, you've got five informants there, all wearing recording devices, and they're riling people up. And you have to think back to the time frame of where we are. This is June 6, 2020. So in the backdrop of COVID lockdowns, people concerned about vaccine mandates, riots happening, cities burning, like, things happening that a lot of people were riled up about. 

And then also, Whitmer had the. She had the most stringent lockdown. So you have a bunch of guys in Michigan who. They can't work. She even closed barber shops. What are they going to do all day except talk crap? So the FBI calls and shares this meeting, invites all these people, has five informants, all provoking people, and then they'll take these little snippets from that to play in court to make these guys look bad after they got them stoned and intoxicated. 

Yeah. That was another sort of recurring theme in the stuff that I've read on this case is that some of the people involved said, well, if you weren't going to bring pizza, beer and weed, we weren't going to show up. And so they literally, I mean, they baited them into, well, come on over, because we're going to have food, we're going to have beer, we're going to have weed, hot wings, and you can hang out and eat and get high and drink beer or do whatever. 

And that was the incentive. From what I read. Some of these guys are saying, well, if you didn't have the wings and beer, I'm not going, yeah, they were literally saying that. Yeah. And then the people providing the food, the drugs and the beer were the FBI guys. And the FBI was paying the bill for that. Yes, that's correct. And everyone thinks, this is fine. No one shrugs at this and says, wait a minute, what are they know? The Dublin meeting, this is where the government alleges that the origins of the plot began. 

And I've seen video of one of the guys'speeches from Dublin, and there's nothing incriminating in that. And from the little snippets that were played, they were played out of context to a jury, and it sounds really bad. Barry Croft, at that meeting, went on a very intoxicated tirade where he talked about what they didn't play in court. But what was talked about prior to that? You had informants talking about hypotheticals. 

So they would ask these guys, hypothetically speaking, when would it be okay to use violence? And then they take the response and play it in court without that context that it just makes it sound like they're planning something, but they think they're speaking hypothetically. And you had the informants telling them, saying things like, they're in your backyard. At that Dublin meeting, there was a riot that occurred in Columbus, Ohio, that they were trying to get the guys to go armed. 

So they were telling them, like, they're in your backyard. Why are we giving quarter when no quarter is given? This is the informants saying that, not these men, and just trying to get them riled up and then saying, in a situation where, like, a shit hits the fan type thing, what would you do to defend your families? And then taking those clips and playing them without the full context. 

So this is a very elaborate, obviously a very in depth, extensive plan to cultivate and develop not just these contacts, but also to document these guys saying stuff that's borderline crazy or built on hypotheticals that are nonsensical but would be played out of context, would make them look like they were fringe, lunatic, violent people. Yes, exactly. At some point, though, in all of this, and we can kind of go forward and backwards and fill in the blanks, I don't mean to constrain your answer, but at some point, somebody comes up with this bright idea or is offered to them, hey, let's go kidnap Whitmer. 

What's the ignition point on that? How did that become the goal of what they were doing? That was the FBI's goal. So at these various meetings and FTXs that the government put on and invited these people to, they would talk about things that were happening in the country, and what do we need to do? The FBI informants suggested not just kidnapping Whitmer, but they suggested doing this to multiple governors. 

The FBI wanted it to be a multistate plot. We have their informants on audio, talking at one of the FTXs saying, oh, there's going to be this big movement with 15 states. They were pushing this, like, boogaloo thing where for people who don't know, it's very hard to explain firearms and militia culture. But the boogaloo, from what I understand, these men understood it to believe to be was a civil war that they thought was inevitable. 

Not that they wanted to make it happen, but if this happened, this is what we would do. So this is their contingency plan for what they thought, how things were going to unfold in the country. Yes, that's right. And then you had the informants that were suggesting things like, well, why don't we fire rounds in governors mansions? Why don't we put tannerite in their driveway and shoot it to explode? Talked, one of the informants talked about taking out her security detail that was the FBI making these. 

Then, you know, their main informant, he posed as. So he really is an Iraq war veteran, but he posed as part of the elite team that helped rescue american sniper Chris Kyle. Like he, so he made himself seem like this operator. And these guys, they saw him as that, like as a war hero. And so they kind of listened to him. And he told them, when we were in the military, when we were training a group of guys, you've got to give them goals and objectives for training. 

Like you're training for a know it's not real. But this is what he was telling, what the informant, Dan Chappell, was telling Adam Fox, the guy who they called the ringleader. So a lot of the talk about Whitmer and kidnapping her or whatever, it's not serious talk in their minds. They think that this is to train the guys and get them focused so there's a mission. And you can see that, too, in the discovery and the exculpatory statements that the jury didn't get to see, but things that were picked up on audio in just text messages, too, where you can see they don't really want to do it. 

And every time the FBI is pushing, they're saying, no. Daniel Harris at one point, not, we're not going to be blackbagging politicians, taking them out of their cars. We're not going to be arresting them. We're not doing that. Because one of the things that they had suggested, Adam suggested to the informant who was pushing these violent things was, well, why don't we contact a constitutional sheriff and try to get a valid arrest warrant? And he actually contacted five sheriffs, and he had one sheriff, I believe, from Van Buren county, who actually had called him back, and the FBI told him, oh, no, don't meet with him. 

That's going to be a set up. This is astounding stuff. And so as this whole thing develops, and like you said, it's a period of months, and there's at least 14 different people involved, plus other FBI informants that are sort of directing. This is not a simple story to tell. So you have your work cut out for you as a documentarian to try to make this all make sense. 

But as the story progresses, there's these confidential human sources, these informants that the FBI is providing direction to and tasking them to foment this type of behavior. Right. But at the special agent level, at the actual FBI agent level. So sort of like two steps up, there's real misconduct and some really sketchy, unethical behavior at the agent level of the people that are directing this whole thing to take place. 

Give us a sample or a couple of ideas of what the problems are with the actual special agents from the FBI. Well, the three lead handling agents have all been accused of misconduct in various ways. Henrich Impala, who was a main handling agent, he'd been previously accused of perjury in a prior case, right before what they called Operation Cold Snap, the Whitmer investigation. He'd actually been referred to the FBI, basically by another us attorney, former us attorney for the Western District of Michigan. 

He pointed out to the FBI that this agent had committed perjury multiple times in this case, and he was hoping that they would investigate him. One month later, they made him a lead agent on this case, where he engaged and his name again, Henrich Impala. And so he ends up becoming the lead agent for the entire operation. One of them. One of them. The second lead handling agent, the main one is a guy named Jason Chambers. 

And Chambers is an interesting character. While all of this was going on, he's trying to launch his own private company called Ex intel, which is a cybersecurity company. But basically they were seeking contracts with the government to advise the government on domestic terror cases. So how great for Jason would it be if he foils a big case? Right. Which is what he talks about, by the way, in emails. 

He's talking about kind of leveraging his work at the FBI to launch his private company. He even, in one email to, the name is redacted. But we have the email. He talks about how he's reallocating FBI resources to launch exit intel and go public with it. He even mentions a person that he says he's paying to do this. But how was he paying her as a source, as a CHS, but she's really working for his private company, which I thought was astounding. 

And the jury didn't get to hear about this. He was also seeking contracts with different state governments for protection, for venue protection. That's literally what he was selling them. So if something happened, like, say, a storming of a state capital, well, that's perfect for selling his proprietary software that does event monitoring. Yeah, I mean, talking about a conflict of interest and leveraging his official government position for his own personal gain. 

Yeah, this was for his personal financial benefit and professional benefit as well as he launches his career in the private sector, which some of these cybersecurity firms go on to make millions of dollars leveraging the skills these people learned in the FBI. And so the third lead handling agent, a man named Richard Trask, who actually signed off on the criminal complaint, he was going to be the government's star witness at trial. 

He actually gets arrested because he and his wife attended a swinger's party in Kalamazoo, where they attended an orgy. And then afterwards, he beat his wife, he tried to strangle her, and he was arrested for that. But he spent one night in jail and paid a $500 fine and was just suspended for the FBI for that. The only person in this case who actually committed violence was the FBI agent. 

That's important to know. Right. So the only person that actually did anything violent. Yeah. Was Richard Traff is one of the lead FBI special agents. Correct. Oh, and they also discovered after this, he had a Facebook page where he was making these very virulent anti Trump, what he would call toilet thought of the day posts where he would just go off on these screeds, Trump supporters, people who were questioning the vaccine. 

So this was clearly somebody who had potentially a conflict here. So this all star lineup of three agents, I'm being very facetious when I say mean. They're clearly very compromised, both professionally and personally. But who's the head guy at the FBI? Who's the special agent in charge in Detroit who's kind of overseeing and orchestrating all this? So that is a man named Steven Dantuano. And it's interesting you mentioned him because he was overseeing the Detroit field office at the time that this was going on. 

He is promoted one week after these men are arrested, October 7 of 2020. October 13, he's promoted by Christopher Ray from head of the Detroit field office to be the assistant director of the DC field office. And so he's there when January 6 happens. And we can talk about the connections between the two cases if you like. Let's do it. Because you've got this set up job where the FBI is essentially creating a crisis and dreaming up a kidnap plot and orchestrating it, training them, equipping them, giving them direction and guidance. 

And, of course, we'll discuss the outcome of the legal matters there. But then the guy in charge, as soon as they make the arrest, a week later, he gets promoted to be the Washington Metropolitan field office. Special agent in charge is kind of like a super agent. So he gets called deputy director of the FBI for the Washington field office. Exactly. So he's way up there. It means, like in the inner circle like the top five guys of the bureau basically. 

So he goes from Detroit and orchestrating this and he gets to DC in October, which is November, December, January. So basically three months before the January 6 riot. Isn't that interesting? Okay, so let's go back to April of 2020 in Michigan, in Lansing, at the Lansing Capitol throughout April of 2020. And I believe June as well. April, May, June, there were these anti lockdown rallies that were happening and also pro two a rallies as well. 

But April 30, 2020, there is an anti lockdown rally happening at the Lansing Capitol. And the FBI decides they're going to have the Wolverine Watchmen go. So they've got their informant there. They have some of the members of the Wolverine Watchmen. And Adam Fox also attends. But he's not met these guys before. He doesn't know them, but he's purportedly the head. Yeah, he's the ringleader, right. But he's never met the people. 

But he's there. Right. And it's interesting, this may have been when he first got on their radar to become the ringleader, but so they're there with some of the members of the Wolverine Watchman, Dan Chappell, the main informant, who is basically the leader of that group, he's wearing a wire. He's talking to Impala, the handling agent there in real time, by the way, the FBI has, and we know their agents stationed around the area in Lansing. 

They're all watching this as it's happening. They've got drones flying overhead at like 6000ft. You don't even see them. And so he says, oh, I think these guys are getting ready to do something. He doesn't say what or what happened makes him think that. But the FBI calls the Lansing Capitol police, tells them, stand down, open the doors and let everybody in. So these guys, and this did not come out till trial. 

They waited in line an hour. They went through Covid screening to get in. They were there in a full kit with their firearms, but nothing happened. They didn't break any of the laws. They waited in line. They peacefully went in. They did do some shouting when they were in there. And they basically, large group of people just occupied the building for about 4 hours and then left peacefully. 

But interestingly, the media was there and they took pictures of the watchmen and they splashed these headlines the next day that said right wing militias storming state capitols. And that picture is used by the FBI to recruit more people into the watchmen. The FBI has these guys posting the pictures and their group chats and they're like, oh, yeah, we can use this to recruit more people into the group. 

And these guys don't know that the FBI is in their group and that they think Dan is just this veteran war hero, their friend. But the progression of that where these guys show up, the FBI tells the Michigan state police, let them in the Capitol and let's get these optics to run with. And then the people involved, there's no storming. No. They line up, they go through Covid screen, they get their temperatures checked, and then they go inside and they yell. 

There's pictures of them yelling in the faces of the. But then they use the optics, they use the imagery of it. The FBI does as a recruiting tool, try to get more people to join militias. Yes, absolutely. And so it's fascinating that that guy, Dan Tuono, who oversaw this, then oversees January 6. But even go back further than that, we don't know what the operation was called, but their operation to infiltrate the Midwest militia in 2018, that comes into play because every extremist group that according to the government, that participated in January 6, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, three percenters, the FBI had their informants in all of those groups going back years at this point. 

So if those people were extreme that day, who trained them? And we know now from court documents how many informants were in, like the Proud Boys, for example, multiple informants in their leadership chat. They had an encrypted group chat called FAFO in the Proud Boys that had numerous informants in it. Well, the FBI also created an encrypted group chat called FAFO in the Whitmer case and then brought the guys into it. 

It's amazing. So of the group in Michigan that was supposedly going to carry out this plot against Whitmer, how many were just essentially dupes, just regular guys who. Yeah, they had a certain interest and they had this idea that they wanted to get together and be a group. How many ordinary guys, ordinary citizens, versus the number of FBI paid informants? How much did the FBI outnumber these guys? Well, there were 14 of them and there were twelve informants and three undercover agents. 

That's just that we know about. Yeah. And in fact, you say that we know about because there are, in fact, additional persons you've discovered that are on sort of the periphery of this whole operation, and those persons are afraid to talk because they've all been threatened by the FBI, that they will be charged in some way or they'll be roped into the various illegal actions that are out there. 

Yeah. Well, what the government was doing in the lead up to this to try to make it a thing. Right, because throughout the summer of 2020, as the government's arranging these excursions, for them to go on the FTX's, these meetings, the group is actually falling apart. Half of the men that were charged, they were never actual members of the Wolverine watchmen, which was not even a militia group. 

It was a prepping group before the FBI took over the group. So these people, they didn't agree on everything. They all didn't like each other. They were suspicious of each other. When Dan brought Adam in, that upset Pete and Joe, who were the original founders of the Watchmen. So they just kind of left the group. They stopped showing up to meetings and trainings, and Dan was the only one doing that. 

So you had one guy, Paul Beller, who was 21 years old when he got arrested for this. He just turned 25 in federal prison for state charges. He was 21. And halfway through, in the summer of 2020, he moves to a different state. He only attended one or two of these meetings. He is at a July 7, 2020 meeting. He is on audio saying, we're not doing anything offensive. 

We're going to be a defensive group. And he actually created his own group because he didn't agree with the things that the FBI was saying in their group. He creates his own, but then he ends up moving to South Carolina. He gets arrested anyways. Brandon Casserta, never a member of the Wolverine Watchman, he got invited by somebody he met online to, oh, come hang out with us. We do these defensive firearms trainings. 

He had no idea in the summer of 2020 that he was walking into an active TEI investigation. TeI stands for Terrorism Enterprise investigation, which is a specific, it's the highest threat level, essentially gives the FBI more resources to use for this because they spent millions of dollars. And it's interesting that Jason Chambers, we have text messages of him where he's talking to another FBI agent, and he's saying, I'm going to run this as a Tei whether I get approval or not, because they have to get approval from a higher up in order to get a TEi. 

Unless you're a special agent in El Paso, Texas, where they recruit people to do things and never get approval to do it, and then well meaning, truly patriotic sources who think they're taking instruction from the FBI spend upwards of $700,000 in personal funds, and they're told by their handler at the FBI, don't worry, keep your receipts. We'll pay you back. And then they circle back to this person about a year later and say, well, you know, we never got approval for the op, so there's no money to repay your expenses. 

That's the El Paso FBI. That's their brand of corruption. But I don't want to mix FBI corruption stories. Let's stick with Michigan and the Whitmer plot. But that's the kind of stuff they do, and they do it all the time. And anybody that tells you, oh, no, that's just an aberration, they're either terribly misinformed or they're lying. It's one or the other. You're telling a really fascinating tale. 

And I just think it's important, again, for these distinctions you've made, there's basically 14 people, some of whom only went to one or two meetings and had no other involvement. Right. And then you have this cadre of FBI informants who keep advancing the ball and trying to push them into it. Yeah, exactly. We have text messages between the agents and one of the informants, Jenny Plunk, she was posing as the head of the Tennessee. 

So I have to explain this. The FBI in this case, actually created fake militia groups. They created a fake national militia group called the Patriot Three Percenters. They couldn't call the group the three percenters. They wanted to touch on that, though, because that was Robeison's cover story for how he became an informant in October of 2019. This chatter amongst three percenters group. So the FBI creates a fictitious national militia group, the Patriot three percenters. 

Robeson is posing as the head of the Wisconsin chapter. Jenny Plunk, another informant, is posing as the head of the Tennessee chapter. They tell her at a certain point, again, this is probably around August of 2020. At this point, the group is falling apart. People are going their separate ways. They task her with keeping Barry Croft in the group. And remember, this is a middle aged trucker from Delaware with three kids. 

What does he care about Gretchen Whitmer and her policies? He lives in a different state, and he was fine with his governor, how he handled this. But they tell her, you've got to convince the guys that Barry has good ideas and that Barry brought them together. Now, it's interesting that the FBI has referred to these people as dTs, violent, scary people that need to be in supermax prisons because the handling agents for Barry, a gentleman named Christopher Long from the Baltimore field office and John Penrod, they're texting each other during the investigation, making fun of him, calling him Bh, which stood for bonehead, moron, coward. 

And they are texting with their informant plunk. And they're saying, boy, for somebody who runs his mouth a lot, he sure seems to be a coward. And they actually called him the p word. I'm not going to say it, but, yeah. So what is plunks? What are her credentials to get her in this position? How did the FBI find her? She was in the militia groups. She was in militia culture already. 

So she was already part of these groups. We don't really know how she becomes an informant, but allegedly she heard concerning things and then somehow becomes an informant in this case. And she's posing as the head of the Tennessee chapter of a fake group that doesn't exist. And they needed her because Barry, at this point, he's driving his truck. He can't attend these meetings. She was actually, the FBI had her driving from Tennessee to Delaware to pick him up so they could drive to Cambria, Wisconsin, together. 

And she's offering to drive so he can sleep. And it's crazy because she ends up sleeping in the same hotel room in the same bed. Is Barry the target of her investigation? Highly unethical. This is just crazed. So eventually, there's this big arrest that goes down. That's in October, I guess the first week of October 2020. What precipitated the arrest? Why then? Why not two months before, two months later? Why then? Well, we have text messages and statements that were made. 

It looks like in September of 2020, the group is again falling apart. They can't get anything off the ground. The FBI at this point has tried to propose multiple plots. They tried to get a disabled Vietnam veteran from Virginia, a man named Frank Butler, to kidnap and kill Ralph Northam. They told him he was going to be the head of the Virginia chapter again, of this fake militia group, and that he needed to recruit 20 to 25 people for a QRF. 

This is a disabled elderly veteran and then QRF, quick reaction force. Yes, exactly. And one of the informants sent him ingredients to make homemade explosives, telling him to double the ingredients. Thank God he didn't do it. They had tried these various things that just wasn't working. So by September, they're really pushing hard for these guys to do something, and at this point, they up the ante and they've got to introduce another undercover agent. 

So they had introduced undercover agent. His name is Mark Schweers. He was posing as a man named Mark woods. In June of 2020, he makes contact with Adam on Facebook. The FBI uses online covert employees. They basically pose as fake identities online. They join these groups. Whatever he had made contact with Adam. But at this point, they needed another one. So they bring in Special Agent Tim Bates, Uce Red, to pose as a quote, uce red. 

Just explain what that is. Uce is undercover covert employee. It's their code word for agents who are undercover operating as undercover. Okay. So they bring him in posing as an explosives expert, and they invite the guys to training at Luther, at one of the guys who took a plea deal, Ty Garbin, at his property in Luther. This is September 12 and 13, 2020 weekend. And so they invite these guys there, they call them all down to what they call a circle of trust meeting, which is, again, numerous informants and undercover FBI agents all standing there recording and everything. 

And Agent Red plays a video that he claims he created of him blowing up an suv and trying to tell the guys, I can get explosives so you guys can blow up this bridge or whatever. Nobody is interested in purchasing them. Nobody gives him any money. Nobody makes an agreement. No one there says anything about it. They're just kind of like, okay, that's cool. And it's one of those things also where they're all kind of trying to look hard to each other and talk tough. 

Exactly. Where you don't know there's other men that are armed at this thing. And maybe some of these guys don't know each other that well. So they don't know, could something bad happen to me if I don't go along with this? So they're just kind of sitting there like, okay, but that didn't work. So then they say, all right, well, the people that are there, and if I'm putting words in your mouth, tell me, no, that isn't right. 

But what I'm imagining is, let's say there's 15 people there. I'll just pick a number. There's groups of guys in twos, threes, whatever. Maybe some solo people. But it's not like they're all no comrades and colleagues, and they've been out training every weekend for the last six months or something. This is kind of an ad hoc group of people. Correct. And these ftxs that the government would put on, they would field training exercise. 

Training exercise where they'd go shooting, basically, yes. And the government build these as family friendly events. That's the other thing, again, to maximize attendance. They would tell people they could bring their kids, oh, we're going to have a cookout. There's going to be beer and blah, blah, blah. So these events, you'd have families there, lots of different people. And so there's people over in one area, there's a medical booth, there's food here. 

There was a little girl's birthday party at one of these events with kids swimming in a swimming pool. And then you have people standing over here talking, maybe. And that's like the FBI's provocateurs with a couple of the guys, again, trying to get them to do something or incite or say something. FBI organized and paid. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So they have this circle of trust meeting, and this is in September, where they introduce uce red, trying to get any of these guys to bite on this explosives thing. 

Nobody does it. They tell them that, oh, when they do the takedown of these guys and arrest them, the informant says, hey, why don't we come? We're going to meet in Yipsilani and we're going to go get hot wings and beer, and red is going to give us free gear. That's what they thought they were going for. Meanwhile, that was luring them to the arrest. And it's a strange thing, because if you have somebody, usually law enforcement, if they're doing a sting operation, whether this is narcotics or anything else, you're going to let the person make the purchase first, and then you're going to swoop in and arrest them. 

They didn't do that in this case. They claimed these guys wanted to purchase explosives from this agent, but they didn't let anyone give him money because no one was going to. So there was no transaction. Nobody gave him a down payment, contraband item, cash. They didn't even think that they were going to meet with him for explosives. They were literally told, we're going to go meet with Red to get free gear. 

That is in text messages from their informant to these men. Did anybody specify what is free gear? What's the gear? No, they just told him, like, extra gear that he had around for the FTXs. So, like plate carriers, magazines, things like firearms, ammunition, things that are expensive, by the way, that if you're getting this for free, it's like, oh, wow. So it was an incentive, again to just get them there. 

And where did they hold this event to bring everybody together that was in a private location? Yeah, I think they just took them out somewhere. They were going to meet up at, like, some restaurant or something. And that was where the arrest happened. Some of them were arrested in different places. Brandon, at his place of work, was. It's just, it's wild that they were able to do. And, like, we have text messages of Adam, the guy who they called the ringleader, telling Dan in September, right before this arrest, I really don't think we can do. 

I know you, like he's saying, I know you really want to do this, but maybe we should just focus on Ty's bug out plan, which was they were going to get kind of bug out in a location, like if something bad happened. That's what he was saying. And so he's apologizing, he feels bad. There are times throughout this, it's just so sad because there are daily calls and texts between Adam and the informant Dan, where you just see that Adam is willing to do anything to please this man. 

He sees him as a father figure, and Dan's complaining to him about his injuries, how the VA isn't helping him. This Adam is homeless. He has nothing. And he would order Dan pizzas. Oh, let me order you some food. So Dan really played up this idea that he was being mistreated as a veteran, trying to get Adam angry about how the government treating him. Obnoxious. Name that they called this guy Adam, right? Didn't they have some kind of captain autism? So the guy who was supposedly the head of this thing, the ringleader, the ringleader they referred to as captain autism, the other guys called him that and would laugh at him because he would kind of fumble around at the trainings. 

He didn't really know how to handle his firearms properly like the other guys. They kind of saw him as not somebody on their caliber and they weren't sure why. Dan kept insisting, no, we need to have him here. He's just like us. Because they kind of saw him as fumbling around and goofy, really, not as a ringleader. But these men are all supposed to be co conspirators. And so throughout this thing, there is no actual agreement between these guys on anything. 

There's drunk talk of them talking about wanting to fly Whitmer over the lake on a kite, but it's not even clear what was their plan? What were they going to do with her? Well, they've said several things. Oh, they're going to take her out on a boat and leave her in the middle of Lake Michigan. And so it would be inconvenient for her. Security would have to come get her. 

And it's like, so they wanted to inconvenience her. They're going to go through the trouble of kidnapping her just to put her in a boat and leave her there and then do nothing. What's the point? Exactly. And then they talked about, like, well, oh, they were going to go, I guess, cross the waters in the middle of know in these cold, insane, choppy waters. They're going to take her over from Michigan, cross this insane lake to Wisconsin to have a citizens trial or something. 

It's nonsense. Some of the things that they talked about were joking things. None of this stuff happened. None of it was silly talk. Right? Adam said something about wanting know, oh, we're going to hog tire to a table and everybody stand around like they just did the world's biggest drug bust. Well, it's obviously not a nice thing to say, but if you listen to the context of how he was saying it, he thought he was joking amongst friends who are venting. 

They're angry about what's happening. So they basically created this situation, poured a bunch of gasoline on it, lit the match, and said, oh, let's see what happens. Right? So there's this big arrest in October 2020. Whitmer does her sort of smiling, smirking press conference, which was really very peculiar to watch, because she's smug. She almost seems happy that it happened. It's a very OD. It's an od thing. 

In that first press conference she did, she said that her team was aware of everything the entire time as she praised the FBI and the state, local law enforcement. But then later, she'd walk that back and she said, oh, every time I scan a crowd, I am scared and in fear for my life. Yeah, well, she had to change her tune to line up with the prosecution. Right. 

And just to touch on her one more time real quick, her team was aware throughout this, like, she was never at any point in any actual danger. She knows that the FBI, so they coordinated what they called recons. They said these guys did a recon of her vacation cottage. This was something they introduced at the end of August, because, again, they needed to wrap up their tei. They'd spent millions of dollars. 

They had nothing to show for it. Also, let's put pole cams on her vacation cottage, and then we'll have the FBI informant drive these guys around in a vehicle up and down the street so it looks like they're casing the place, literally. I have text messages from the informants saying who to invite. Invite Brandon. We want him there on the 20 eigth. Oh, invite this person. Try to get this guy there. 

It's not Adam doing it, the ringleader. It's not Barry arranging this. It's the FBI. And they're saying, we want these guys there. Try to get them all to show up to. The daytime recon was August 28, 2020. The informants driving the suv, which, of course, the FBI is paying for. Adam is in the passenger seat. They pick up a gentleman named Eric Mulliter. He's a guy from Cadillac, Michigan, who had worked security with Adam before. 

He has no idea where they're going. The text messages came out that showed Adam and him were talking. He thought that because Antifa had been and BLM had been coming in and rioting and they were staying at hotels, and as his job is security, they were kind of noticing this and taking notice. So Adam tells him, we're going to go look at a high profile vacation cottage. Eric, in his mind, is thinking, oh, this is a security job. 

They must have found these guys are using Airbnbs now instead of hotels. So he thinks that's what he's going for. He doesn't know till he gets in the vehicle that they're actually going to drive up by her vacation cottage. And the FBI in advance has installed multiple pull cams to catch them on. And they have everybody coordinating this. Whitmer's husband was actually there at the residence at this time while they were all coordinating it with her detail and law enforcement. 

But they had to do a second recon. That wasn't enough. They needed to do a nighttime recon where they tried to bring more people into this to just get something incriminating on them. And we have text messages from the agents as this is happening with the vehicles driving up there where they're saying, oh, the lighting over here on this pole cam isn't good. Make sure you drive them up. 

When you drive up that, you get them by this pull cam so we can, like, they're orchestrating like a theatrical production or something. Well, they are. I mean, that's exactly what they're doing. The arrests are made and then eventually this all goes to trial, actually, plural trials. Right. Both federal and state. Give us a little recap of how the trials went and what happened to who. And kind of a summary for us is what the breakout was. 

Yes. So six men were charged federally with conspiracy to kidnap. They added a superseding indictment with WMD charges, which was also ridiculous. What was the supposed mass destruction? Wanting to purchase explosives. But they also claimed that Barry had at one point taped pennies to a firework. He was trying to make a flashbang, but they said he was trying to put shrapnel on an explosive or something. Taping pennies on a firework. 

On a firework he purchased from a store. Like, legally, we had to have testimony from the agents about mass destruction. Yeah. This is now you've taped some pennies to the back, and now it's a WMD, I guess. But so those six guys, when they're arrested, almost immediately, I would say within one or two months after them being arrested, before all the discovery had come in, one of the gentlemen, Ty Garbin, who was an airplane mechanic, he took a plea deal. 

It's interesting, he was the only guy who had a private attorney who used to work for the FBI that arranges the sweetheart deal for him. So he takes a plea. Then another guy, Caleb Franks, he takes a plea. He's pressured into it about a month before trial. This is after the evidence of entrapment has already come out. But Franks was facing life in prison for a couple of other things that he engaged in with the informant, Dan, and the other guy who took a plea deal, Ty Garbin. 

They had done this ghost gun thing on the side that Dan Chappell had them basically selling guns to drug dealing felons. Well, that's a. Yeah, if you're selling guns to drug dealing felons. Right. People who can't legally own them. But that's separate from this additional charges to Frank's. Then they found that he had smuggled suboxone into prison, so they were going to get him with that, too. So he's facing life in prison. 

I think he felt pressured. He took a plea. So four guys go to trial. Brandon Casserta, Daniel Harris, who was a 24 year old Marine, by the way, Barry Croft and Adam Fox. Brandon and Daniel are acquitted. And then there's a mistrial for Adam and Barry. So the government decides to double down, retry Adam and Barry using the same judge, Judge Yonker, who had basically prevented all of the exculpatory information. 

I told you guys about the text messages, the things that these guys were saying that wasn't violent, that was indicating they didn't want to do anything. That was all suppressed. There were a lot of issues there with that trial. This is why it's on appeal. There was an issue of juror misconduct where they didn't have a proper remmer hearing about that allegation, didn't properly investigate it, and prevented all of this stuff from going to the jury. 

They put time limits just on the defense for this, for questioning the government star witness, they get 25 minutes time limits, but not the prosecution. How can this happen? That's not a real trial. You're rigging it. You're preventing these people from mounting an actual defense, from showing any evidence that they have of their innocence. To a jury, they couldn't have any witnesses testify on their behalf, because all these people who got invited to an FTX, who came with their kids, they were all threatened with potential charges and called unindicted co conspirators. 

And so you don't get a fair trial. So Adam and Barry are convicted. Then they have the first state trial. The state charges are for aiding and abetting, essentially providing material support. Pete Musico, Joe Morrison, and Paul Beller are the first guys. And they're also hit with gang affiliation, felony firearms. And essentially, what they say that they did of how they aided and abetted this fake conspiracy was, well, you allowed somebody to use your property for training. 

You allowed us to have a meeting at your property. The FBI called those meetings, though. That's entrapment. But so they were hit with those, and they were convicted. And again, a very unfair process where the same thing. They couldn't mention entrapment. They couldn't bring in this evidence. But the government could mention, oh, Adam and Barry were just convicted, but the defense couldn't say, daniel and Brandon were acquitted. 

This is not a fair process. So then we have the final state trial. It was going to be five guys. Brian Higgins, Sean Fix, Eric Mulliter, and Bill and Michael Null. They're twin brothers. Sean fix and Brian Higgins took plea deals. So it was just the null brothers and Eric. They go to trial and they're acquitted. Those last three is. And that was just this September. I remember seeing the video from the courtroom. 

Right now, we've got five men who are trying to appeal their convictions. And Adam and Barry were sent right after they were convicted in the retrial. I interviewed them while they were still at Nuego County. I got statements from them for the weaponization committee. I published one of those statements. And the next day, Adam and Barry were moved from Nuego county to different supermax prisons across the country. 

So they put Adam and Florence supermax, they put Barry and Tara hot. And it cut off my ability to contact them anymore, have them participate in the documentary, which was very upsetting. Well, it's also very deliberate. It was deliberate, right? The effort on the part of the government. And they restrict their phone calls, their ability to send letters. They won't let them buy stamps. They drain their commissary. 

It's insane. Barry, when he was first sent to Terra Hoat, he was told he was going to go into the infamous communications management unit. So you get 115 minutes phone call per month, and that's it. No communication with the outside world. Now, this was originally created after 911 for international terrorists who were speaking Arabic. That's why you had the CMU, so the translators could listen and make sure they're not conducting attacks and stuff. 

What are we putting Barry there for? The middle aged truck driver who didn't really have a criminal record? Adam Fox had no criminal record whatsoever. No history of violence, nothing. So they're in supermax prisons now. The three guys who were convicted of state charges of providing material support, they could be incarcerated until 2063. Wow. Yeah. And it's interesting because on the eve of their appeals, they were in Michigan prisons, and they were not charged federally, not convicted federally. 

On the eve of their appeals, they all get shipped out to federal BoP facilities across the country. They send Paul to Minersville, Pennsylvania. They send Joe Morrison to Peckin, Illinois, and then they send Pete musico to Gilmer, which is in West Virginia. Sci Gilmer. So they move him out of Michigan. Can't talk to their lawyers, can't access a Michigan law library. They didn't give them their transcripts. Transcripts were delayed. 

The court reporter didn't provide all of them. It took forever for her to get them. Now, these men, their appeals briefs are due this February. Their lawyers have just sued the Michigan Department of Corrections to find out why were they moved. Anyways, their lawyers can't meet with them. Phone calls. They can't get phone calls through, can't get letters through their legal mail. We've got proof from this filing, this latest filing that shows it was rejected. 

It was sent back, returned to sender legal mail of them trying to get these men their transcripts to prepare for appeals, which are very timely. So I have said on this podcast and other interviews with other ethside organizations that the FBI in particular will do anything, and I like bold caps, underline. They will do anything to get you if you're a target of theirs. Without any restriction. They will lie, cheat, steal, manufacture information, distort stuff. 

No matter what, they will do whatever it takes if you come within their crosshairs. Am I exaggerating? No, not at all. In fact, one of the defense attorneys, Mr. Barnett, at this last trial, caught the FBI fabricating evidence on the stand. They had altered the timestamp of what eric said on the way to the vacation cottage that the FBI planned the daytime recon. They changed it so that what he said 4 hours later, they tried to make it appear. 

That's what he said on the way there, to make it look like he knew that they were going to her cottage on the way there. That is literally fabricating evidence. They altered. Someone had to manually alter that timestamp. And we only know this because Mr. Barnett caught it while it happened. Had he not caught that, Eric could be in prison right now. But they were allowed to explain this the way as he made a typo. 

No, he had to manually change the timestamp. It wasn't a typo. It's called fabricating evidence. Right. It's a frame job. So I've watched the trailer, the two minute preview of your documentary. It's excellent. And I know that folks that are watching this or listening to it have got to be intrigued by all the work that you've done on this. So please take a moment and tell people where they can go to see your trailer and more importantly, how they can support your work. 

Because none of this happens based on good wishes and happy thoughts. It comes down to money in the mean. So you need financial support to continue doing your work. So take a moment and just explain where folks can go, whether it's Internet, social media, GoFundme, whatever it is, talk about how folks can follow you. Yeah, sure. So our website for the documentary, the documentary itself is called kidnap and kill, an FBI terror plot. 

And we didn't want to get a website called kidnappandkill. com, because if I'm not on a list, I'm going to be. Well, you're on a list now, I guarantee. Oh, I know I am. So we got a website that is k the letter kandkfilm. com. If you go there, you can watch the trailer. It's right on the front page there. And there's also a donate page. You can donate there as well. 

There's a media tab page. You can see some of the other interviews I've done. If you want to learn more about the case, you can follow the same account on Twitter. It is k and k film on Twitter. And my twitter is not radix notradix. You can follow me there, and from there, you'll basically hear about what I'm doing. That's great. So we talked before we began filming this, and you said that you hoped to have something out pretty soon in the first quarter of 2024. 

I know that people watching this and listening to this are very impressed. You have encyclopedic knowledge of this case and the various characters involved. You literally need a scorecard. You really do. Because there's all the sort of the people that have been accused of crime, some convicted, some pled out, some exonerated, but then there's also all these characters that the FBI was running, and then there's the FBI agents that are involved. 

Of the FBI agents that are involved. I mean, this is a complex web we've discussed, right? Because there's not just the Michigan militia guys and the Whitmer kidnapping. You mentioned that there was a national patriot 3% group. You talked about guys in Baltimore who are running, who had overall supervisory control of this entire operation. Well, I would say special agent Charles story, who is the one who did sign off on the TEI investigation. 

Since he signed off on it, ultimately this falls on him. He allowed Jason Chambers to do the, you know, they knew full well there was no actual plot happening here. So him, Stephen Dantuono, who was the special agent in charge of the Detroit field office, who was then promoted and oversaw January 6, it falls on him as well. And he should be questioned and brought in, put under oath as all three handling agents put under oath and made to answer questions about what they did in this case and the informants as well. 

And I think they should also be civilly liable. It's a tremendous story. It's a creepy story because it really points out abuse of authority and power in many cases, these FBI guys are really just thugs with guns and badges, and they go out and recruit dirtballs. I mean, this one guy was a child molester, career criminal, felon. Oh, my God. They're using him to basically orchestrate and run. 

Robeson is the guy's name, correct? Yeah, they're using him to run and orchestrate the whole thing. And they kept him completely off the stand. They did not allow him to testify. So his role in building this was totally. The jury didn't get hidden from the jury. Completely hidden. They didn't get to see the things he was saying at these meetings, which was horrific. And we have it. We know exactly what he was doing. 

And there were other things. He was, oh, my God, he's a felon and a predator. He's running across the country with guns, transporting explosives material, doing all of committing various crimes along the way. He defrauded a couple out of an suv for a fake charity he was running while he was doing this, that the FBI was aware of. He had a fake charity called Race to unite races, and he defrauded a couple out of an suv, telling them, oh, we're going to use this to go after child traffickers. 

He even told these guys he worked with law enforcement. He worked with law enforcement. Well, he did. They thought they were going to be going after child traffickers, though, and this is, again, they knew that that was something that would get these men, that they really didn't like child predators. So let's put a pedo in their midst, let this guy around their kids, and then tell them that he's actually going after child traffickers and they can help him. 

Now, moreover, one more. Please do. Please. He was pushing, and this comes into play. The $5,000 credit cards, prepaid credit cards, were actually attached to his fake 501 c three charity race to unite races. During the course of this, towards the end, when they really hadn't gotten anything on these guys and they were trying to wrap it up and they needed something, they started pushing these $5,000 prepaid credit cards, encouraging the guys to go buy gear with it. 

Oh, we can give you this. And imagine that you're indigent, like Adam's homeless, living in the basement of the vac shack. He turns it down. He doesn't take the credit card. He doesn't go buy gear. They wanted them to make large purchases of firearms or ammunition, but it didn't happen. And that was all. And I'm glad you touched on the expenses part of it. You said that the FBI spent millions of dollars in this whole operation. 

But the confidential human sources, the informants that the FBI was using for this operation, many of them received tens of thousands of dollars in payments and more than just cash, that some of them also received other goods or items on time. Can you kind of run through a little summary of that for us? Yes. Robeson, for his work in this, was paid $20,000. He was also, like I said, allowed to run around wild across the country doing all these things. 

Dan Chapel was paid almost $60,000 for his work in this. And it was actually 23,000 of that was given to him in December of 2020, after the guys were successfully arrested as a bonus. So they were paying the informants and envelopes of cash that said Chase bank on them. And Dan got almost $60,000 for about six months of work, which is more than he made an entire year working as a trucker. 

Although he lied initially and said he worked for the postal service, he worked for a trucking company that was contracted to work with them. He was not a federal worker. Right. So the FBI helped him move to a new house. They got him a laptop because he was going to college now, and they purchased him a smartwatch. He got that. So he got a variety of goodies out of this and got relocated to a nicer house. 

It's outrageous stuff. I could go on and on. I could talk about this for another hour with you. But we can't do that, unfortunately. Christina Urso, the name of the film, again, is. And the website kidnap and kill an FBI terror plot. And the website is k and kfilm. com. Everybody should go to that website. Everyone should see the work that she's done. And as far as I'm concerned, everyone should make a donation towards the completion of her work, because this is incredibly important stuff. 

And you can see how this example, what the impact is or what the repercussions are across the FBI, more broadly and across our Department of Justice. This is very, very important work. So congratulations, Christina. Thank you very much for joining us on watch. Thank you. I'm Chris Farrell on Watch. .