HAZEL PARK, Mich. — FBI agents have raided a Hazel Park home while investigating threats to the judge and defense lawyers in the Gov. Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping conspiracy trial, The Detroit News has learned.
Agents are investigating threats directed at several people, including Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker and defense lawyers Josh Blanchard and Christopher Gibbons, according to two sources familiar with the investigation who were not authorized to speak publicly about the probe. Jonker is presiding over the trial and the attorneys represent accused plot ringleaders Barry Croft and Adam Fox, respectively.
There have been no arrests since the Friday raid, which coincided with the third week of trial in federal court in Grand Rapids and a rise in threats against federal judges nationwide. Croft, 46, of Delaware and Fox, 38, of Potterville are standing trial alongside Lake Orion resident Daniel Harris, 24, and Brandon Caserta, 33, of Canton Township, and the group faces up to life in prison if convicted of kidnapping conspiracy.
The raid raises questions about the security of key figures in one of the country's most important prosecutions involving politics, allegations of domestic terrorism and violent extremism. Prosecutors say the defendants were angered by restrictions imposed by Whitmer in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, but defense lawyers say there was no plot and that FBI agents and informants orchestrated the case.
“Unfortunately, it’s become far too common a thing in society today,” said Detroit defense attorney Michael Bullotta, a former federal prosecutor. “It comes with the territory in a high-profile case.”
Bullotta doesn't believe the developments will be impactful on the jury "because we hear about death threats all the time."
The full scope of the investigation and exact location of the search were unclear Tuesday, but agents are believed to be investigating death threats aimed at the judge and lawyers.
"FBI Detroit will work closely with other FBI field offices and with our law enforcement partners across the country to identify the source of any threat made to anyone involved with the ongoing prosecution in Grand Rapids," FBI spokeswoman Mara Schneider wrote in a text to The News. "Individuals found responsible for making threats in violation of state and/or federal law will be referred for prosecution in the appropriate jurisdiction."
The judge did not respond to a message seeking comment Tuesday. Blanchard and Gibbons also could not be reached for comment.
“I feel like defense attorneys are more vulnerable, in many ways, to threats and violence in the criminal justice system,” Bullotta said. “Because they don’t have the protection and law-enforcement backing. To the extent they are representing dangerous and violent people, those clients expect certain things to happen in their favor. And when those things don’t happen, they can blame the defense attorneys."
Violence against federal judges is rare. In 2020, authorities said a disgruntled lawyer killed the son of a federal judge from New Jersey and seriously wounded her husband.
U.S. District Judge Terrence Berg was shot outside his Detroit home during a failed robbery in March 2015. Berg suffered a gunshot wound to his leg and recovered.
The shooting was unrelated to Berg's job or his earlier career as a federal prosecutor. Detroit resident Kevin Andre Smith Jr. was acquitted of shooting Berg but convicted of robbery conspiracy and gun charges, and sentenced to 67 to 90 years in prison.
The ongoing investigation involving Whitmer trial figures coincides with an increase in the number of threats to federal judges in recent years fueled by a rise in domestic extremism. In February, the head of the U.S. Marshals Service said federal judges were targeted in more than 4,500 threats and inappropriate communications in 2021, according to a Reuters report.
It was unclear what new security measures, if any, have been instituted in response to threats against Jonker or the defense lawyers.
The U.S. Marshals Service, which oversees security at the country's 94 federal district courts, has a judicial security division tasked with protecting judges, prosecutors, jurors, court security officers and others.
A spokesman with the marshals service office in Grand Rapids could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Jonker, 62, meanwhile, has served on the federal bench since 2007 after being nominated by President George W. Bush.
The judge was concerned about outside influence on the trial and took steps to protect jurors. That included ordering juror names be shielded from the public.
“I want to have jurors identified in court only by number to give them some greater confidence that they are not going to have their privacy unduly invaded in the process,” Jonker said.
Jonker is following a plan used in various high-profile federal trials in Michigan in recent years. Jurors were not identified publicly in the racketeering conspiracy case against former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the terrorism case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called "Underwear Bomber."
Adam Fox and Brandon Caserta listen as defense attorney Josh Blanchard says there was plenty of crazy talk but no agreement by the defendants to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer during the trial this month.
Before the trial started March 8, prosecutors expressed concern about outside influence and singled out supporters of Croft. In a jailhouse phone call, Croft appeared as a guest on a podcast during which one of the hosts talked about influencing jurors.
“My thinking was to have the militia at the courthouse, and do a big recruitment, and do it right there at the courthouse," the host said, according to a government court filing. "For the juries. Jury nullification! Jury nullification! Jury nullification!”
Jonker has admonished jurors during the trial to avoid news reports and social media posts about the trial.
Defense attorneys Christopher Gibbons and Karen Boer, from left, listen alongside defendant Adam Fox, right, as Judge Robert Jonker questions prospective jurors about their ability to put political beliefs aside while listening to the facts of the case on Tuesday, March 8, 2022.
Prosecutors also were concerned about threats to FBI agents involved in the case. They sought to have undercover agents testify by using pseudonyms.
Blanchard fought the request.
"Permitting the agents to testify under false names erodes the presumption of innocence," he wrote in a court filing. "Such a measure clearly communicates to the jury that the defendants are so dangerous that even experienced FBI agents have a judicially recognized and justified reason to fear them."
Jonker refused the government's request.
"It is time for all guise and pretense to end and for the prosecution to present the evidence in an open forum with witnesses testifying using their true identity," Jonker wrote in an order filed in federal court. "Disclosure, and the opportunity for the defense to present a meaningful cross-examination, will best ensure continuing trust in the judicial process."
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