DETROIT — A key participant in the trial of four men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has tested positive for COVID-19, forcing the judge to halt one of the nation's most important cases of alleged extremism.
Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker postponed the trial in federal court in Grand Rapids until at least Thursday, according to an order filed in federal court on Sunday afternoon.
The judge's order does not identify who tested positive for COVID-19 and instead refers to an "essential trial participant."
"Assuming no other complications, the court hopes to re-convene trial Thursday," Jonker wrote.
The development illustrates the complications of resuming trials during the pandemic. Jonker has followed Centers for Disease Control guidelines, which do not recommend masks in counties, like Kent, with a low risk of transmission, and has not required trial participants to wear masks. Few prospective jurors wore the protective gear during jury selection last week and almost nobody wore masks during the first three days of trial.
In August, the chief federal judge in Detroit was placed in quarantine and one of the largest health care fraud trials in U.S. history put on hold after the jurist and two staffers were exposed to someone who contracted COVID-19. At the time, the case against Dr. Frank Patino was the first criminal jury trial in federal court in Detroit since the start of the pandemic. Patino eventually was convicted.
Jurors have heard two days of testimony in a trial that is projected to last as long as six weeks.
The trial started 17 months after FBI agents said they thwarted a kidnapping conspiracy involving self-described patriots and militia members angered by restrictions imposed during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The indictment describes a conspiracy hatched in clandestine meetings across the Midwest, from online chats to hotel rooms in Ohio, where members mulled abducting Whitmer, to the farmlands of Wisconsin where members tried detonating homemade bombs, and at a heavily wooded training camp in northern Michigan where plotters practiced with an arsenal of weapons and launched surveillance of the governor's cottage.
The case has focused national attention on violent extremism in Michigan and raised questions about whether that team of FBI agents and informants orchestrated the conspiracy and entrapped the alleged plotters.
Defense lawyers have argued that there was no plot, just coarse anti-government language, and have focused on the conduct of the lead FBI agents and one key informant. Still, prosecutors are armed with two star witnesses — members of the conspiracy who pleaded guilty and are expected to testify that the group conceived of the plot, not FBI agents.
The four defendants — Adam Fox of Potterville, Barry Croft of Delaware, Lake Orion resident Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta of Canton Township — face up to life in prison if convicted of kidnapping conspiracy.
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