A jury on Tuesday convicted two men of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, a swift victory for prosecutors in a foiled plot that was described as a rallying cry for a U.S. civil war by anti-government extremists.

Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. were also found guilty of conspiring to obtain a weapon of mass destruction, namely a bomb to blow up a bridge and stymie police if the kidnapping could be pulled off at Whitmer’s vacation home.

Croft, 46, a trucker from Bear, Delaware, was also convicted of another explosives charge. The jury deliberated for roughly eight hours over two days.

This combo of images provided by the Kent County, Mich., Jail. shows Barry Croft Jr., left, and Adam Fox. Jury selection started Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, in the second trial of the two men charged with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 over their disgust with restrictions early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Prosecutors are putting Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. on trial again after a jury in April couldn’t reach a verdict. Two co-defendants were acquitted and two more pleaded guilty earlier. (Kent County Sheriff’s Office via AP) / AP

“Today’s verdicts prove that violence and threats have no place in our politics and those who seek to divide us will be held accountable. They will not succeed,” said Whitmer in a statement following the verdict. “But we must also take a hard look at the status of our politics. Plots against public officials and threats to the FBI are a disturbing extension of radicalized domestic terrorism that festers in our nation, threatening the very foundation of our republic.” 

It was the second trial for the pair after a jury in April couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict after five days. Two other men were acquitted and two more pleaded guilty and testified for prosecutors.

The result was a big win for the U.S. Justice Department following the shocking mixed outcome last spring.

“You can’t just strap on an AR-15 and body armor and go snatch the governor,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler told jurors.

“But that wasn’t the defendants’ ultimate goal,” Kessler said. “They wanted to set off a second American civil war, a second American Revolution, something that they call the boogaloo. And they wanted to do it for a long time before they settled on Gov. Whitmer.”

The investigation began when Army veteran Dan Chappel joined a Michigan paramilitary group and became alarmed when he heard talk about killing police. He agreed to become an FBI informant and spent summer 2020 getting close to Fox and others, secretly recording conversations and participating in drills at “shoot houses” in Wisconsin and Michigan.

The FBI turned it into a major domestic terrorism case with two more informants and two undercover agents embedded in the group. Evidence showed the group had many gripes, particularly COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Whitmer early in the pandemic.

Fox, Croft and others, accompanied by the government operatives, traveled to northern Michigan to see Whitmer’s vacation home at night and a bridge that could be destroyed.

Defense attorneys tried to put the FBI on trial, repeatedly emphasizing through cross-examination of witnesses and during closing remarks that federal players were present at every crucial event and had entrapped the men.

Fox and Croft, they said, were “big talkers” who liked to smoke marijuana and were guilty of nothing but exercising their right to say vile things about Whitmer and government.

“This isn’t Russia. This isn’t how our country works,” Croft attorney Joshua Blanchard told jurors. “You don’t get to suspect that someone might commit a crime because you don’t like things that they say, that you don’t like their ideologies.”

Fox attorney Christopher Gibbons said the FBI isn’t supposed to create “domestic terrorists.” He described Fox as poor and living in the basement of a Grand Rapids-area vacuum shop, which was a site for meetings with Chappel and an agent.

Whitmer, a Democrat, has blamed then-President Donald Trump for stoking mistrust and fomenting anger over coronavirus restrictions and refusing to condemn hate groups and right-wing extremists like those charged in the plot.

Over the weekend, she said she hadn’t been following the second trial but remains concerned about “violent rhetoric in this country.”

Trump recently called the kidnapping plan a “fake deal.”

First published on August 23, 2022 / 12:25 PM

© 2022 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

“The King of Iraq”

Sadr, now 48 years old, first rose to prominence as the son of Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, a historic figure in Iraq who helped lead Shi’ite resistance to Saddam. The senior cleric, and two of his other sons, died from gunshots in a 1999 ambush widely believed to have been orchestrated by Saddam’s government. A prominent young cleric himself at the time, Sadr inherited the allegiance of many of his father’s followers.

After the 2003 U.S. invasion, Iraq’s Shi’ites worked to emerge from the Sunni dominance of Saddam’s dictatorship. Sadr grew cozy with Iran. With aid from Tehran, according to former advisors and diplomats, he successfully positioned himself as a populist fighting to expel Western aggressors. Thousands of insurgents, many of whom still make up the Sadrist militia known as the Peace Brigades, saw him as their leader.

Shi’ites took power in Baghdad starting in 2005, winning a majority in the first parliamentary elections of the U.S. occupation. As Shi’ite parties consolidated their hold in subsequent elections, however, many Iraqis increasingly perceived their administrations as corrupt, focused only on controlling oil wealth and the patronage it enables.

“This political system has failed,” said Mohammed Yasser, a longtime Shi’ite activist in southern Iraq. “They have provided nothing.”

Because most of those governments were allied with Iran, Sadr gradually distanced himself from Tehran. Eager to cast his movement as incorruptible, he encouraged supporters to stage mass demonstrations, preluding those that toppled the last Shi’ite coalition in 2019. He also began currying favor with Middle Eastern governments traditionally at odds with Iran, even Sunni-led powers.

In 2017, Sadr surprised many in the region by meeting with senior officials in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Persian Gulf neighbors led by Sunni dynasties and allied with the United States. To overcome the historical rift between Sunni and Shi’ite regimes, Sadr played to ethnic ties instead. “We are also Arabs,” he told them, according to one senior Sadrist familiar with the visits.

Sadr made his first public critique of Iran that year, accusing Tehran in a statement of fueling sectarian conflict in Syria, Iraq and across the region. He also stepped up criticism of domestic rivals for Shi’ite influence, including former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a staunch Iran ally.

“Muqtada wants to be Shi’ite leader number one,” one former adviser told Reuters, “the king of Iraq.”

In 2020, two events tilted the landscape upon which Sadr would operate.

First, the United States in a drone strike killed Qassem Soleimani, Ghaani’s predecessor as the head of Iran’s Quds Force and a major player in Iraq. Soleimani had a strong relationship with Sadr, despite the cleric’s critiques of Tehran. Then, the UAE established diplomatic relations with Israel, solidifying a shift in some Arab states toward the West.

Those developments played into Sadr’s hands.

His outreach to Gulf neighbors, for instance, immediately led to help after the election with the task of courting Iraqi Sunnis. Iraqi officials familiar with the process told Reuters that Emirati envoys prodded Sunni parties to work toward an agreement with Sadrists. “For the Gulf countries, Sadr was the best chance to challenge Iranian power,” said Yazan Jabouri, an influential Sunni leader who attended meetings with the Emiratis.

The UAE’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Sadr had also courted the Kurds, a minority ethnic group with its own regional government in Iraq’s north. Shortly after the election, Sadrists and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the ruling group in the region, told local media they would team up in a new government. For Iran, the alliance was a double setback, particularly because the ruling Kurd party, too, has friendly relations with Israel.

By January of this year, Sadr’s alliance appeared solidified – Sunnis, Kurds and Sadrists united in a coalition they dubbed “Save the Homeland.” They elected Mohammed Halbousi, a Sunni and ally of Gulf states, as speaker of the parliament, overriding opposition from pro-Iran parties and taking the first step toward the formation of a new administration. Soon, it seemed, they would have enough votes to form a government.

Tehran at first struggled to respond, especially without Soleimani, the Iranian general killed by the U.S. His influence in Iraq dated back to the earliest days of the resistance to American occupation. Two Iranian officials familiar with discussions early this year told Reuters that Tehran asked Ghaani, Soleimani’s successor, to keep pro-Iran militias united and to seek the crucial sitdown with Sadr.

“Things were about to get really tough”

Before Sadr and Ghaani could meet, some of Iran’s allies decided to make clear their displeasure with any move away from Tehran. On February 2, a little-known Shi’ite militia based in southern Iraq launched drone strikes on Abu Dhabi, the Emirati capital. The militia, known as the “True Promise Brigades,” said the strikes were in response to the UAE’s meddling in Iraq and Yemen, where a festering civil war has pitted regional proxies, led by Saudi Arabia and Iran, against one another.

The UAE said at the time that it intercepted the strikes.

But the attack spooked the Emiratis, according to an Iraqi government official, a Western diplomat and two Iraqi Sunni leaders who had worked with the UAE’s envoys in the coalition talks. The UAE sent officials to Tehran and Baghdad to quell tensions. “Their commitment to Sadr wavered,” Jabouri, the Sunni leader who participated in the efforts to form a government, said of the Emiratis.

Sadr and Ghaani met the following week.

Three days after their strained encounter, Sadr summoned aides to his home, several of his advisors told Reuters. He was visibly frustrated by the mounting tension, they said, and had even resumed smoking, an old habit he had quit and never done in public.

“He told us we weren’t just in confrontation with Iraqi rivals, but with the Islamic Republic,” said one advisor, whose account of the meeting was corroborated by two other senior Sadrists with knowledge of the meeting. “That things were about to get really tough.”

Iran got an assist from Iraq’s judiciary, controlled in large part by judges appointed by pro-Tehran parties. Days before parliament was to vote on a new president, Iraq’s Supreme Court decreed that a two-thirds majority was needed for the chamber even to meet. The ruling ruined the planned vote by “Save the Homeland,” whose simple majority was no longer enough to convene the assembly.

A flurry of other rulings by the court followed.

One barred Hoshyar Zebari, the coalition’s preferred candidate for the presidency, because of old corruption allegations. Zebari, a Kurdish politician and former finance and foreign minister, has denied any wrongdoing and hasn’t been convicted of any crime.

Another ruling slowed graft investigations that Sadrists were conducting against pro-Iran officials. A third banned the regional government in Kurdistan from dealing directly with foreign oil companies, targeting a crucial source of revenue for the important coalition partner.

Iraqi law experts and political insiders said the rulings, while legally sound, were strategically timed. “It was no coincidence,” said Sajad Jiyad, the Baghdad-based director of the Shia Politics Working Group at The Century Foundation, a U.S. think tank. “At the same time that there’s a government formation deadlock and Sadr has the upper hand, four to six rulings come out.”

Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council, which oversees the country’s courts, in a statement to Reuters said the rulings weren’t political. Other Supreme Court rulings, including its ratifications of the parliamentary election results and the speaker voted upon by the coalition in January, benefited the Sadrists, it noted.

Iran’s ire then grew explicit.

On March 13, the Revolutionary Guards fired 12 missiles at the Kurdish regional capital of Erbil. Kurdish officials reported limited damage to a neighborhood outside the city center and no injuries. In a statement, the Revolutionary Guards said they launched the missiles because Israeli military operations were being conducted from Kurdistan. Tehran didn’t elaborate or provide any proof of Israeli operations.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry didn’t respond to requests from Reuters for comment.

The Kurdish government denied the accusation and saw the strikes as yet more retaliation for choosing sides among Shi’ites. “They wanted us to ally ourselves with the whole Shi’ite community, not one part against another,” said a senior Kurdish official, who was involved in talks with Iranian envoys around the time of the strikes.

Iran and its allies began pressuring Sadr’s Sunni partners, too.

In April, Maliki, the former prime minister and one of Sadr’s foremost Shi’ite rivals, helped repatriate and absolve two influential Sunnis who had fled Iraq because of terrorism charges, according to five lawyers and three government officials familiar with the effort. They told Reuters that Maliki himself helped convince a Baghdad court to drop those charges. As soon as the two Sunnis were cleared, they began denouncing the leadership of Halbousi, the Sunni parliament speaker elected by Sadrists and their allies, saying other Sunni leaders were better options.

In a television appearance, Maliki denied he had assisted the two men, but said he had asked the court about their charges and helped one of them get from the airport to an audience with the judge. Critics found his comments contradictory. Maliki’s office didn’t respond to requests from Reuters for comment about any role he played in the return of the two Sunnis.

Halbousi was rattled, according to an official close to the speaker.

Amid growing criticism about his leadership from other Sunnis, he flew to Tehran, where he sought to ensure he could still have a working relationship with Iran even if the coalition that elected him failed to form a government. “Halbousi wanted assurances that if Sadr failed, he would have support from Iran,” the official said.

A spokesperson for Halbousi said the speaker had traveled to Iran on official business at the request of the Iranian parliament. She declined to discuss the visit further.

By May, Sadr’s push to form a government stalled. No other coalition emerged to form its own government.

In June, Sadr ordered the Sadrist lawmakers to resign, ceding further control of the chamber to rivals. Sadr’s office released a statement citing the impasse, the Supreme Court rulings, and disagreements with “some countries,” without elaborating, as reasons for the withdrawal. Days later, in a video online, Sadr addressed his former legislators and urged them to reject any alliance “unless God provides an opening and the corrupt are swept aside.”

Sadrists increasingly express exasperation about their inability to form a government. Some call for renewed unrest. “This time the methods of reform will be different,” Abu Mustafa al-Hamidawi, the head of Sadr’s militia, recently told an Iraqi news site. Reuters was unable to reach al-Hamidawi for further comment.

Sadr now calls for new elections, which some believe will only delay a reckoning with political rivals.

Recently, Sadrists marched toward parliament to join colleagues there occupying the chamber to protest the impasse with other parties. Sadr’s old rival Maliki patrolled with bodyguards outside his home, brandishing an assault rifle. Pro-Iran groups staged their own demonstrations, stoking fears of armed clashes.

During six months of war in Ukraine, Associated Press photographers have captured images that are both succinct and eloquent. The click of a shutter is brief, but the stories they tell are deep.

Sometimes they show a life that ended in a moment — the body of a Russian soldier lying face down in the snow near a ruined tank. Others record a life ending, in agony and terror — medics carrying a mortally wounded pregnant woman on a stretcher through the ruins of a bomb-ravaged hospital in Mariupol.

There are moments of bold energy, such as a rifle-carrying woman waving a Ukrainian flag in the intensely blue sky as a Kyiv monastery’s tower rises in the background.

Some portray lives that are just about to change, heading into the unknown. A father stands outside a railroad car in Kyiv, his hands pressed against the window framing the face of his young daughter as the train prepares to depart the besieged city for far-away but peaceful Lviv. Hundreds of people crowd under a destroyed bridge in the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, wondering if gunfire will abate long enough to even give them a chance to escape into the unknown.

A woman walks her dog in Kyiv, an event from daily life. Her attentive gaze at her pet turns her face away from the ruins of a rocket-destroyed shopping center just behind her.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sits on a staircase in his office, seemingly casually, his legs crossed and his chin resting in a hand. By his posture, he could be a man waiting for a romantic interest who’s late. But the piles of sandbags behind him tell of the war’s constancy. He is waiting, but not for a date — instead, to see how and when the war will end.

___

Full coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

The Gang of 8 includes the top two congressional leaders in each chamber — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — as well as the top Democrat and Republican on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

A spokesperson for the Senate Intelligence Committee declined to comment. A representative for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also declined to comment. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for a Gang of 8 member indicated that a specific request hadn’t been signed onto by all eight lawmakers, but acknowledged that congressional oversight is ongoing. (The Gang of 8 and its staff routinely ask the intelligence community for specific information in ways that don’t always require sign-off from all eight members.)

Privately, Capitol Hill aides have expressed frustration about the fact that Congress has learned little about the investigation into the former president, especially since it reportedly involves matters of national security. The executive branch has historically resisted congressional inquiries about ongoing law-enforcement actions, arguing that it could compromise the investigation.

The FBI search warrant unsealed earlier this month revealed that the Justice Department was investigating potential violations of the Espionage Act, the Presidential Records Act and obstruction of justice in relation to Trump’s storage of White House materials at his home.

At a hearing last week in south Florida, the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, Jay Bratt, said the investigation is still in its “early stages.”

It is possible that the public could learn even more about the probe in the coming days. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who signed off on the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, has told the Justice Department to propose redactions to the FBI’s affidavit of probable cause that could subsequently be released publicly.

A group of media organizations filed a motion asking the judge to unseal the affidavit, citing substantial public interest. Reinhart indicated during last week’s hearing that he was skeptical of the Justice Department’s efforts to keep the affidavit under seal. The document would reveal the government’s justification for requesting Reinhart’s approval of a search warrant. Earlier Monday, Reinhart wrote that the facts contained in the affidavit are “reliable.”

“Given the intense public and historical interest in an unprecedented search of a former President’s residence, the Government has not yet shown that these administrative concerns are sufficient to justify sealing,” Reinhart wrote.

Some lawmakers have also requested access to the affidavit, but that would likely require Reinhart’s signoff.

Dr. Anthony Fauci announced Monday that he will resign as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) after spending more than a half-century in government, prompting Republican detractors to question his timing following his perceived double-talk during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In December, Fauci will also forfeit his roles as chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation and President Joe Biden‘s chief medical adviser, saying he wants “to pursue the next chapter of my career.” Republicans believe Fauci is leaving government due to the possibility that the GOP will take control of the House in November.

“Dr. Fauci is conveniently resigning from his position in December before House Republicans have an opportunity to hold him accountable for destroying our country over these past three years,” Republican Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona tweeted, adding that Fauci will be held accountable whether or not he remains in public office. “This guy is a coward.”

Fauci gained national attention during the COVID-19 pandemic, including acknowledging having to “stand up” to former President Donald Trump‘s COVID-related claims to benefit the public and “for the sake of preserving my own integrity.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies during the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies hearing to examine proposed budget estimates for fiscal year 2023 for the National Institutes of Health on Capitol Hill on May 17, 2022, in Washington, D.C. Fauci announced his impending retirement on August 22, 2022, scheduled for December.
Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images

Emails from Fauci uncovered via the Freedom of Information Act showed that he said “the typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus,” even as mask mandates were commonplace nationwide for long periods of time.

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has had multiple public squabbles with Fauci, pledged Monday to conduct “a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic” regardless of Fauci’s impending departure.

“[Fauci] will be asked to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the lab leak,” Paul tweeted.

Former White House counsel Kellyanne Conway has claimed that Fauci, who has said that COVID-19 will not be fully eliminated, did not wear a mask in private White House meetings.

Mercedes Schlapp, former White House communications director under Trump, tweeted that it is “no coincidence” Fauci chose a December retirement date “right after Republicans will take back the House and immediately plan oversight into our pandemic response and his funding of gain of function research at the Wuhan Lab.”

Fauci has spent the past 38 years as NIAID director, first serving during President Ronald Reagan’s administration and ultimately seven presidents in total on infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS, West Nile virus, the anthrax attacks, pandemic influenza, various bird influenza threats, Ebola and Zika.

“It has been the honor of a lifetime to have led the NIAID, an extraordinary institution, for so many years and through so many scientific and public health challenges,” Fauci said in a statement released Monday, adding that he is not retiring but will continue to advance science and public health and mentor the next generation.

“I am very proud of our many accomplishments. I have worked with—and learned from—countless talented and dedicated people in my own laboratory, at NIAID, at NIH and beyond. To them I express my abiding respect and gratitude.”

In a statement, Biden said he first worked closely with Fauci as vice president on Zika and Ebola response, finding Fauci to be “a dedicated public servant, and a steady hand with wisdom and insight honed over decades at the forefront of some of our most dangerous and challenging public health crises.”

“When it came time to build a team to lead our COVID-19 response—in fact, in one of my first calls as President-elect—I immediately asked Dr. Fauci to extend his service as my chief medical advisor to deal with the COVID-19 crisis our nation faced,” the statement said.

“In that role, I’ve been able to call him at any hour of the day for his advice as we’ve tackled this once-in-a-generation pandemic. His commitment to the work is unwavering, and he does it with an unparalleled spirit, energy and scientific integrity.”

Newsweek reached out to the NIAID for further comment.

The National Archives found more than 150 sensitive documents when it got a first batch of material from the former president in January, helping to explain the Justice Department’s urgent response.

National Archives officials spent much of 2021 trying to recover material from former President Donald J. Trump that he should have turned over when he left office.Credit…Saul Martinez for The New York Times