“The conspirators might easily have killed the governor in a botched kidnapping, killed unsuspecting law enforcement during a traffic stop or other unexpected encounter, or blown up innocent bystanders with a negligently constructed bomb,” federal prosecutors said in a sentencing memo, in which they asked Judge Jonker to impose a life sentence.
At trial, Mr. Fox’s lawyer, Christopher Gibbons, described his client as an unimpressive dupe who talked a big game but had no real chance of pulling off an attack. Mr. Gibbons said undercover F.B.I. agents preyed on Mr. Fox, pretending to be his friend and luring him into a plot he was incapable of planning himself. In arguing for a lesser sentence, Mr. Gibbons wrote that prosecutors used “exaggerated language to create the false narrative of a terrifying paramilitary leader.”
“Adam Fox was an unemployed vacuum repairman who was venting his frustrations on social media but abiding by the laws of the State of Michigan,” Mr. Gibbons wrote in a sentencing memo.
Ms. Whitmer, who was elected to a second term last month, said after the trial that the convictions showed “that violence and threats have no place in our politics and those who seek to divide us will be held accountable.”
At his first trial in the spring, jurors acquitted two of Mr. Fox’s co-defendants but failed to reach verdicts on the charges against Mr. Fox and another man, Barry Croft. At a second trial this summer, which played out amid a tense campaign season in politically divided Michigan, Mr. Fox and Mr. Croft were each convicted of kidnapping conspiracy and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.