https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/ralph-northam-gretchen-witmer-kidnapping-plot/2020/10/13/26b4e31a-0d5f-11eb-b1e8-16b59b92b36d_story.html
By Kayla Ruble,
Laura Vozzella and
Devlin Barrett
Oct. 13, 2020 at 9:19 p.m. EDT
An FBI agent said Tuesday that some of those charged in a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also discussed "taking" Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, who reacted to the news by accusing President Trump of fueling extremism with reckless rhetoric.
The disturbing allegations about politically motivated violence surfaced during a day-long court hearing over what law enforcement officials say was a plan to abduct Michigan's highest elected official and either leave her on a boat in the middle of a lake or put her "on trial" before a self-styled militia.
Northam, like Whitmer a Democrat, said that as a former Army doctor he had faced threats from foreign enemies but never before from his own commander in chief.
"These threats and this rhetoric is not coming from another country," the governor said at an afternoon news briefing in Richmond. "It's coming from Washington. And that I regret, and it needs to stop."
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Trask spent hours on the witness stand describing conversations and group text messages among the suspects, who he said repeatedly discussed plans to attack law enforcement officials. At one point, a member of the group mentioned the possibility of attacking Michigan State Police buildings, he said.
At another point in the investigation, one of the defendants, Brandon Caserta, became irate because he had been pulled over and ticketed for driving without insurance.
“An injustice just happened to me,” he messaged the other suspects, according to evidence introduced at the hearing, and he wrote that he could find out where the two police officers lived and “tap them,” which Trask said is slang for killing them.
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