By now, nearly everyone has read the basic facts surrounding the plan to kidnap and then execute everyone’s favorite 2020 COVID leader, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. We say “everyone’s favorite” because it has been a long time since this country had a more courageous politician. She was “John Lewis level courageous” in doing the right thing for her state. Some citizens tried to make her pay the ultimate price.

Clearly, the “plan” couldn’t sound more horrific. The only way to make the news of the plan worse is to note – as various media outlets have for a couple of months – just how close this plan came to succeeding, at least a serious attempt. The only thing saving Gov. Whitmer was an amazing professional partnership between the Michigan State Police and the FBI. When first reported, the plot sounded fantastical, a bunch of losers talking around the range. No, these people were very serious and near carrying out the attempt.

We continue to learn more. In today’s Washington Post, we learn that the plan was also dangerous to certain Michigan citizens:

Last September, as two would-be kidnappers made their way to the vacation home of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) for nighttime surveillance, the pair made a pit stop at a nearby highway bridge, according to prosecutors.

Then the two members of an extremist anti-government group, Adam Fox and Barry Croft, allegedly looked for the optimal spot to “mount an explosive charge” underneath — all so they could blow the bridge up to stall police trying to reach Whitmer’s home…

… On Aug. 30, one of the group members, Ty Garbin, suggested in their encrypted chat that they “take down” a bridge leading to Whitmer’s home to “hinder a law enforcement response,” court documents said. Two weeks later, on Sept. 12, Fox and Croft allegedly went to the bridge to scope out a good spot for a bomb.

Bombing a bridge would almost surely lead to the deaths of a few police officers and perhaps citizens, until the road could be blocked off, which might have been ten to fifteen minutes, given the chaos that would have ensued.

Nighttime surveillance? They were very close. Luckily, law-enforcement intelligence operatives had an informant close enough to the group to tip them off, late in the plan.

These criminals were not only very serious in their plans for Whitmer, but they were also willing to do a lot more to “slow down” the police response. We mentioned Whitmer’s courage? She continued to make COVID decisions that infuriated the MAGA portion of her state but kept deaths down. The plot didn’t change a thing in her approach.

She is our favorite governor because she’s possibly the best governor, at least in the top three. She will be headed for higher office someday and hopefully sooner rather than later. She might have been a good choice for Homeland Security.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak