Comment by taylodl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by taylodl | Hacker News Reader

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Let's not forget the liberals who've been murdered and attacked:

- Gabrielle Giffords (2011) - shot in the head, survived.

- Gretchen Whitmer (2020) - kidnapping plot foiled by the FBI.

- Paul Pelosi (2022) - hammer blows to the head, survived.

- Josh Shapiro (2024) - arson attacked family home while Josh Shapiro along with this wife and kids were residing at the time.

- Melissa and John Hoffman (2025) - Murdered by a man posing as law enforcement.

Now you want me to get concerned that MAGA might get upset with the murder of Charlie Kirk? I'm supposed to get concerned that MAGA is going to use this event as a rally cry - a rally cry for what, exactly? More violence? What does that say about them? That's just a threat they make to further their use of fear and intimidation to silence their critics. As I told my grown children time and time again while they were growing up: don't ever use the excuse that someone "made you" do something to rationalize your behavior. You chose your behavior, stop making excuses to justify it. Own it.

The Whitmer plot is interesting because it was both 'foiled' by the FBI and the plot itself was something like half police informants or employees.

If I recall several of the alleged plotters were found not guilty or hung jury because some of the jurors were having trouble with who even came up with and encouraged the plot.

Imagine that defense. "Well sure, if one person convinced you to kidnap a governor, that's on you. But in this case several people said it'd be a good idea to kidnap a governor so you're blameless!"

>Imagine that defense

There is no need to "imagine" -- many of them were found not guilty, and their defenses are openly available. You can pull up the cases, and I think the situation was a little beyond a sort of one liner defense or anything like that. Brandon Caserta also was featured in several interviews and commented on it, for a briefer view of his situation.

Either way I think we should be concerned that the government is generating violent conspiracies against the government while intentionally trying to drag 3rd parties along with it. I also just kind of object to calling something "foiled" when the entity foiling it appears to have likely been the one generating it in the first place.

Wait which federal agent "generated" the kidnapping plot?

They were mostly FBI informants instead of agents, acting as FBI assets.

FBI informant "Big Dan" was the guy that drove them to the supposed casing of Whitmer's vacation home, acted as one of the leaders of the militia, and he also spent hours and hours planning the kidnapping. For one. (from memory, the FBI even supplied the addresses to case).

FBI credit cards bought a lot of the ammunition and the stuff involved in the plot.

I believe Caserta (not guilty) was referencing him when in his interviews he talked about how the guys training them were FBI assets as referenced in wikipedia "Chappel taught the group tactical skills he had learned in the U.S. Army."

  A confidential FBI informant known as "Big Dan," identified in court as Dan Chappel, testified that he drove plotters involved in the scheme to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Chappel also drove with Adam Fox, the group's ringleader, to scout Whitmer's vacation home.

(google AI)

  Dan Chappel (born c. 1987), nicknamed "Big Dan", an Army veteran who served in the Iraq War. He has stated that he joined the Wolverine Watchmen in 2020 after finding them on Facebook, wanting to keep up his firearms skills, but contacted law enforcement after seeing the group's radicalization.[109] After becoming an informant, Chappel became the group's "XO", or executive officer, the second-highest rank in the group,[110] and then its highest-ranked officer after Morrison departed the group due to marital problems.[110] Chappel taught the group tactical skills he had learned in the U.S. Army,[110] offered the group use of a credit card (paid for by the FBI) to buy ammunition and supplies,[111] and in summer 2020 spent hours on the phone with Fox planning the kidnapping.[110]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...

That article says Musico came up with the kidnapping plot, not the government.

Lol you just brushed aside all the generating the FBI did, which i cant beleive is an act of good faith. You know they convicted a bunch of other people that helped generate the plot too right? Not even the FBI subscribes to your idea that only the guy that initially came up with the general idea is culpable, assuming it was Musico ( and even then, to become a conspiracy you need an overt act and not just an idea... like fbi informants helping people buy ammunition or driving them to case a house).

The FBI provided the training, ammunition, addresses, and driving. If the best counterpoint is another crackpot conspirator had allegedly the initial mere idea (which, depending how it is conveyed, may not even be illegal merely as speech if not calling for imminent action or soliciting or threatening to actually do it), well I rest my case about their involvement in generating the conspiracy.

Perhaps we aren't seeing the term 'generate' in exactly the same way. I took your meaning to be "the government hatched a kidnapping plot and suckered some libertarians into going along with it". You understand this is a much different scenario from "the FBI let confidential informants play their part as militia members but let the conspirators fully bake their plan."

> If the best counterpoint is another crackpot conspirator had allegedly the initial mere idea (which, depending how it is conveyed, may not even be illegal

Seems like exactly the reason the feds would have to allow the conspiracy to develop. What would you have them do? Give them a stern warning and let them know who their informants were?

The government hatched a large part of the plot, it seems though, then roped a bunch of people into court who jurors found not guilty.

I think it impossible to know who came up with the mere idea first. You'd have to prove a negative that no one else did which seems impossible. So the assertion regarding Musico is questionable, at best you could assert he did utter the idea at some point.

>eems like exactly the reason the feds would have to allow the conspiracy to develop

You're speaking of alternate reality. Fed assets trained , funded, planned, and encouraged it. They weren't 'allowing it' -- they were actively creating it. No i dont condone that.

> The government hatched a large part of the plot

Which parts?

> You'd have to prove a negative that no one else did which seems impossible.

That is a weird way to operate, particularly since you just assigned "a large part" of the creation of the plot to informants without proving that no one else on earth thought of it beforehand.

> Fed assets trained , funded, planned, and encouraged it

They were also militia assets with a pretty strong incentive to not act abnormally. You are welcome to be opposed to undercover work, most of the country is not. In the end, they key figures were convicted and the kidnapping didn't happen.

Loop to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45216655.

>st assigned "a large part" of the creation

Stated as generation/"generating violent conspiracies", not initial conception of mere idea which by itself might not even be illegal activity. You can't even have a conspiracy without an overt act, which FBI extensively aided and generated.

We're just looping now. End of loop.

You cannot legally have a conspiracy conviction without an overt act. Clearly the plot to kidnap the governor was an actual criminal enterprise from its inception.

The FBI did a great job exposing a violent militia.

> I'm supposed to get concerned that MAGA is going to use this event as a rally cry - a rally cry for what, exactly? More violence?

Yes. Namely. You wait and see, with how public figures on the right have been talking.

The political party which tends more than the other to house bunches of heavily armed wingnuts who like to muse about the prospect of a civil war... How do you think this is going to go when one of their media darlings gets murdered? And then quotes like this are put out there:

"Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives. Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died" - Trump, 2 days ago before anything was known.

I actually think we're lucky that reflexively they haven't started jailing the political opposition just to make the base feel warm and fuzzy.

This kid without question made the world a worse place for liberals and conservatives both. What a complete asshole.

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