Mich. GOP Deflect Their Role In Encouraging Militia Terrorist Plot; Maybe 'Only A Citizen's Arrest'
'Conservatives run away from consequences for encouraging Michigan militia’s terrorism plot,' Daily Kos, 10/13/20.
- Barry Co. Sheriff Dar Leaf, seen here speaking at a May 15 rally in Grand Rapids alongside militia members, including some arrested in last week's FBI arrests in Michigan. The sheriff told an interviewer the men may only have been planning a citizen's arrest.
Discovering that terrorists can look like the guys next door is a jarring thing, especially if that’s not how you’ve been conditioned to think of such matters. In Michigan this week, cognitive dissonance has been thick on the ground—especially as public officials who came too close to the plotters and their incendiary rhetoric have tried to wrestle with the consequences of last week’s arrests of 13 Michigan militiamen who schemed to kidnap and assassinate Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
A local sheriff who had appeared onstage at an anti-Whitmer rally this spring suggested to a TV interviewer that maybe the plotters—some of whom he knows personally—were just trying to make a citizen’s arrest. A Republican state legislative candidate opined that the arrests were “a totally bogus sham.” And the state’s Republican Speaker of the House, who has helped stoke the incendiary “tyranny” rhetoric that fueled the plotters, chastised Whitmer for pointing out the connection between the plotters’ actions and the rhetoric used by Donald Trump and Michigan Republicans.
Dar Leaf, the sheriff of Barry County—where two of the accused domestic terrorists, William and Michael Null, reside and were arrested by the FBI Thursday—told a Grand Rapids interviewer that he believed the men might have been within their rights. “It’s just a charge, and they say a 'plot to kidnap' and you got to remember that. Are they trying to kidnap? Because a lot of people are angry with the governor, and they want her arrested. So are they trying to arrest or was it a kidnap attempt? Because you can still in Michigan if it's a felony, make a felony arrest,” Leaf told Fox17 reporter Aaron Parshegian.
He added: “The two gentlemen that I know of from my county, were they involved in that? I don't know. They're innocent till proven guilty. And we really, really should be careful, trying to try them in the media.”...
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/12/1986057/-Michigan-Republicans-struggle-with-recognition-of-their-own-roles-in-fueling-militia-kidnap-plot
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