- Ty Garbin agreed to plead guilty in the alleged plot to kidnap
Michigan Gov.Gretchen Whitmer on Wednesday. - Court documents filed in his plea agreement reveal new details about the case.
- Prosecutors say the men also practiced storming the state Capitol building and discussed attacking police.
The group of men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer over the summer also practiced storming the state capitol building and discussed attacking police with weapons, according to new court documents.
New details about the alleged plot to kidnap Whitmer from her vacation home in northern Michigan were revealed in a plea agreement filed when Ty Garbin, one of the six men charged federally in the case, agreed to plea guilty on Wednesday.
Garbin, a 25-year-old from Hartland, Michigan, pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping conspiracy.
All other men in the federal case have pleaded not guilty. Eight other people have been charged with related crimes in the alleged kidnap plot at a state level.
Court filings on Garbin's plea deal seen by Insider describe Garbin and four other defendants as members of Wolverine Watchmen, a Michigan-Based, self-styled antigovernment "militia" group.
Prosecutors say all of the federal and state-level suspects in the case targeted Whitmer with a kidnap plot over public health orders she had put in place to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
In the court filing, prosecutors said the defendants held "training" sessions at multiple locations and prepared for a fight against police.
Prosecutors said that during training sessions in Munith, Michigan, the defendants constructed a "shoot house" out of wood that they practiced breaching with firearms "to stimulate assaulting the Capitol or elsewhere."
"The conspirators also practiced combat first aid, including applying tourniquets, applying bandages, treating cuts, burns, and gunshot and shrapnel wounds they might receive during a firefight with law enforcement," prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said that in one meeting, a defendant "reiterated the plan to storm the Michigan State Capitol, and proposed using Molotov cocktails and other improvised explosive devices to distract and hinder law enforcement during the operation."
At another training session, prosecutors said, one of the men brought a modified AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle equipped with a shortened barrel, silencer, and a 37-millimeter projectile launcher that he said could be used against police.
Authorities stopped the plot in October thanks to confidential informants and an undercover FBI agent. Upon making arrests, officials charged Garbin and five others with kidnapping conspiracy and eight on a state level with related crimes.
Garbin appeared before a judge in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Wednesday, and faces up to life in prison for the kidnapping conspiracy charge.
He's scheduled to be sentenced on July 8.
Prosecutors said in the plea agreement that the US Attorney's Office is still deciding whether or not it will file a motion requesting a reduction in Garbin's sentence.
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