President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would analyze the forgiveness of the convicted men in a plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, and hit the legitimacy of the case.
“I’ll take a look. He caught my attention,” Trump said while talking to journalists at the Oval office. “I saw the test. It seemed like a rail work.”
The president said he thought that the convicted men in the case, which occurred on the eve of the 2020 elections, “drank” and “said stupid things.”
Fourteen men were accused of kidnapping Whitmer, a Democrat, and nine were convicted. The group leader, Barry Croft Jr., received the longest prayer in more than 19 years.
Whitmer’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
In 2020, Whitmer blamed the kidnapping plot of Trump’s rhetoric, saying that “he refused to condemn white supremacists and hate groups like these two groups of Michigan militias”, referring to Trump’s comments in the presidential debate against Joe Biden.
Whitmer said that “hate groups heard the president’s words not as a reprimand, but as a gear scream” and “as a call to action.”
“When our leaders gather, encourage or fraternal with domestic terrorists, legitimize their actions and are accomplices,” he added.
Whitmer, widely seen as a 2028 presidential potential, has met with Trump several times this year, including a memorable visit to the Oval office where the governor was photographed last month covering his face with a folder.
A Whitmer spokesman said at that time that he was surprised to have been taken to a press conference “without any notice of the subject” and defended his appearance as “not support of the actions taken or statements made in that event.”
The Democratic governor appeared with Trump a few weeks later at the base of the Selfridge Air Force, in Macomb County, Michigan, before the president celebrated a nearby demonstration to mark his first 100 days in office.
Whitmer also met him in March while he was in DC for a political retirement with the Chamber Democrats. She said her meeting was “productive.”
