The Defendants In The Alleged Plot To Kidnap Michigan?s Governor Have Lost Their Bid To Avoid Trial

If that were to happen, they added, “the government would have no recourse but to try Steve for perjury.”Regardless of whether Robeson or the three FBI agents are called as witnesses at trial, the defense’s primary endeavor will be to convince the jury their clients were entrapped by a government desperate to make a case.To do that, Jonker emphasized in his ruling, they’ll have to not only prove that the government “induced” or persuaded the defendants to act using “excessive pressure,” but also, critically, demonstrate that the five men were not predisposed to violence.And that second prong may be a particularly tall order given the extensive library of incendiary rhetoric prosecutors have documented in the hundreds of hours of clandestine recordings made by the FBI’s informants in the case.It is “neither ‘undisputed’ nor ‘patently clear’ that defendants were not predisposed to commit the crimes charged," Jonker wrote in his opinion.Ken Bensinger is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles.