(Source: MIRS.news, Published 08/30/2023) A déjà vu feeling permeated the trial Wednesday of three men accused of providing support to the 2020 plot to kidnap the Governor as one defense attorney spent the morning criticizing the prosecution.
William Barnett, who represents defendant Eric Molitor, told the judge for at least the third time that he wants a mistrial because the Attorney General’s office continually misrepresents its evidence.
“They’ve had this case for four years. They don’t know their evidence,” he said.
Molitor and twins Michael Null and William Null are each charged with providing material support to a terrorist act and felony firearms. Their trial, being heard before Judge Charles Hamlyn in Bellaire, is expected to last until at least Sept. 11.
On Tuesday, Assistant Attorney General William Rollstin showed video clips of Molitor’s January interview with a freelance videographer, but Barnett argued the clips were prejudicial because they misrepresented his client.
The attorneys' discussion took place without the jury, which sent a note to the judge asking about the “timeliness” of the trial because they were left waiting in the jury room while the attorneys made legal arguments before the judge. The wait time over the six days so far has seemed too much, it appeared.
When the jury entered the courtroom, Hamlyn explained the delays are inevitable before they again heard the prosecution’s version of the video clips as well as the defense’s longer version.
In the short clip, Molitor explains his perspective of the Boogaloo Boys, “isn’t what the government says,” and is a “fight against our government, like a Civil War, I guess.”
In the long version, Molitor said a potential second Civil War “scares the shit out of me,” and that he believes it may be “inevitable” because people disagree and such a situation is “cyclical.”
Molitor also said “there’s something wrong” with anyone who “stands up and says they’re ready to shoot somebody” and the “Boogaloo should be the last resort because you’ve already tried doing stuff."
Molitor added: “The last thing anybody should want to do is fight another human being.”
In the second clip, Molitor tried to differentiate between violent rhetoric, saying he’s sorry someone has to be hurt for “my opinion to matter here, but if nothing happened, there is no victim” and if there is a victim, the guilty culprit should be held accountable. In the long version, he says that innocent people “should not have any regulations placed on them because of something that somebody else did.”
Barnett also wanted a longer version of the slow-motion video Molitor took at the request of convicted ringleader Adam Fox as the group surveilled the Governor’s vacation home.
In the short version, Molitor said he knew exactly what it was as it seemed “obvious” to take a video while driving by, but in the defense’s long version, the jury heard Molitor ask: “How do you say no to somebody not knowing how far they will go to keep you quiet?”
Molitor added that he didn’t want to give Fox and the others “the opportunity to think that I would not be OK with them” because they knew where his mother and children lived.
The defense attorneys then got their chance to question FBI Special Agent Henrik Impola, who was on the stand for the sixth day.
Kristyna Nunzio, who represents William Null, asked questions about the Wolverine Watchmen while Barnett introduced a number of photographs, including those of the Governor’s mansion on Mackinac Island.
Barnett’s questions tried to show Molitor as a person who left Michigan for North Carolina when he realized the others were serious and as a protector who served as a security guard during the George Floyd protests and other social happenings in the country.
Barnett also questioned Impola about an undercover informant, Steve Robeson, who the FBI stopped using when it became aware that Robeson was playing both sides.
When asked if Robeson wanted to kill a confidential human source (CHS), Impola replied that he interviewed Robeson after learning he “was looking for Dan,” the CHS.
Robeson subsequently was convicted and sentenced in federal court for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
In addition, Fox’s ex-fiancée, Amanda Keller, took the stand outside the presence of the jury to say she would exercise her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent if called to testify. She then left the courtroom with her attorney.
However, Rollstin introduced a recording of Keller’s call to the FBI reporting “domestic terrorists.”
In the Aug. 21, 2020 call, Keller tells the FBI employee that there are multiple states involved, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio and Delaware, and the plan was to “kidnap Gov. Whitmer and kill her, blow up buildings, blow up the electric grid. Again, that's just Michigan's plan."
