#43Americans
Barry Croft Jr.
Bear, Delaware · The Michigan governor “kidnapping plot” case
His first jury could not reach a verdict, and two co-defendants were acquitted. On retrial he received 235 months; the appeals court found the judge erred in excluding FBI-informant statements, but called it harmless.
In 2020 the FBI and a group of paid confidential informants spent months inside a loose circle of men talking angrily about Michigan’s governor. Barry Croft Jr., from Delaware, was one of them. When the arrests came in October 2020, weeks before the presidential election, the case was announced as a domestic-terrorism plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
The first jury did not see it that way. After a twenty-day trial in the spring of 2022, jurors acquitted two of the defendants outright and could not reach a verdict on Barry Croft Jr. or Adam Fox. The government tried the two men again that August, and the second jury convicted them on all counts. Barry was sentenced on December 28, 2022, to 235 months — nineteen years and seven months — the longest sentence in the case.
The question at the center of both trials was entrapment: whether the government found a plot or built one. The defense identified 258 statements by FBI informants that it wanted the jury to hear. The trial judge kept them out. On appeal, the Sixth Circuit agreed that the district court erred in the rule it used to exclude those informant statements — and then held the error harmless and affirmed. Barry’s court-appointed appellate lawyer asked the Supreme Court to take the case, describing government agents as the “producer, director, script writer, choreographer, photographer, principal actors, and dancers” of the plot. The Court asked the government to respond, then denied review on January 12, 2026.
Barry filed his own § 2255 motion to vacate the sentence, without a lawyer, in September 2025, and a supplemental memorandum that November. His family says those filings, below, are the best place to read the evidence that was excluded, the trial transcripts, and the co-defendants’ plea agreements. The motion has been pending for more than a year.
He has been in prison for six years. His family says he has spent more than three and a half of them in total solitary confinement at USP Florence ADMAX in Colorado — the federal supermax known as the Alcatraz of the Rockies.
In her own words
Tessie Liz Croft is Barry Croft Jr.’s fiancée. She asked that this page let the documents speak for themselves, with no photographs or video, and that it carry this statement, in her words:
“Barry Croft Jr. was falsely accused of the FBI made plot to kidnap the Governor of Michigan. He has been in total solitary confinement for over 3.5 years (total of 6 years in prison) in the USP Florence ADMAX, also known as the Alcatraz of the Rockies. It is the worst prison in America, described as "Hell without the flames." Barry Croft Jr. was targeted because of the intelligence he possesses on the deep state.
The evidence that proved Barry's innocence was barred at trial, his fate was determined by a judge who had already decided the verdict before the trial had started, the jury had been purchased, his defense lawyer was hired by the person who framed him (Whitmer), and the prosecutor coerced the co-defendants with extremely short sentences in exchange for perjury against Barry. I beg President Trump to pardon my fiance Barry Croft Jr. today. Please bring my Barry home to me. He deserves to be home with his family. Please don’t let him languish another day in that gulag.”
— Tessie Liz Croft, Barry Croft Jr.’s fiancée
The book
Tessie and her mother, Theresa Nichols, wrote a book about the case: Whitmer Kidnapping Hoax: A Plot to Kidnap Barry Croft Jr. Nameless Casualties, Secret Wars.
The documents
Filed by Barry Croft Jr. in his own § 2255 case and provided by his family. Both are public court filings.
- His § 2255 motion to vacate (ECF No. 1)Twenty pages, filed September 22, 2025, in No. 1:25-cv-01146. His own handwritten motion, filed without a lawyer.
- His supplemental memorandum and exhibits (ECF No. 8)Sixty-four pages, filed November 12, 2025. The memorandum he and his fiancée worked on together, with exhibits including an FBI document from an informant’s case and an article on the informants in his case.
The families of the #43Americans ask that this case be read in order. A first jury heard the government’s evidence and acquitted two men and could not agree on Barry Croft Jr. The appeals court found that the jury at his second trial was kept from hearing statements by the government’s own informants under a rule it called mistaken. He is serving nineteen years and seven months, much of it in solitary confinement. His family asks President Trump to pardon him and bring him home.
Records
- Sixth Circuit opinion, United States v. Fox and Croft, Nos. 23-1014/1029 (April 1, 2025)
- Supreme Court docket, Croft v. United States, No. 25-5249 (certiorari denied January 12, 2026)
- RealClearPolitics, “Will High Court Take a Look at FBI’s Role in Whitmer Kidnapping Case?” (September 23, 2025)
- CNN, sentencing report (December 28, 2022)
- § 2255 motion, No. 1:25-cv-01146, ECF No. 1 (September 22, 2025)
- Supplemental memorandum, No. 1:25-cv-01146, ECF No. 8 (November 12, 2025)
← All the cases of the #43Americans
This page speaks for the families of the #43Americans, who are asking President Trump to review these cases. The statement above is Tessie Liz Croft’s, published in her words at her request; its claims are her account and have not been adjudicated. His conditions of confinement are as described by his family and his own filing. The case number, charges, trial outcomes, sentence and appeal are taken from the Sixth Circuit’s opinion, the Supreme Court’s docket, his own § 2255 motion, and contemporary news reports. A jury verdict or a sentence is reported as what the record shows. It is not a finding by this site.