Last Friday, in a bizarre move that mostly flew under the national radar, Michigan state Rep. Rachelle Smit, a Republican Of Course, honored twin brothers with a legislative tribute celebrating their “courage” for “keeping alive our cherished liberties.” Normally, this is the sort of thing that might be done to honor a particularly heroic first responder or a passerby who risked their life to pull a drowning child out of a half-frozen lake, but Smit’s award was unusual.
That’s because the two brothers she was honoring, along with their lawyers, were two men who were recently acquitted at trial for their involvement in a militia-devised plot to kidnap or kill Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. From The Detroit News:
The twins along with Eric Molitor were found not guilty of providing support for a terrorist act and a weapons charge. They were the last of 14 men to face charges in state or federal courts, where nine suspects were convicted or accepted plea deals, while a total of five men were acquitted.
The Nulls and Molitor were accused of supporting leaders of the plan by participating in military-style drills and traveling to see Whitmer’s vacation home in northern Michigan. The key players, Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr., were convicted of a kidnapping conspiracy last year in federal court.
Smit wasn’t willing to clarify to The Detroit News why she felt, as the tribute wording went, “The People of Michigan owe a debt of gratitude” to the pair, leaving the rest of us to speculate as to why allegedly scoping out the governor’s vacation home as part of a plan to seize or kill the governor counts as behavior for which her constituents owe a “debt of gratitude.” But the message is obvious: Smit’s handing out awards to people who were connected to the plot but freed by Michigan juries unwilling to convict them.
Of the 14 militia members and hangers-on charged for the planned act of domestic terrorism, nine were convicted or accepted plea deals and five were acquitted. Smit’s criteria for awards appears to be “willing to visit the scene of the planned act of terror to further the conspiracy while convincing a jury later on that you were just too dense to know what was going on.”
That’s the sort of thing the United States tortures foreign cab drivers over, but Michigan Republicans are now handing out awards for it. There’s no word on whether Smit plans to visit Guantanamo Bay with an armful of additional plaques; we’ll just have to keep an eye out.
As you can imagine, Whitmer’s office is blasting Smit for honoring men connected to the plot to kidnap the governor, since it self-evidently appears that Smit is celebrating that kidnapping plot and signaling to would-be future domestic terrorists that they can count on the state Republican Party to have their backs.
Smit isn’t doing anything to dissuade people from thinking that. She’s had every opportunity to pipe up to explain herself—and she hasn’t. Nor could we find any of her fellow Republicans distancing themselves from this bizarre “tribute.”
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