Thread by @hradzka

everybody is talking about the Buzzfeed News story about FBI informant involvement in the plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan

lots of focus on how many FBI informants were involved

less-remarked: the story on *when* the feds got involved has evolved
buzzfeednews.com/article/kenben…

Here is the story in the FBI’s affidavit. Note:

a) the impetus for the investigation is sedition on social media.
b) the investigation starts with a guy named Adam Fox, who, following a meeting in Ohio, reaches out to a militia that has already been infiltrated by the FBI.

According to the Buzzfeed article, the affidavit is backwards.

Buzzfeed’s story starts w/ the militia, called the Wolverine Watchmen. Dan, a veteran, joins it blindly and is alarmed: his new buddies aren’t just interested in fun gun stuff but in potentially killing cops.

Dan tells a cop buddy, who alerts the FBI, who ask Dan to become and informant within the group.

When a protest occupies the Michigan Capitol, the Wolverine Watchmen go along. Dan alerts the FBI, whereupon the cops stand down and let them do it.

Adam Fox, focus of the FBI affidavit, is also at that protest. He doesn’t know the Wolverine Watchmen yet.

Joe Morrison, one of the WWs, is invited to a militia meeting in Dublin, Ohio. He does not go.

Adam Fox, also invited, does.

The meeting sponsor is an FBI informant.

This is the crucial bit: Joe Morrison decides to hook up the Wolverines with Adam Fox, who has radicalized to the extent of wanting to seize the state Capitol and take hostages.

Except *Morrison hadn’t been at the meeting where the FBI obviously had set up him and Fox to meet.*

So here is the crucial question, which doesn’t seem to be answered in Buzzfeed or in the affidavit: *how did Adam Fox — who fantasized about raising 200 men to seize the Capitol — know who the Wolverine Watchmen even were to reach out to them?*

Who connected him & Joe Morrison?

The FBI pretty clearly set up that initial meeting to connect as many people they were investigating as possible under the kind auspices of an informant host, and then see what possibilities for set-ups that offered them so they could pick the most promising ones to roll up.

Also interesting sausage-making: it’s pretty clear they wrote the affidavit’s story of the investigation retroactively. If somebody else had come out of that meeting as a contender, they would have written beginning of the investigation with a different protagonist.