The FBI quickly realized it had a problem: A key informant in the case, a career snitch with a long rap sheet, had helped to orchestrate the kidnapping plot.
The Intercept exclusively obtained a five-hour recording of the FBI's interrogation of Stephen Robeson, a paid informant central to the alleged kidnapping plot.
The FBI documents and recordings reveal that federal agents at times put Americans in danger as the Whitmer plot metastasized.
In an extraordinary five-hour conversation, which FBI agents recorded, one of Robeson's handlers told him: "A saying we have in my office is, 'Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story,' right?" Despite federal and state trials involving the kidnapping plot, this recording - which goes to the heart of questions about whether the FBI entrapped the would-be kidnappers - was never allowed into evidence.
Robeson's role as an informant in the Whitmer kidnapping plot was supposed to be a tightly held secret.
In his December meeting with FBI agents, Robeson confirmed that Higgins was not initially aware of the kidnapping plot and instead believed they were out "Hunting pedophiles." But once he was in Michigan, Higgins learned that some of the attendees had a rough plan to kidnap Whitmer.
His behavior in the immediate aftermath of the arrests was so concerning to FBI agents that federal and state prosecutors discussed charging him with witness tampering, according to emails that circulated among more than a dozen FBI agents the day after the kidnapping plot was announced.
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/06/gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-informant/
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