A Michigan appeals court threw out the terrorism convictions of two more men tied to the 2020 plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the third such reversal in weeks, and a stinging rebuke to the state's legal theory.
Pete Musico and Paul Bellar had their convictions for providing material support for an act of terrorism overturned Monday after the court ruled it was bound by a precedent set just last month, when a separate panel reversed the conviction of their co-defendant Joseph Morrison on the same charge. The legal reasoning in all three cases turned on a single question: whether kidnapping qualifies as a "violent felony" under Michigan's anti-terrorism statute. The courts said it does not.
Neither Musico nor Bellar was accused of playing a direct role in the scheme to abduct Whitmer. Both were members of a paramilitary group that trained with Adam Fox, the man convicted of leading the plot, who is now serving 16 years in prison. But prosecutors charged them under Michigan's terrorism law for providing material support, and that charge has now collapsed for all three peripheral defendants.
Nine people in total were convicted in connection with the Whitmer kidnapping plot. With Monday's ruling, three of those convictions have been wiped out on appeal. The Morrison reversal came roughly a month earlier, when a different three-judge panel ruled unanimously that the terrorism charge could not stand because kidnapping did not meet the statute's definition of a violent felony.
That ruling set the table for Monday's decision. The new appeals panel said it was obligated to apply the Morrison precedent to Musico and Bellar, whose charges rested on the same legal foundation. The result was inevitable once the first domino fell.
The broader case has been marked by a pattern of prosecutorial setbacks. Five of the 14 men originally arrested were acquitted at trial. Morrison's conviction was then overturned. Now Musico and Bellar walk free, too. What was once billed as a landmark domestic-terrorism prosecution is steadily unraveling on legal technicalities that the state should have anticipated before it ever brought the charges.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, has not taken the reversals quietly. After the Morrison ruling, she called the decision "completely and irredeemably nonsensical, outrageous and irresponsible" and vowed to take the case to the Michigan Supreme Court.
Her reaction to Monday's ruling struck a similar tone. Nessel accused the court of contorting the law to free dangerous people, a posture familiar from other recent Democratic confrontations with unfavorable legal outcomes.
In a statement, Nessel said:
"The Court twists itself into a knot using legal and linguistic gymnastics in order to liberate dangerous criminals using convoluted definitions of the crimes upon which they were convicted."
Strong words, but the attorney general's office now faces a structural problem. Nessel has vowed to appeal the initial Morrison ruling, and that appeal would cover both decisions. If the Michigan Supreme Court upholds the lower courts' reading of the terrorism statute, all three reversals stand. If the high court disagrees, the convictions could be reinstated. But two separate appellate panels have now reached the same conclusion independently, which makes the state's position harder to defend on appeal.
The core issue is not whether Musico, Bellar, and Morrison were involved with dangerous people. They trained with a man who plotted to kidnap a sitting governor. The question is whether the charge prosecutors chose, material support for terrorism, actually fit the conduct under Michigan law as written.
Two appellate panels, ruling weeks apart, concluded it did not. Kidnapping, whatever else it may be, does not satisfy the statute's requirement that the underlying offense be a "violent felony." That is a drafting problem in the law, and prosecutors built their case on a foundation that could not hold.
This is not an isolated phenomenon. Across the country, politically charged prosecutions have stumbled when the legal theories behind them proved weaker than the headlines they generated. The DOJ's recent decision to drop remaining charges against a Proud Boys member in a January 6 case follows a similar arc, aggressive charging that could not survive sustained legal scrutiny.
The Whitmer kidnapping plot was real, and the man who led it is behind bars. Nobody disputes that. But the state's decision to stretch a terrorism statute beyond what its text could support has now produced a cascade of reversals that undermines public confidence in the prosecution itself.
Nessel's fury at the courts is understandable from a political standpoint. She staked credibility on these convictions. But blaming judges for reading the law as written is not a legal strategy, it is a political one. When prosecutors overreach, the consequences fall not just on defendants but on the credibility of the justice system that brought the charges in the first place.
Six of the original nine convictions still stand. Adam Fox's 16-year sentence is not at issue in these appeals. But the speed at which the peripheral convictions are falling apart raises an obvious question: did prosecutors prioritize the size of the case over the strength of the charges?
The Michigan Supreme Court will have the final word. If Nessel's appeal succeeds, it will vindicate a legal theory that two separate appellate panels rejected. If it fails, the attorney general will have spent years and public resources defending charges the courts found unsupportable. In an era when Americans are already questioning whether prosecutorial power is wielded fairly, that outcome would carry weight well beyond Michigan.
When the law cannot support the charge, the conviction does not hold, no matter how politically convenient it was to bring it.