Court of Appeals Overturns Two More Convictions Tied to Whitmer Kidnapping Plot

Overview

• The Michigan Court of Appeals on Monday set aside the state convictions of Pete Musico and Paul Bellar by applying a precedent from Joseph Morrison’s June ruling.
• The panels found that a 2006 amendment removed explicit force language from Michigan’s kidnapping statute and that the state terrorism law still requires a predicate violent act involving force.
• Attorney General Dana Nessel said she will ask the Michigan Supreme Court to review the rulings and criticized the appeals decisions as strained legal readings; the defendants remain jailed while appeals proceed.
• Musico, Bellar and Morrison had been convicted in 2022 of providing material support for an act of terrorism for secondary roles in the 2020 scheme that federal agents infiltrated.
• The decisions create legal uncertainty for some state terrorism convictions from the 2020 plot and could prompt the state Supreme Court to clarify whether kidnapping, as currently written, can underlie terrorism-support charges.