KIDNAP PLOT TRIAL: Second defendant denies participating in plan to abduct governor

Sep. 12—BELLAIRE — William Null testified in his own defense Monday morning, spending some time on the witness stand telling the jury about places he didn't go, meetings he didn't attend, conversations he didn't hear and weed he didn't smoke.

"On June 30, did you have a meeting with Adam Fox in 2020?" Null's attorney, Damian Nunzio, asked.

"No," Null said.

"How do you know you didn't have a meeting with Adam Fox on June 30th?" Nunzio asked.

"Well, I've never had a one-on-one with Adam Fox," Null said. "I know on June 30th, I absolutely know where I was —"

This date is significant as prosecutors say Null met with Fox, in advance of a daytime and nighttime surveillance of the governor's vacation home, held weeks later.

Null testified Monday he was never at the meeting, but the jury did not hear where Null says he was — at a shooting competition — after 13th Circuit Court Judge Charles Hamlyn sustained an objection from the prosecution.

Hamlyn explained how the defense had not filed notice of an alibi defense, so while Null could tell the jury he wasn't at the meeting, he couldn't say where he actually was.

Null and his brother, Michael Null, along with another man, Eric Molitor, are on trial for what prosecutors say is their role in a 2020 plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

The men have pleaded not guilty to charges of providing material support for an act of terrorism and to being in possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

On Thursday and Friday last week, Molitor testified in his own defense, explaining how he knew nothing about the kidnapping plot until Aug. 29, 2020.

That's when Molitor said Fox, who prosecutors have portrayed as a ringleader, told him about it during a daytime surveillance of the governor's vacation home near Elk Rapids.

Prosecutors, however, have said evidence and witness statements made by co-conspirators show the men knew of the plot and willingly participated.

The jury on Friday did hear Null testify how he was not at a number of meetings in June 2020, with Fox, where the plot, according to evidence presented in court, was discussed.

Null also said he wasn't at a June 28, 2020, field training exercise with a militia group, the Wolverine Watchmen, that he didn't go on a daytime surveillance of the governor's vacation home in August 2020, and he said he wasn't privy to conversations others charged in the plot had while they were smoking marijuana.

"Do you smoke weed?" Nunzio asked.

"I do not," Null said.

Like Molitor, Null said he initially did not believe Fox or Barry Croft, the other man prosecutors say was involved with planning, were serious but rather were "rants" about their grievances with the government.

Null acknowledged he had his own frustrations with authority, specifically COVID-related lockdown orders and mask mandates, and enforcement of land-use permitting rules in Barry County, where he lives.

Null, however, did attend a field training exercise, or FTX in Luther, on Sept. 12 and 13, according to both his testimony and evidence presented in court, and says he was invited, by a Wisconsin man, Steve Robeson.

Null said FTXs were a common activity for his family — he estimated he'd attended 40 to 50 such events between 2015 and 2020 — and went to Luther with his teenage son, his son's friend and co-defendant Michael Null.

The FTX in Luther was pretty standard, Null said, with firearms safely, survival skills and shooting drills held on wooded private land where attendees camped in campers or tents.

Robeson, who Null said he did not know was an FBI informant, invited him and his brother Michael on "a car ride," which Null said turned out to be the nighttime surveillance of the governor's vacation home on Birch Lake.

The kidnapping plan, Null said, still sounded like posturing but that all changed the next day, Sept. 13, 2020, back in Luther at the FTX, when he said Fox and others talked about raising money to buy explosives.

Prior to this date, Null said he'd never taken any talk about explosives, blowing up the US-31 highway bridge near Elk Rapids or harming law enforcement, seriously.

"At this point in time, I'm involved in something I don't want to be involved in anymore," Null said, adding he packed up camp and all four — he, his son, his brother, his son's friend —left early.

"Why didn't you call the police?" Nunzio asked.

"I wish I would have," Null, 41, said. "I should have."

Michigan Assistant Attorney General William Rollstin, lead prosecutor in the case, cross-examined Null on Monday afternoon.

Rollstin asked Null about a recording made by an undercover agent, during the drive between Luther and Cadillac Sept. 12, 2020, where the men stopped in a Walmart parking lot to meet with men in two other vehicles, who would accompany them north.

The agent, Undercover "Mark," is driving, Fox is in the vehicle with the Null brothers and says he has a plan to blow up a bridge, to which Null says, "That would be a good plan."

"She would be hanging in the halls, that's where I would do her," Null says earlier in the recording.

When Rollstin asked what Null meant by that, Null said he was adding his own rant to Fox's.

"We're just talking on a car ride," Null said.

Rollstin pointed out how Fox, on the recordings made during the drive, didn't always sound like he was ranting — sometimes he sounded goal-oriented, like when he said, "her detail is gone before we even reach the shore," about Whitmer's Michigan State Police security detail, in the event of a water assault.

Or when Fox describes the public boat launch across the lake from Whitmer's property, describes the small police department, describes blowing up the bridge and says the group is going to need some "boom-boom."

"The whole point of this is to send a message," Fox says, on the recording.

Null said he didn't know what Fox meant by "boom-boom," or when he said, later, "we're going to take her on Birch Lake," and didn't pay attention to much of what Fox said, on the drive to and from Elk Rapids and otherwise.

"I didn't take these people serious," Null said.

Rollstin pointed out that Tuesday would be the third anniversary of the nighttime surveillance, that Null was 38 at that time, a small business owner, with life experience; he was an adult and not naïve.

Null, earlier in the day, under questioning by Nunzio, said he supported law enforcement, but Rollstin presented social media posts, made by Null, where he said "blue liners" couldn't be trusted and another where he said, "F- — THE POLICE."

Null explained how he'd been angry about the 2018 Parkland, Fla. school shooting, in which he said police failed to protect children, and the subsequent decision by what he believed was the US Supreme Court, which he said determined police weren't obligated to protect people.

In December 2018, a Florida federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by more than a dozen students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, stating police officers have no Constitutional obligation to protect the public when they are not in their custody.

Rollstin described the gear Null wore to rallies and protests — body armor, sidearm, long gun, shotgun in a sheath across his back — and asked him about its significance.

"You're supporting the Second Amendment of this country," Null said of his gear.

"But why do you carry a shotgun in a sheath?" Rollstin asked.

"Because I can," Null said.