FBI Detroit chief during bungled Whitmer ‘plot’ sting now runs DC office that raided Mar-a-Lago

Aug 22, 2022 | Political News

The Washington, D.C., FBI field office that raided former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate and is investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol breach is led by Steven D'Antuono, who ran the bureau's Detroit field office when, trial testimony alleges, it instigated, encouraged and facilitated what the government charges was a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

The retrial of two men charged in the alleged plot, Adam Fox and Barry Croft, Jr., finished its first full week on Thursday, as the prosecution rested its case.

Details about the FBI's integral role throughout the development of the alleged kidnapping plot continue to emerge amid plunging public support for the agency following a string of investigations, arrests and prosecutions targeting Trump allies and recent whistleblower reports of enforcement decisions tainted by political bias at FBI headquarters in D.C.

Legal experts and civil libertarians have decried accelerating prosecutorial overkill, double standards and strong-arm tactics in the criminalization of political opposition by the Department of Justice and FBI.