Dana Nessel

LANSING – On Monday, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled to reverse the convictions of Pete Musico and Paul Bellar, who were convicted of multiple felonies in connection with the 2020 plot to kidnap and harm Governor Gretchen Whitmer. It follows a recent decision by a different Court of Appeals panel to reverse the conviction of co-defendant Joseph Morrison. In that decision, the Court ruled to overturn Morrison’s convictions based upon their finding that, for the purposes of charging material support for terrorist acts, kidnapping is not a violent felony.While Musico and Bellar did not originally raise that issue in their own appeals, the panel was bound to follow the ruling in Morrison on that issue, resulting in the reversal of Musico’s and Bellar’s convictions.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel issued the following statement in response:

“A previous ruling used linguistic gymnastics to overturn the conviction of an extremist. Now, that broken precedent has legally bound this Court of Appeals panel to reverse the convictions of two more dangerous criminals. It is clear that all three of these defendants engaged in a coordinated plan to kidnap and harm the governor and cause mayhem and destruction across our communities in the process. There is no word to describe this other than violent. My office will not downplay domestic terrorism and will not stand by while criminal statutes meant to preserve public safety are arbitrarily gutted. We have already started the process to appeal the disastrous decision in Mr. Morrison’s case, and we will not hesitate to do the exact same for Mr. Musico and Mr. Bellar.”