Why Whitmer and Benson Tell Tall Tales of Political Violence

Turns out, kidnapping prosecutions in Michigan require an overt act. Not just heavy breathing recorded by an FBI informant. This month, a conviction in Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s kidnapping case was vacated by a three-judge panel at the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Only half of the 14 men accused in the Whitmer kidnapping plot were convicted. And even those convictions draw scrutiny, due to the heavy hand of FBI informants who went beyond documenting a plot to providing the architecture.

This is a good time to relitigate the curious case of Jocelyn Benson, and the supposedly armed protesters who showed up outside her home on Dec. 4, 2020.

Two events in 2020 shot Whitmer into the firmament of national politics: Trump calling her “That Woman from Michigan” in the spring and the kidnapping plot in October that year.

Jocelyn Benson rode the Whitmer wave of 2018 into statewide office as secretary of state, a win that had eluded her eight years prior.

Benson watched Whitmer’s star rise in 2020, based on battles with Trump and the appearance of violent extremism, and may have decided to follow suit.

In her memoir, “The Purposeful Warrior,” Benson has a chapter called “The Women from Michigan,” trying to expand the Trump insult to include herself.

Not to be outdone by the Whitmer kidnapping headlines from October, Benson claimed that in December, armed protesters showed up outside of her Detroit home, angry about the 2020 election.

Benson’s memoir starts with a conversation between herself and Attorney General Dana Nessel. Michigan State Police had reported that a “female elected official” in Michigan would be the target of protests.

“Well, who’s it going to be?” Benson asked Nessel. Both thought it would be the other. For some reason, neither seemed to think it would be Whitmer, who had supposedly just been targeted. It was Benson.

“Dozens of armed individuals, some shadowy, others clear as day, standing just outside, ten, maybe twenty feet away from us,” Benson recalls in the memoir.

Benson says the protesters showed up about 9:15 p.m., and that Detroit police didn’t arrive until about 10 p.m..

When they did, “the crowd quickly dispersed,” Benson wrote.

“They were indeed armed, police officers confirmed when they arrived on the scene,” Benson wrote.

Benson didn’t just claim to see armed protesters; she claimed that Detroit police had confirmed this.

But when a reporter asked the Detroit Police Department to confirm, they could not.

“I know there were people who did congregate outside the residence to protest, and we did not see any weapons,” Sgt. Nicole Kirkwood, a spokeswoman for the Detroit Police Department, told National Review at the time.

Michigan State Police arrived after Detroit police and didn’t see any weapons either. A spokesman cited “reports” of armed men—Benson has made these claims many times—but no direct knowledge.

If police confirmed that there were guns at the protest, why couldn’t they confirm there were guns at the protest?

In her memoir, Benson calls the protest at her home “a precursor to that tragedy that unfolded a month later in our nation’s capital,” on Jan. 6, 2021.

Benson has told her tale in news stories and books. She uses it to promote a narrative that President Donald Trump has stoked political violence in America.

The one place Benson did not mention armed protesters? When she testified to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in August 2022. Neither in her written testimony, or in her answers to questions from the committee.

The timing would’ve been just right, at a hearing titled “Protecting Our Democracy’s Frontline Workers.” Benson was there to talk about the threats the election officials face.

“We cannot have a secure democracy if we do not protect the security of the people who administer, protect, and stand guard over our elections,” Benson told the committee.

Benson continued: “I’ve experienced these threats firsthand, most notoriously in December 2020, just a few weeks after Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers certified the results of the 2020 presidential election. At close to 9 p.m. on a Saturday night I was about to put my son to bed when the peace, serenity and spirit of the evening was broken as dozens of individuals descended upon our home.

“Growing in numbers over the course of an hour they stood outside, waking my neighbors, shouting obscenities and graphic threats into bullhorns in the dark of night,” Benson testified.

Benson recounts obscenities, graphic threats, and bullhorns… but no guns? Stretching the truth in books and news stories carries no legal penalty. But lying to Congress is a crime.

In the one environment where telling a tall tale could carry a legal penalty, Benson—a trained lawyer—left out the part about armed protesters.

Between the tall tale about armed protesters and Benson’s tenure on the board of Southern Poverty Law Center at the exact time feds allege it sparked the tiki torches in Charlottesville, a disturbing pattern emerges.

Is Benson benefiting politically from claims of political violence that are either exaggerated or fabricated?