By Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday pardoned six people who have already served time for crimes, including five convicted of drug or alcohol-related offenses and a woman who killed her allegedly abusive husband nearly five decades ago.

The latest pardons showed Biden nudging U.S. criminal justice policy away from the war-on-drugs ethos that he and other liberal lawmakers once championed.

Now gearing up for a possible re-election bid in 2024, the Democratic president faces pressure to show progress on racial and criminal justice issues. The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population but a fifth of its prisoners. A disproportionate share are people of color, who make up a sizable chunk of Biden’s base of support.

All three of Biden’s uses of the pardon power so far in his term have involved reducing the sentences of people convicted of drug-related offenses.

In October, he dismissed the sentences of thousands of people with federal offenses for simple marijuana possession and launched a reexamination of how the drug is classified by federal officials.

All of the people pardoned on Friday were convicted and served a sentence for the crime, some of which happened decades ago, when they were young. In the years since, they have developed careers and been involved in community service.

One of those pardoned was Beverly Ann Ibn-Tamas, now 80, who shot and killed her neurosurgeon husband while she was pregnant in 1976. The case of Ibn-Tamas, who said she was abused and acted in self-defense, became a model for using a woman’s history of abuse in legal arguments.

After she was released, Ibn-Tamas worked in healthcare and raised the two children fathered by her husband as a single mother, the White House said. Her daughter is now an attorney.

Others on Biden’s list included Vincente Ray Flores, an active-duty Air Force service member, now 37, who was convicted for consuming ecstasy and alcohol while serving at age 19, according to the White House.

Biden also pardoned Edward Lincoln De Coito III, a decorated U.S. Army veteran, now 50, who was briefly a courier for marijuana at age 23 and served more than a year in prison.

Among the others was a 66-year-old convicted of a crime related to a cocaine deal at age 22; a 77-year-old man who sold whiskey without tax stamps at age 18; and a 72-year old who rented space that was used to grow marijuana nearly 30 years ago.

(Reporting by Trevor HunnicuttEditing by Frances Kerry)

(Reuters) – A Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives committee on Friday released former President Donald Trump’s tax returns from 2015 through 2020. Below are highlights from his personal tax returns.

2015

Wages $14,141

Taxable interest $9,393,096

Dividends $1,729,897

Business income -$599,030

Rental real estate, -$7,882,011

partnerships, etc.

Taxable income $0

Net tax $641,931(Congressional tax

panel says this could drop

to $750, if a claim of

previous losses is approved)

2016

Wages $978

Taxable interest $8,994,141

Dividends $337,938

Business income $8,797,393

Rental real estate, -$15,939,523

partnerships, etc.

Taxable income $0

Net tax $750

2017

Wages $373,629

Taxable interest $6,758,494

Dividends $21,984

Business income $1,433,030

Rental real estate, -$16,746,815

partnerships, etc.

Taxable income $0

Net tax $750

2018

Wages $393,957

Taxable interest $9,435,377

Dividends $60,254

Business income -$430,408

Rental real estate, -$11,992,220

partnerships, etc.

Taxable income $22,951,389

Net tax $999,466

2019

Wages $393,928

Taxable interest $11,332,436

Dividends $71,921

Business income -$225,560

Rental real estate, -$16,472,951

partnerships, etc.

Taxable income $2,975,173

Net tax $133,445

2020

Wages $393,229

Taxable interest $10,626,179

Dividends $25,347

Business income -$29,686

Rental real estate, -$15,676,469

partnerships, etc.

Taxable income $0

Net tax $0

(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Vancouver; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

King Charles will knight Queen guitarist Sir Brian May in his first New Year’s Honours.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s ex-PR boss who accused the duchess of bullying has also been recognised in the list, while four of England’s Lionesses football team will get gongs following after their Euros football triumph.

Jason Knauf, who initially worked as joint head of communications for both the Sussexes and the now Prince and Princess of Wales, has been made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order, entitling him to put the letters LVO after his name.

He made serious allegations about Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’s alleged bullying of junior royal family staff before he stepped down and became a special adviser to Prince William and his wife Catherine, and then chief executive of the Royal Foundation, the charitable arm of their official operations.

He said on Friday night (30.12.22): “Working for the Prince and Princess of Wales was the honour of a lifetime.

“Receiving this recognition means more to me than I can say. I am incredibly grateful.”

He gave evidence during Duchess Meghan’s High Court privacy case against The Mail on Sunday.

Sir Brian, 75, guitarist on Queen hits such as ‘We are the Champions’, pledged to “do the things one would expect a knight to do” including “fight for justice” and for “people who don’t have any voice”.

Lionesses skipper Leah Williamson, 25, is getting an OBE following the team’s 2–1 extra-time win over Germany in July’s Euros.

Her teammates Beth Mead, 27, defender Lucy Bronze, 31, and goal scorer Ellen White, 33, are receiving MBEs, with Lucy telling The Sun on Friday: “To be on this list because I’ve just been doing something that I love is amazing.”

The women’s coach Sarina Wiegman, 53, gets a CBE on the overseas list, and said: “I feel privileged and humbled and would like to dedicate this to the players, support team and others within the Football Association who have worked tirelessly for our shared success.”

Dame Denise Richards, 51, who helped organise the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and won gold at the Sydney Olympics 2000, was another of the athletes to be honoured.

She said: “It’s an incredible honour. I’m trying to take it in and its enormity.”

“I recognise I’m one of very few women in athletics that have received a damehood. I’m just so proud and incredibly beside myself.”

More than 1,000 are honoured on Charles’ first New Year’s list.

Other famous faces included are actors Stephen Graham, 49, David Harewood, 57, who are getting OBEs, while stand-up comic Frank Skinner, 65, is made an MBE.

‘Dennis the Menace’ illustrator David Sutherland, 89, who has been drawing for The Beano for 60 years is getting an OBE.

Kate Bush is being urged to share one of her uplifting Christmas messages every year.

The reclusive singer, 64, told fans in her 2022 festive note life had become “incredibly frightening”, while backing the work of nurses and reflecting on the death of Queen Elizabeth aged 96 on September 8.

It has prompted her followers to share Kate’s 2021 message, which talked of the devastating effects of Covid, with fans of the musician saying they hope she makes it a tradition of sharing a hopeful message on her official website each year as many of her followers said it gave them comfort in an uncertain world.

Kate has made a return to the spotlight this year after her 1985 ‘Running up that Hill’ track featured in Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ show before the Official Charts Company announced in September it had become the UK’s biggest song of the summer.

She said alongside a picture of a goldcrest bird perched on a frost-covered branch in her resurfaced 2021 festive message: “With nearly two years of Covid, are any of us the same people we were before? It’s left everyone confused and uncertain of the future.

“It’s been a terrible time of loss for so many. I want to say a big thank you to all the people on the front line and in the NHS.

“I have such huge respect for all the nurses and doctors who’ve already been working flat out for nearly two years.

“These caring people are showing such extraordinary acts of kindness to others. Let’s hope they get the pay rises they rightly deserve.

“I’d like to mention something that happened a few weeks ago on a walk; stopping to look at the view, I noticed something moving in a tree right beside me. It was a Goldcrest – the smallest bird in Europe, even smaller than a wren. I stood still, hoping not to frighten it away.

“Its colouring is beautiful – a peacock’s eye on each wing and a striking yellow streak on its tiny head. This gorgeous little ball of fluff flew away after ten minutes or so.

“I’ve only ever seen one once before and very briefly. It made my day. In these strange times, I really hope you can get the chance to stop for a moment and feel nature around you.

“Please stay safe. Wishing you a restful Christmas and hoping 2022 is a happier year for everyone. With love Kate.”

Courtney Love claims Brad Pitt “stalked” her about Kurt Cobain.

Earlier this week, Courtney, 58, claimed on Marc Maron’s ‘WTF’ podcast that she was fired from the 1999 movie ‘Fight Club’, starring Brad because she refused to let the actor make a movie about her late husband, Nirvana frontman Kurt, who died by suicide in 1994 at the age of 27.

And Courtney later took to her Instagram account to double down on her claims.

She wrote: “Hi. Regarding a story I told on the @marcmaron #wtf podcast. A story I was never going to tell. Brad pushed me a bridge too far. I don’t like the way he does business or wields his power. It’s a simple fact, and it started during the production of Fight Club.

“I understand how much of a game of roulette casting is. I am not here 22 years later b******* about losing a part playing someone’s side piece in a movie.

“On the podcast, I recount the day Brad Gus Van Sant called me from lunch and tried to blackmail me over my role, for the rights to a film about Kurt. I lost my s*** on them, and by 7pm I was fired from Fight Club. Every word of this is factual. This was always a secret that I was fine keeping.

“It’s a movie. Indeed, I passed on better roles that that. Who cares?

“The point is Brad kept stalking me about Kurt.”

Courtney also said she took a call with Brad in 2020 about another film about Kurt but turned him down again. However, she has now decided to speak openly about it because she feels that Brad will not stop “pursuing” Kurt until she made it public.

She explained: “With all this resentment in our history, one might ask why I took yet another pitch for Kurt’s film from Brad after all these years? It’s because I’m in recovery. And resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.

“I was over being mad about it. Plus, I heard Pitt was dealing with the same demons. So, we might both have changed our spiritual world views. Not to be.

“It’s not just the Zoom I had with Brad in 2020 where I said no to @planbfilms Brad producing it. It’s that I said NO on the Zoom and that was not enough, and I was not heard. I was ignored.

“I had no plans to bring it up with Marc Maron but up it came.

“I told the story because I felt Pitt would not stop pursuing Kurt – unless I said it in public.

“I don’t want Brad to be p***** off at me and become his resentment. I want him to do better. I’m not into assault. Cmon brother Pitt. I wish you well, truly.

“If he’s mad at me, that’s his problem. I enjoy him as a movie star immensely. Not so much as a biopic producer.

“Hope this clarifies, and thanks for your time.

“I’m sure Helena Bonham Carter was utterly meant to be Marla Singer and I do not bear her or Edward Norton or David Fincher or Art Linson all people whose work genius I respect immensely any ill will.

“Xx. Nmrk.

“#GENTLEMAN? #IMNOTAREALBLONDE! Shall we get started xC.”

Sam Asghari has addressed speculation he “controls” his wife Britney Spears.

The 28-year-old model spoke out after fans claimed Britney, 41, was not in charge of her own social media accounts following a post on her birthday in December when she gushed about her estranged sister Jamie Lynn Spears.

Sam told TMZ: “I don’t even control what we have for dinner.

“In the past, there has been a lot of stuff going on so I understand where [some fans are] coming from. They’re just being protective. If anything they’re being good fans.”

Sam – who tied the knot with Britney in June – previously admitted he was not a fan of the racy content his wife posts on Instagram, but insisted he would never try to censor her posts as she was previously under a conservatorship for 13 years.

He wrote on his Instagram Story: “The only person in the world that gets bullied for posting things like this. I personally preferred she never posted these but who am I to control someone that’s been under a microscope and been controlled for most of her life.”

Meanwhile, it was recently revealed that Britney’s former husband Kevin Federline, is planning to write a tell-all book about the star.

The 44-year-old dancer was married to popstar Britney from 2004 until 2007 and was granted custody of their sons Sean, 17 and Jayden, 16, upon their divorce but is now reportedly set to be “writing a book on his experience of fatherhood” as a nondisclosure agreement is set to come to an end along with child support payments.

A source said: “He turned down multimillion-dollar book deals in recent years. Kevin’s divorce settlement and child support payments include a nondisclosure agreement. But that expires when the boys turn 18. Once that happens, Kevin is free to tell all — and he knows everything.”

The ‘…Baby One More Time’ hitmaker was placed under a conservatorship governed by her family in 2007 following a personal breakdown and although she regained control of her fortune upon its termination in 2021, she has since become estranged from her parents and children.

Kevin has reportedly teamed up with Britney’s father Jamie Spears – who headed up the conservatorship arrangement and allegedly put his daughter under various restrictions and dictated her professional obligations – for the book now that the “are now speaking to each other once again” following a fallout.

Kate Hudson thinks Liv Tyler was her best on-screen kiss.

The 43-year-old actress singled out her ‘Dr. T and the Women’ co-star as being her favourite person to have locked lips with on camera over the years and joked she and her friend always regret not “going for it” more when they made the 2000 film.

Sitting down for Vanity Fair magazine’s lie detector test video series, Kate said of kissing Liv: “She beats them all. We, to this day, are like, ‘Why didn’t we go for it more with our making out?’ She has the softest lips of them all. Oh my God. Those lips? Those Tyler lips!”

Kate also joked she had “done well” after kissing Billy Crudup in ‘Almost Famous’ in 2000 and Matthew McConaughey in 2003’s ‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days’ and 2008’s ‘Fool’s Gold’.

Holding up photos of them both, she joked: “I’ve done well, guys. I feel like I’ve done well…

“I think Billy is a gentler kisser. I wouldn’t say better, but definitely just gentler. It’s a more sophisticated version of a kiss. It’s like theatre. It’s like Stanislavski and like Longhorns. You know what I mean?”

But when it came to Dane Cook, Kate joked of her ‘My Best Friend’s Girl’ co-star: “No. No. Cancelled”.

In 2014, Dane claimed his smooch with the actress in the 2008 movie was his worst on-screen kiss.

He said: “I think she purposely ate a feast of onions right before the scene. I had to burn her on that one.”

Elsewhere in the interview, despite being best known for her rom-coms, the ‘Mother’s Day’ actress admitted she doesn’t watch many.

She said: “I don’t watch that many rom-coms. I love rom-coms, but sometimes for me the rom-coms that people are seeing are not movies that I… I’d probably choose something else.”

Darren Hayes felt a “sense of sadness” he could never be himself in public.

The 50-year-old singer came out publicly as gay in 2005, after the break-up of his band Savage Garden, and he admitted he envies artists such as Sam Smith and Olly Alexander who have never had to hide away who they really are.

He said: “I know that a lot of younger people might think ‘Why?’ or would even be in disbelief at some of the stories that I’ve experienced especially at a record label. Even now, in a world where we have amazing artists that are so fully our or not even out, it’s not even a question. I’m so excited at the new Sam Smith video and it’s that we’re so much more nuanced.

“The queer community becomes more and more detailed and less put into boxes. That word is so constricted and has so many negative connotations in that it used to be used by a psychologist to diagnose someone with mental illness.

“It’s just beautiful and I think the newer artists today who are just so interesting and brave and complex and…layered. That gave me inspiration in the 10 years I was away and I remember feeling a sense of sadness that I had never been myself in a public eye.

“That was a huge part of why I wanted come back to make a record and show people that I’m not ashamed of who I am.”

Darren admitted he was in a “challenging dark period” before writing his latest album ‘Homosexual’, particularly because he’d just turned 50 and was questioning his “legacy”.

He exclusively told BANG Showbiz: “I live with a major depressive disorder and I was in the middle of a pretty challenging dark period before I made the record. I’d also just turned 50 and I was having a moment in my life where I was really questioning my self-worth and what the next part was going to be and what my legacy was supposed to be.

“If I wasn’t singing, I started to think ‘Who am I if I’m not singing?’ and ‘Do I still matter?’ ‘What does that mean as a human being if I’m not contributing music?’ ‘Am I of no value if I’m not doing this?’ ”

Kim Kardashian’s employees wear uniforms.

The 42-year-old reality TV star revealed that she prefers when her employees are coordinated and wearing a similar palette, although she does not consider them uniforms.

When quizzed by Angie Martinez on her ‘IRL’ podcast, about whether a dress code for her employees is “intentional”, Kim replied: “Absolutely. I have uniforms. It’s not like hey, this is like your uniform. It’s just palettes.”

And Kim revealed that the dress code was discussed with her employees before she brought it in.

She said: “My house is so zen, so I asked how everyone felt about it, and everyone actually said, ‘That would make our life so easy’ And once everyone was on board and thought it would be easier for them, I was like, ‘Yes, let’s do this.’

“I should have like a free-dress day on their birthdays or something.”

Kim previously spoke about her monochromatic house, explaining that things needed to be “zen” at home because her life outside the house is so chaotic.

She told ‘Live with Kelly and Ryan’: “It’s getting harder. It really is getting harder. But you have no other choice sometimes. That’s why my house has to be really zen because life, as soon as I step outside, life outside of this house is not zen.”

However, her kids don’t always approve, especially daughter North, nine.

Kim said: “My kids probably hate me. Like, North will say, ‘Your house is so ugly! It’s all plain, it’s all white!’ She thinks it really gets to me. I’m like, ‘It’s your house too!'”

Daniel Craig couldn’t understand why everyone was obsessed with his ‘Knives Out’ co-star Chris Evans’ jumper in the film.

The former James Bond – who stars as detective Benoit Blanc in Rian Johnson’s whodunnit franchise – couldn’t get his head around the cable-knit sweater Chris’ alter-ego, Hugh Ransom Drysdalel, wears in the 2019 flick.

He told BBC Radio 1: “It’s the bit that goes over my head.

“I don’t understand. It’s like, so Chris Evans is wearing a jumper. It’s like he’s naked or at least naked from the sort of waist down, wearing a jumper. I’m like, ‘He’s just wearing a jumper.’ News is like, ‘Chris Evans wears jumper!’”

He added: “Sure, it’s a living. He does it very well.

“He wears it very beautifully.”

The sequel, ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’, has just been released.

But Rian has just confessed he is annoyed that ‘Knives Out’ is included in the title.

The filmmaker says he worked hard to ensure that the original flick and the recent release felt like separate movies that could exist independently of each other and he was not happy with the full title.

Speaking to The Atlantic, he said: “I’ve tried hard to make them self-contained. Honestly, I’m p***** off that we have ‘A Knives Out Mystery’ in the title. You know? I want it to just be called ‘Glass Onion’.

“I get it, and I want everyone who liked the first movie to know this is next in the series, but also, the whole appeal to me is it’s a new novel off the shelf every time. But there’s a gravity of a thousand suns toward serialised storytelling.”

Daniel is the only actor from the first film to return for the second movie.

And Rian also admitted he would have preferred a longer theatrical release from Netflix.

He said: “I’d love it to be longer; I’d love it to be in more. But also, I appreciate that Netflix has done this, because this was a huge effort on their part, and the chains, to reach across the aisle and make this happen. I’m hoping it does really well so we can demonstrate that they can complement each other.”

‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’ co-stars Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Kate Hudson and Dave Bautista.

Gillian Anderson had fun playing someone “a little loopy” in ‘A Pale Blue Eye’.

The 54-year-old actress stars in Scott Cooper’s Edgar Allan Poe-inspired whodunnit as doctor’s wife Julia Marquis and she was delighted to be offered such a “curious” role.

She said: “My character is such a curious one. She’s a little loopy. Which was fun.

“And she gets to smash plates. I’m trying to talk about it without giving too much away.”

Gillian also admired Scott’s way of working and thinks he managed to craft a film that feels “very real” to the time period in which it is set.

She told Total Film magazine: “I was very interested in te setting, and having seen a couple of Scott’s films before, it almost felt like I knew what it was going to look like.

“You could get a real sense from not just the script but knowing how he works.

“And I thought there was something very delicious in that.

“And certainly in seeing it myself, I was struck with how quiet it is, and how much he allows the scenes to just sit.

“There’s atmosphere. There’s a real silence. You feel the damp, you feel the cold.

“It feels very real to the 1800s in a way I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced before.”

The veteran actress think audiences like whodunnits because they are such an “escape” and she thinks audiences will learn more from ‘A Pale Blue Eye’ than they realise.

She said: “They’re such an escape. And more than ever, people want entertainment. They don’t want stuff that’s too heavy-handed or too real or too serious.

“Whodunits are a valid form of entertainment. And to have it presented in such a beautiful, luscious, fascinating and not necessarily educational way – but there’s certainly stuff in there that would have been well-researched and adds to the fascination of who Poe might have been when he was a younger man.

“And the beginnings of America and the beginnings of West Point and that institution. So all of that is quite curious and fascinating.”

By Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – NASA is exploring whether SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft can potentially offer an alternative ride home for some crew members of the International Space Station after a Russian capsule sprang a coolant leak while docked to the orbital lab.

NASA and Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, are investigating the cause of a punctured coolant line on an external radiator of Russia’s Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which is supposed to return its crew of two cosmonauts and one U.S. astronaut to Earth early next year.

But the Dec. 14 leak, which emptied the Soyuz of a vital fluid used to regulate crew cabin temperatures, has derailed Russia’s space station routines, with engineers in Moscow examining whether to launch another Soyuz to retrieve the three-man team that flew to ISS aboard the crippled MS-22 craft.

If Russia cannot launch another Soyuz ship, or decides for some reason that doing so would be too risky, NASA is weighing another option.

“We have asked SpaceX a few questions on their capability to return additional crew members on Dragon if necessary, but that is not our prime focus at this time,” NASA spokeswoman Sandra Jones said in a statement to Reuters.

SpaceX did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

It was unclear what NASA specifically asked of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capabilities, such as whether the company can find a way to increase the crew capacity of the Dragon currently docked to the station, or launch an empty capsule for the crew’s rescue.

But the company’s potential involvement in a mission led by Russia underscores the degree of precaution NASA is taking to ensure its astronauts can safely return to Earth, should one of the other contingency plans arranged by Russia fall through.

The leaky Soyuz capsule ferried U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dimitri Petelin to the space station in September for a six-month mission. They were scheduled to return to Earth in March 2023.

The station’s four other crew members – two more from NASA, a third Russian cosmonaut and a Japanese astronaut – arrived in October via a NASA-contracted SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which also remains parked at the ISS.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, a gumdrop-shaped pod with four astronaut seats, has become the centerpiece to NASA’s human spaceflight efforts in low-Earth orbit. Besides Russia’s Soyuz program, it is the only entity capable of ferrying humans to the space station and back.

THREE POSSIBLE CULPRITS

Finding what caused the leak could factor into decisions about the best way to return the crew members. A meteroid-caused puncture, a strike from a piece of space debris or a hardware failure on the Soyuz capsule itself are three possible causes of the leak that NASA and Roscosmos are investigating.

A hardware malfunction could raise additional questions for Roscosmos about the integrity of other Soyuz vehicles, such as the one it might send for the crew’s rescue, said Mike Suffredini, who led NASA’s ISS program for a decade until 2015.

“I can assure you that’s something they’re looking at, to see what’s back there and whether there’s a concern for it,” he said. “The thing about the Russians is they’re really good at not talking about what they’re doing, but they’re very thorough.”

Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov had previously said engineers would decide by Tuesday how to return the crew to Earth, but the agency said that day it would make the decision in January.

NASA has previously said the capsule’s temperatures remain “within acceptable limits,” with its crew compartment currently being vented with air flow allowed through an open hatch to the ISS.

Sergei Krikalev, Russia’s chief of crewed space programs, told reporters last week that the temperature would rise rapidly if the hatch to the station were closed.

NASA and Roscosmos are primarily focusing on determining the leak’s cause, Jones said, as well as the health of MS-22 which is also meant to serve as the three-man crew’s lifeboat in case an emergency on the station requires evacuation.

A recent meteor shower initially seemed to raise the odds of a micrometeoroid strike as the culprit, but the leak was facing the wrong way for that to be the case, NASA’s ISS program manager Joel Montalbano told reporters last week, though a space rock could have come from another direction.

And if a piece of space debris is to blame, it could fuel concerns of an increasingly messy orbital environment and raise questions about whether such vital equipment as the spacecraft’s coolant line should have been protected by debris shielding, as other parts of the MS-22 spacecraft are.

“We are not shielded against everything throughout the space station,” Suffredini said. “We can’t shield against everything.”

(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

By Kanishka Singh and Steve Gorman

(Reuters) -The leader of a foiled plot by members of right-wing militia groups to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was sentenced to 16 years in prison on Tuesday in a U.S. District Court, prosecutors said.

Adam Fox, 39, was found guilty in August by a federal court jury in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on one count each of conspiring to abduct Whitmer, a Democrat, and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction in a scheme prosecutors said was intended to spark a “second American Revolution.”

Co-defendant Barry Croft Jr., 47, like Fox a member of the Three Percenters militia group, was convicted of the same charges at the same trial and was scheduled for sentencing on Wednesday.

Prosecutors described Fox as the mastermind behind a plot to break into Whitmer’s vacation home, kidnap her at gunpoint, and take her to stand “trial” on bogus treason charges and face execution.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jonker said he did not think a life sentence, as asked for by prosecutors, was appropriate, but that the crimes required a “significant sentence,” the Detroit News reported. Fox declined to speak during the sentencing and had no reaction to the sentence, the report added.

The judge also imposed five years of supervised release beyond the sentence of 192 months in prison, prosecutors said.

Fox’s attorney had said prosecutors overstated his role. The attorney added that Fox and Croft never used explosives and the group would never have been able to actually kidnap the governor.

Prosecutors said the plot, precipitated by the group’s opposition to public health measures Whitmer imposed during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, was aimed at pushing the country into armed conflict as a contentious presidential race approached in November 2020.

The weapon of mass destruction involved was a bomb that prosecutors said the conspirators planned to detonate to hinder law enforcement’s response to the abduction.

Whitmer, co-chairman of Joe Biden’s White House campaign that year, had clashed publicly with then-President Donald Trump over her COVID-19 policies.

She accused Trump of fomenting political extremism by repeatedly directing heated rhetoric on the issue, including a campaign rally in Michigan where his criticism of Whitmer drew chants of “Lock her up” from the crowd.

Fox and Croft were among 13 men arrested in October 2020 in the kidnapping conspiracy.

Two others put on trial with them in federal court were found not guilty in April 2022. The same jury failed to reach a verdict for Fox and Croft, resulting in a mistrial for them.

Two other men who pleaded guilty to kidnapping conspiracy charges testified for the prosecution at the first federal trial and during the retrial of Fox and Croft about four months later.

The two cooperating witnesses, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, were sentenced to 2 1/2 years and four years in prison, respectively.

Three other men tried together in state court and convicted in October 2022 of playing supporting roles in the plot as members of the Wolverine Watchmen militia were sentenced recently to minimum sentences of 10, 12 and 7 years in prison, respectively.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Kanishka Singh in Washington. Editing by Gerry Doyle and Alistair Bell)