A federal jury in Michigan has found two men guilty of plotting to kidnap the state’s governor Gretchen Whitmer.

On Tuesday, Barry Croft and Adam Fox, we’re found guilty of planned to capture Ms Whitmer at her vacation home in 2020.

They were also found guilty of conspiring to obtain a bomb to blow up a bridge and slow down police if the kidnapping could be pulled off at Whitmer’s vacation home.

Ms Whitmer has reacted to the development, saying the verdicts “prove that violence and threats have no place in our politics.”

“But we must also take a hard look at the status of our politics. Plots against public officials and threats to the FBI are a disturbing extension of radicalised domestic terrorism that festers in our nation, threatening the very foundation of our republic,” Ms Whitmer said in a statement.

The investigation started after Army veteran Dan Chappel joined a Michigan paramilitary group. He agreed to become an FBI informant after hearing talk about killing police. 

The FBI classified it as a major domestic terrorism case and planted two informants and two undercover agents in the group. Mr Chappel then spent some time getting close to Mr Fox and his accomplices. In this time, he secretly recorded conversations and participated in drills at “shoot houses” in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Messrs Fox, Croft and others, accompanied by the government operatives, traveled to northern Michigan to see Ms Whitmer’s vacation home and a bridge that could have been destroyed.

Earlier this year, a jury failed to reach verdicts for Messrs Croft and Fox. Two had pleaded guilty and the jury had acquitted another two of their co-defendants.