A Michigan appeals court on Monday set aside convictions for Pete Musico and Paul Bellar tied to the 2020 plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Joe Morrison's conviction was thrown out in June, and a different panel at the Michigan Court of Appeals said it was obligated to apply that ruling to Musico and Bellar.
The appeals court said the convictions were overturned on technical grounds because kidnapping is not an underlying violent felony that can support a conviction under Michigan's terrorism law.
Attorney General Dana Nessel called it "linguistic gymnastics" and said she would ask the Michigan Supreme Court to take up the cases.
Musico, Bellar and Morrison were not charged with having a direct role in the alleged plot; Bellar had moved out of state weeks before FBI arrests in October 2020, and Morrison and Musico said they were no longer in contact with key figures.
All three had been members of a paramilitary group that earlier trained with Adam Fox, who was prosecuted in federal court as a leader and is serving a 16-year prison sentence for conspiracy.
Prosecutors said Whitmer was supposed to be kidnapped from her vacation home just before the 2020 presidential election and that the conspirators were furious over tough COVID-19 restrictions and perceived threats to gun ownership.
Whitmer, a Democrat, was never physically harmed; undercover FBI agents and informants were inside Fox's group for months and the scheme was broken up.
The overall investigation produced mixed results for state and federal prosecutors, with five of the 14 men acquitted at trials.