The details of the kidnapping plot targeting Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer are disturbing and show the real danger of the far right. But given the FBI’s very recent history of using undercover informants as provocateurs to push people into planning “terror plots” that otherwise would have never happened, we should examine its narrative closely.

And there are more than enough warning signs that, with this case, the FBI may be up to its old Obama-era tricks, helping manufacture the very terrorist plots it ends up thwarting and publicizing.

During the Obama era, the FBI built up something of a reputation: the Bureau would publicize its foiling of ambitious, frightening terror plots hatched by young, often poor Muslim men thanks to its use of paid informants and undercover agents. It would receive kudos for stopping the conspiracies, while reminding the public about the ever-present threat of terrorism in their lives.

And, inevitably, details would emerge that the plot could never have come to fruition, or in some cases even be hatched in the first place, without FBI personnel guiding, cajoling, and supplying the alleged terrorists every step of the way.