Orlando neo-Nazi arrested after planned attack on Baltimore power grid, feds say
An Orlando man who founded a neo-Nazi group and a Maryland woman were arrested for their alleged plans to wreck the Baltimore power grid through a coordinated attack on multiple substations, authorities say.
Brandon Clint Russell, of Orlando, and Sarah Beth Clendaniel, of Maryland, have been charged with conspiracy to destroy an energy facility, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Russell, 27, planned attacks against “critical infrastructure,” specifically electrical substations in Baltimore, Maryland, beginning last June, according to the complaint unsealed Monday.
The plot was driven by Russell’s “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist beliefs,” court records said.
Russell is the founder of the Atomwaffen Division (AWD), a terroristic neo-Nazi organization that “is organized as a series of terror cells that work toward ushering in the collapse of civilization,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The group’s targets have included “racial minorities, the Jewish community, the LGBTQ community, the United States Government, journalists, and critical infrastructure,” the complaint said.
Over the course of five months, Russell posted links to maps of electrical substations, describing “how a small number of attacks on substations could cause a ‘cascading failure,’” investigators wrote.
Clendaniel, 34, helped Russell by trying to secure a sniper to use in an attack on five Baltimore substations that she hoped would “completely destroy this whole city,” she said, according the complaint, adding: “It would probably permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully.”
Federal investigators in late January received records from Google, one of which showed a person detectives believe to be Clendaniel “wearing tactical gear containing a swastika, holding a rifle and with a pistol in a drop holster on her left leg,” court records said.
In a recorded conversation weeks earlier, Clendaniel said she had a terminal disease and wished to “accomplish something worthwhile” before her death including the attack on Baltimore “before June, at the latest,” the complaint said.
“This alleged planned attack threatened lives and would have left thousands of Marylanders in the cold and dark,” Maryland U.S. Attorney Erek L. Barron said in a prepared statement. “We are united and committed to using every legal means necessary to disrupt violence, including hate-fueled attacks.”
If convicted, Russell and Clendaniel both face a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for conspiracy to damage an energy facility, according to the DOJ.
Russell made his initial appearance Monday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Orlando.
