Angelos family members drop suits
As legal battle delved further into personal and financial dealings, parties sign motion to bring end to proceedings
Soon, Georgia Angelos, the wife of Orioles owner Peter Angelos, would have been put under oath and questioned.
A river of documents had begun flowing — to lawyers involved in the case, if not to the public — with details including everything from private email conversations to bank
records to negotiations over a possible sale of the team.
That was the backdrop to Monday’s abrupt end to the legal fight that erupted within the Angelos family in the wake of the 93-year-old patriarch’s illness and subsequent incapacitation.
As The Baltimore Sun revealed early Monday, the lawsuits filed last year pitting younger son Louis Angelos against his brother John, the Orioles chairman and CEO, and their mother, Georgia, were withdrawn. Attorneys for all three family members, as well as a court-appointed lawyer for Peter Angelos, signed a motion to end the cases.
The terse, four-page document provided no details of why or how the cases were settled. Family members and their lawyers either declined to comment or did not return requests for comment from The Sun.
But the pace of the legal battle had intensified in recent weeks.
Two weeks ago, Louis Angelos, 53, amended his original suit to allege Georgia, 81, and John Angelos 55, had transferred some $64 million from one of Peter Angelos’ bank accounts. The information appeared to bolster Louis Angelos’ claims that his brother, with his mother’s acquiescence, was working to keep family assets from him, contrary to what Louis Angelos said was his father’s desire that they share the wealth equally.
John and Georgia Angelos have sought to emphasize — he through his attorneys and
around Baltimore and if they hit a number of them in the same day, they “would completely destroy this whole city,” according to the criminal complaint.
BGE, an Exelon company, said its substations were not targeted because of any particular vulnerability. The company has strengthened its grid and enhanced its surveillance technology to prevent both physical and cyberattacks, as similar threats have increased in recent years, BGE said in a statement.
“We remain focused on improving the resiliency of the grid by stocking critical back-up equipment while designing a smarter grid that isolates damage and routes power around it,” BGE said in a statement.
The FBI disrupted several plans to attack substations in other states in recent months, Sobocinski said, but there is no indication that Clendaniel and Russell’s plans were part of a larger conspiracy. Substations are considered critical infrastructure because blackouts can threaten public safety and national security.
In December, one or more people opened fire on two electrical substations in North Carolina, creating widespread power outages that impacted 45,000 customers for several days. Traffic lights went dark, and schools and businesses closed. Residents struggled to stay warm during freezing winter nights.
Russell shared a YouTube video about the North Carolina substation attack with an FBI informant.
In a statement, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore commended the FBI’s intervention in the “potentially catastrophic attack” on Baltimore and said state and local law enforcement officials are working with the federal agency.
Russell and Clendaniel started corresponding when they both were incarcerated and appeared to have continued a romantic relationship, according to the criminal complaint. Russell contacted an FBI informant in June and encouraged them to read a white supremacist publication for guidance on how to attack substations in Maryland. In January, he connected the informant with Clendaniel, who in Catonsville in Baltimore County.
Russell advised the informant to hit the substations during cold temperatures, when people are using more electricity to heat their homes, according to the criminal complaint.
In 2016, Clendaniel was sentenced to five years in prison for armed robbery for wielding a large butcher knife at several Cecil County convenience stores. She told the FBI informant in January she has a terminal kidney illness and wanted to “accomplish something worthwhile” before she died. Her plan was to shoot at the substation while the informant acted as a getaway driver.
“If we can pull off what I’m hoping ... this would be legendary,” Clendaniel wrote to the informant, according to the criminal complaint.
Russell was sentenced in 2017 to five years in federal prison for possessing numerous chemicals used to create explosives. He told law enforcement officers that he started his own local violent extremist group with Nazi beliefs called the “Atomwaffen.” His three roommates were members of Atomwaffen until one murdered the other two in 2017 for bullying him after he converted to Islam, according to the criminal complaint.
In January, FBI agents searched Clendaniel’s online records and found photos of firearms, including a photo of her wearing tactical gear with a swastika and holding a rifle and a pistol. Screenshots of a Google document that stated it was “not a manifesto” referenced Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Anders Breivik, who was convicted of committing terrorist attacks; and Adolf Hitler.
“I would sacrifice **everything ** [sic] for my people to just have a chance for our cause to succeed,” Clendaniel wrote in one document, according to the criminal complaint.
Barron said Maryland and federal law enforcement officials are “using every legal means necessary to keep Marylanders safe and to disrupt hate-fueled violence.”
“When we are united, hate cannot win,” he said.