Feds: Woman, neo-nazi plotted to attack power grid
BALTIMORE>> A Maryland woman spent months conspiring with a neo-nazi leader based in Florida to plan an attack on Baltimore’s power grid, hoping to further their racist mission, law enforcement officials said Monday.
The plan was thwarted when both suspects were arrested last week, adding to a growing list of similar cases as authorities warn the American electrical grid could be a vulnerable target for domestic terrorists.
Sarah Beth Clendaniel, 34, was working with Brandon Russell, who founded a small Florida-based neo-nazi group, to plan a series of “sniper attacks” on Maryland electrical substations, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Monday. The document also included a photo of a woman authorities identified as Clendaniel wearing tactical gear that bore a swastika and holding a rifle.
It wasn’t immediately clear Monday whether either suspect had a lawyer to speak on their behalf. There was no evidence the plot was carried out or any record of damage to local substations.
U.S. Attorney Erek Barron praised investigators for disrupting hate-fueled violence.
“When we are united, hate cannot win,” he said at a news conference announcing the charges.
Authorities declined to specify how the planned attack was meant to fulfill a racist motive but suggested the defendants wanted to bring attention to their cause. Russell had discussed targeting the grid during cold weather “when most people are using max electricity,” authorities alleged.
According to the complaint, Clendaniel was planning to target five substations situated in a ring around Baltimore, a majority-black city mostly surrounded by heavily white suburban areas.
“It would probably permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully,” Clendaniel told a confidential informant she met through Russell, according to the complaint. She was most recently living outside the city in surrounding Baltimore County, officials said.
Clendaniel told the informant she was experiencing terminal kidney failure. With just a few months to live, she wanted to “accomplish something worthwhile” before her death, according to the complaint.
Investigators also found a document in her Google records that they compared to a manifesto. In it, Clendaniel wrote she would give up “everything” to “have a chance for our cause to succeed.”
Russell, who founded a neoNazi group called Atomwaffen Division, has a long history of ties to racist extremist ideologies and past plans to disrupt American infrastructure systems, according to the complaint. Atomwaffen Division leaders recently renamed themselves the National Socialist Order.