Pair is charged with plotting to attack electrical grid

Federal law enforcement officials have arrested two people accused of conspiring to “completely destroy Baltimore” in what they described Monday as a racist plot to demolish the power grid in a predominantly Black city.

Sarah Clendaniel, 27, of Catonsville, Maryland, and Brandon Russell, 34, of Orlando, Florida, planned to inflict “maximum harm” by targeting facilities operated by Baltimore Gas and Electric, which serves 1.2 million customers in central Maryland, according to a complaint filed in federal court.

While prosecutors suggested the arrests did not appear linked to recent attacks on the electrical grid in North Carolina, Washington state and Oregon, Russell is active in a neoNazi group called Atomwaffen that discussed attacks on electrical and nuclear facilities in Florida in 2017. He was released in August from federal prison after a conviction for bomb making.

“Russell provided instructions and location information,” Thomas J. Sobocinski, the special agent in charge of the FBI's field office in Baltimore, said at a news conference. “He described attacking the power transformers as the greatest thing somebody can do.”

Clendaniel, who was responsible for carrying out the attacks, boasted that she wanted to “lay this city to waste,” Sobocinski said, adding that local, state and federal law enforcement agencies disrupted the plot before it could be carried out.

The charges came a few days after the FBI offered two $25,000 rewards for information on those responsible for shooting and damaging two substations in Moore County, North Carolina, on Dec. 3 and for targeting another substation in Randolph County, North Carolina, on Jan. 17. The attack in Moore County caused 45,000 people to lose power, some for five days.

In December, Russell used encrypted messaging apps to detail his long-term plans to attack the electrical grid, telling a confidential FBI informant that he had recruited Clendaniel — who had served three years for robbing a convenience store with a butcher's knife — as a possible accomplice.

Clendaniel said that striking all five, in rapid succession, with a “good four or five shots,” would “completely destroy this whole city” by setting off a cascade of power failures and prompting a wave of destructive civil disturbances, according to the complaint.

The communications from Clendaniel veer from grandiose predictions about the plot to jarring details of her personal and physical travails.

Prosecutors obtained a photograph of Clendaniel trying to appear fearsome in a death's-head mask that covered her mouth and nose, as she held a semi-automatic rifle and brandished a holstered 9 mm pistol.

There is “no indication” the Maryland plot was related to other attacks or plans, Sobocinski said Monday.