BALTIMORE — A Maryland woman is facing charges as officials say she conspired with an accused neo-Nazi to attack Maryland's power grid.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Baltimore Field Office, Sarah Beth Clendaniel, of Catonsville, Maryland, and Brandon Clint Russell, of Orlando, Florida, have been charged with conspiracy to destroy an energy facility.
“This planned attack threatened lives and would have left thousands of Marylanders in the cold and dark,” said Maryland U.S. Attorney Erek L. Barron. “We are united and committed to using every legal means necessary to disrupt violence, including hate-fueled attacks.”
In court documents, officials claim Clendaniel and Russell began conspiring to carry out the attacks on Maryland's electrical substations as a way to further Russell's "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist beliefs."
Russell has a long criminal history and ties to racist groups and Nazi beliefs. In 2018, the neo-Nazi group leader was sentenced to five years in prison for stockpiling explosive materials in a Florida apartment where a friend killed two roommates in 2017. Reporting from the Associated Press shows he was not charged in the killings. According to reporting from WUSA9 sister station WTSP, Russell was released from prison in Aug. 2021.
Russell reportedly posted links to open-source maps of infrastructure, including locations of electrical substations, and described how a small number of attacks on the substations could cause a "cascading failure."
Clendaniel allegedly collaborated with Russel to plan out the attacks. She is accused of securing a weapon with the intention of targeting five substations.
Officials say Clendaniel said that if they hit a number of substations all in the same day, they “would completely destroy this whole city,” and that a “good four or five shots through the center of them . . . should make that happen.”
“[I]t would probably permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully,” she told agents, according to the FBI.
The pair each face a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for conspiracy to damage an energy facility.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore released the following statement following the arrests:
“I want to commend the F.B.I. and our state homeland security team for their swift action in preventing a potentially catastrophic attack on several of Maryland’s electrical substations. Our state and local law enforcement authorities are working in partnership with the F.B.I. to assist with any follow-up investigative work they need. This collaborative effort is vital to protecting critical infrastructure across Maryland, and I’m grateful to the men and women protecting our state.”
Montgomery County are set to allocate nearly $1 million to fight hate crimes. The announcement follows several high-profile incidents in the county.