Hopefully this asshole spends the next two decades in jail, but neo-Nazi hate group Atomwaffen founder Brandon Russell and his girlfriend are facing federal charges after being picked up in a plot to destroy power substations around Baltimore in order to "completely destroy the whole city."
A neo-Nazi leader recently released from prison has been arrested again and accused of plotting an attack on the Maryland power grid with a woman he met while incarcerated.
Brandon Russell, 27, and Sarah Clendaniel, 34, are expected to make their first appearance Monday in Baltimore federal court on a charge of conspiring to destroy an energy facility, which carries up to 20 years in prison.
“If we can pull off what I’m hoping … this would be legendary,” Clendaniel said on Jan. 29, according to the court record. She was speaking to a federal informant, who was having similar discussions with Russell.
According to prosecutors, their plan was to attack with gunfire five substations that serve the Baltimore area. The charges come after similar attacks on the power grid in North Carolina and Oregon that remain unsolved; the Department of Homeland Security recently warned that the United States is in a “heightened threat environment” and that critical infrastructure is among the “targets of potential violence.”
In conversations about the plot, according to court documents, one defendant “described how there was a ‘ring’ around Baltimore and if they hit a number of them all in the same day, they ‘would completely destroy this whole city.’”
Clendaniel and Russell met while incarcerated at separate prisons, according to the court documents — Russell in federal custody for possessing bombmaking materials and Clendaniel in a Maryland facility for robbing convenience stores with a machete.
“Going to prison was worth it because I might not have met you otherwise,” Russell said in one text.
Both are on probation. It was not immediately clear whether they had attorneys representing them in this matter. Attempts to reach family for Clendaniel and Russell was not immediately successful.
Russell, a former Florida National Guard member, is the founder of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen, which attempted to use violent attacks to spark a race war in the United States. Experts say the group, while small, is dangerous because of its influence on the broader far-right movement to eschew politics and spill blood.
Proud Boys and Oath Keeper terrorists are one thing, but these Atomwaffen assholes put the Nazi in neo-Nazi and they specifically targeted Baltimore in order to make Black folk suffer and die. It's 2023 and America is still dealing with shit like this.
And we have an entire major political party playing footsie with these guys, and the people who support them.
Jesus wept.
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