(NewsNation) — A white supremacist leader was convicted in federal court of conspiring with a Maryland woman to attack the state’s power grid to further their racially motivated violent extremist beliefs.
A jury found Brandon Russell, 29, guilty of working with Sarah Beth Clendaniel to plan an attack on electrical substations around Baltimore that could have caused significant damage to the regional power grid, according to federal prosecutors.
Their goal was to create chaos in the majority-Black city, prosecutors say.
Russell, who is based in Florida, posted links to open-source maps of infrastructure, which included the locations of electrical substations, and described how a small number of attacks on substations could cause a “cascading failure.”
Clendaniel identified five substations to target, and Russell attempted to secure a weapon for her.
The two were arrested in February 2023 before they could carry out their planned attack.
The intended monetary loss associated with the planned attacks would have exceeded $75 million, federal prosecutors said.
A jury deliberated for less than an hour after hearing about four days of testimony in federal court in Baltimore. They found Russell guilty of one count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility, the only charge he faced.
Russell faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for conspiracy to damage an energy facility.
Several years ago, Russell co-founded the neo-Nazi group “Atomwaffen Division,” “atomwaffen” being German for “atomic weapon.”
Russell had previously pleaded guilty to possession of an unregistered destructive device and improper storage of explosive materials after investigators searched his home and found a stash of highly explosive materials and a cache of neo-Nazi signs, posters, books and flags.
During the trial, prosecutors played a clip from a recorded phone call in which Russell used a racist expletive and requested secrecy from the informant, telling him, “It’s important you don’t talk about this to anyone.”
Clendaniel, 36, pleaded guilty to plotting the attack and was sentenced in September to 18 years in prison.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.