Woman gets prison term for Neo-Nazi plot to attack power grid

A woman has been sentenced to 18 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to charges in what prosecutors said was a neo-Nazi scheme to attack energy substations in the Baltimore area.

Sarah Beth Clendaniel, 36, of Catonsville, Maryland, was sentenced Wednesday and will also have to serve a lifetime of supervised release for conspiring to attack electrical facilities in the state. She is also serving a concurrent 15-year prison sentence for having a gun while being a felon.

Clendaniel met Brandon Russell, of Florida, in 2018, federal prosecutors said. Russell has also been charged with conspiracy to attack electrical facilities in the state and is awaiting trial.

Both espouse white supremacist ideologies and advocate a concept known as “accelerationism,” prosecutors said, meaning they promote a white supremacist belief that the current system is "irreparable and without an apparent political solution, and therefore violent action is necessary to precipitate societal and government collapse," prosecutors said in a news release Wednesday.

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Their planned attack, which could've resulted in an estimated $75 million in damages, took aim at five substations including “Norrisville, Reisterstown, and Perry Hall.”

Clendaniel said there was a “ring” around Baltimore. If they hit a number of them in one day, they “would completely destroy this whole city.” She added that they needed to “destroy those cores, not just leak the oil . . . ” and that a “good four or five shots through the center of them . . . should make that happen.”

Further, she said: “[i]t would probably permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully.” When CHS-1 asked if it would accomplish a “cascading failure,” Clendaniel replied, “[y]es . . . probably” and that the attack targets are all “major ones.” Clendaniel also said that the most difficult target that they would have to do together has “fire walls on three sides.”