Three white supremacists plead guilty in plot to attack US power grid -- and spark a 'race war'

The United States Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that three avowed white supremacists have pleaded guilty to plotting to attack the United States power grid.

According to the DOJ, Christopher Brenner Cook, 20, of Columbus, Ohio; Jonathan Allen Frost, 24, of West Lafayette, Indiana, and of Katy, Texas; and Jackson Matthew Sawall, 22, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, all pleaded guilty this week to one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

The DOJ alleges that the plot was first hatched in 2019, when Cook and Frost began discussing it after meeting in an online chat forum. Sawall was recruited to join them shortly afterward, the DOJ alleges.

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"As part of the conspiracy, each defendant was assigned a substation in a different region of the United States," DOJ claims. "The plan was to attack the substations, or power grids, with powerful rifles. The defendants believed their plan would cost the government millions of dollars and cause unrest for Americans in the region. They had conversations about how the possibility of the power being out for many months could cause war, even a race war, and induce the next Great Depression."

Assistant Director Timothy Langan of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division said in a prepared statement that the three men "wanted to carry out such a plot because of their adherence to racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist views."

Read the full press release here.

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