Neo-Nazi convicted of plotting to destroy Baltimore's power grid

Article Tools

Contact The Editor Articles By This Author

A 29-year-old neo-Nazi was convicted Monday of plotting to blow up Baltimore's power grid in a scheme prosecutors said was designed to cause mayhem and lead to a White ethnostate.

Brandon Russell faces up to 20 years in prison. His co-defendant, Sarah Beth Clendaniel, was recently sentenced to 18 years after pleading guilty to planning the attacks with him. Both were arrested in 2023 before any of the plans were put into action.

The two wanted "to bring this city into chaos" by causing widespread power outages, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Baldwin told jurors during closing arguments Monday after a four-day trial in Baltimore that included more than 100 pieces of evidence and testimony fro

m a key undercover operative. The 12 jurors rendered their verdict in just 45 minutes.

As the verdict, to a single count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility, was announced just after 6 p.m., Russell showed little outward reaction. Two of his supporters in the second row of the courtroom were visibly upset as he was led away in handcuffs.

In 2015, according to trial testimony, Russell co-founded the Atomwaffen Division, which prosecutors called a National Socialist group that "advocated for racially or ethnically motivated violence." Russell specifically advocated "accelerationism," according to prosecutors, which holds that society is irreparable and violent actions are needed to precipitate government collapse.

In a different case, in 2018, he was sentenced to five years in federal prison for possessing an unregistered destructive device and unlawful storage of explosive material.

In the Baltimore trial, his attorney Ian Goldstein argued to jurors that federal agents were originally focused on Clendaniel before realizing they could draw in Russell. They did so by relying heavily on a confidential informant.

"The government wanted to get Brandon Russell," Goldstein said. "They don't like the things he says."

But Russell's actions amounted to little more than sharing publicly available information rather than any kind of plotting, according to Goldstein.

"Brandon Russell never agreed to anything," Goldstein said. "He was not a conspirator. He was a cheerleader."

According to prosecutors, while incarcerated about seven years ago, Russell began writing letters to Clendaniel, who was locked up in a different facility. "At some point, they developed a romantic relationship that continued after their respective releases from incarceration," prosecutors stated.

Russell posted documents online espousing his beliefs. One document, titled "Make it Count," advocated taking out power transformers, according to trial testimony. The document called such facilities "sitting ducks, worthy of prey."

Russell also began communicating with a government informant about infrastructure attacks. On Dec. 3, 2022, Russell messaged the informant and stated that "someone else i know in maryland … is gonna be doing same thing as you."

By getting the two together, prosecutors said, he was "coordinating a conspiracy" even if he did so from Florida. "He was happy to stay as far away as possible and direct things," Baldwin told jurors.

Russell vouched for Clendaniel, telling the informant she was "100 percent" serious and could be trusted. He recommended targeting transformers because they are "custom made and could take almost a year to replace," according to prosecutors. He also said the attack would be most effective after a winter storm, "when most people are using max electricity."

A major part of Russell's role, prosecutors said, was helping Clendaniel get a rifle to shoot up the power substations. He asked the informant to help her obtain the gun. And he encouraged Clendaniel, prosecutors asserted, at one point telling her by message: "Remain calm. You're fine."

Prosecutors showed jurors photographs depicting how close Russell and Clendaniel were. In one, their hands were clasped over a book espousing neo-Nazi beliefs. Another showed Russell standing behind her, his hand stretched out in a Nazi-like salute.

Prosecutors told jurors how FBI agents arrested Russell and Clendaniel in early 2023 and searched their homes and electronic devices. One way that FBI agents connected Russell to an online moniker was a statement he made: "When I'm good I'm really good. But when I'm bad, I'm better." He wrote those words, according to trial testimony, on both an online bio and a handwritten list of ideas for tattoos.

Prosecutors leaned into a detailed definition of conspiracy that jurors were instructed to use. Among its components, they told jurors, was whether Russell "engaged, advised or assisted" in an agreement "furthering an illegal undertaking."

Russell's attorney, Goldstein, had argued that Russell's statements and messages to the informant and to Clendaniel didn't rise to making him part of a conspiracy. Much of what he disseminated, he said, could be seen by anybody.

"Sharing publicly available information is not illegal," Goldstein told jurors. "It's actually constitutionally protected free speech."

It was the informant, he said, who agreed to transport Clendaniel to power stations so Clendaniel could take aim at them. "He was the driver. She was the shooter. Just the two of them," Goldstein said.

In a statement after the verdict, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, Erek Barron, said Russell espoused "hate-fueled" violence and "went well beyond his First Amendment rights, orchestrating a terrorist plot that would have harmed thousands of innocent people."

U.S. District Judge James Bredar, who presided over the trial and will decide Russell's sentence, had sentenced Clendaniel earlier. Had the plan she'd agreed to been executed, Bredar said at the time, "this would have been an utter and complete catastrophe."

(COMMENT, BELOW)