White Supremacist leader from Orlando found guilty of conspiring to destroy Baltimore power grid
On February 3, after a six-day trial, a federal jury found Brandon Russell, 29, a resident of Orlando, Florida, guilty of conspiracy to damage an energy facility. Erek L. Barron, United States Attorney for the District of Maryland and Special Agent in Charge William J. DelBagno, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Baltimore Field Office announced the jury’s verdict.
“Hate-fueled violence has no place in a civilized society. Brandon Russell went well beyond his First Amendment rights, orchestrating a terrorist plot that would have harmed thousands of innocent people,” Barron said. “It won’t always be popular, but this office will do the right thing, the right way, for the right reason.”
“Brandon Russell, a self-proclaimed National Socialist, conspired to ‘lay waste to the city of Baltimore’ through violence and destruction of critical infrastructure. Today’s verdict reinforces there is no tolerance for those who seek to harm our communities and use violence to further hate-filled beliefs,” DelBagno said. “I am proud of the tremendous work by the FBI Tampa and Baltimore Joint Terrorism Task Forces which led this investigation. The FBI remains diligent in protecting Marylanders from national security and public safety threats every single day in conjunction with our dedicated law enforcement and private sector partners.”
From at least November 2022 to February 3, 2023, Russell conspired to carry out attacks against critical infrastructure, specifically transformers located within electrical substations, in furtherance of Russell’s racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist beliefs. Russell posted links to open-source maps of infrastructure, which included the locations of electrical substations, and he described how a small number of attacks on substations could cause a “cascading failure.” Russell also discussed maximizing the impact of the planned attack by hitting multiple substations at one time.
Russell recruited a Maryland-based woman, Sarah Beth Clendaniel, to carry out the attacks in Baltimore and elsewhere. They planned to damage energy facilities involved in the transmission and distribution of electricity and to cause a significant interruption and impairment of the Baltimore regional power grid.
The intended monetary loss associated with the planned attacks would have exceeded $75 million. Clendaniel identified five substations to target, and Russell attempted to secure a weapon for Clendaniel. Clendaniel stated that if they hit a number of substations all in the same day, they “would completely destroy this whole city,” and that a “good four or five shots through the center of them . . . should make that happen.” She further added, “[i]t would probably permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully.”
Related: More on Sarah Beth Clendaniel
- Maryland woman pleads guilty to conspiring to destroy the Baltimore region power grid ~ Ace News Today, 5/16/2024
- Catonsville woman gets federal prison time for conspiring to destroy the Baltimore electrical power grid ~ Ace News Today, 9/27/2024
Russell faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for conspiracy to damage an energy facility. Senior United States District Judge James K. Bredar will determine the sentence after accounting for the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors. U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar has scheduled sentencing for June 17, 2025 at 11 a.m.
On September 25, 2024, U.S. District Judge Bredar sentenced Clendaniel, to 18 years in federal prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, for conspiring with Russell to damage or destroy an energy facility, and a concurrent sentence of 15 years for being a felon in possession of a firearm, and 3 years of supervised release.
For more on Brandon Russell and Beth Clendaniel and their terroristic plot to blow up electrical substations around Baltimore, see the video below.
.
(Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Maryland)
Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today
Follow Richard on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram
