'Completely destroy this whole city': Neo-Nazi leader’s girlfriend admits role in plot to attack Baltimore’s energy grid

Neo-Nazi Sarah Clendaniel, left, stands accused of trying to “completely destroy” Baltimore with an attack on power stations. (Photos via DOJ)

The woman accused of plotting with the white supremacist leader of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen to attack energy grids around the majority-Black area of Baltimore has pleaded guilty and admitted she conspired to carry out “hate-fueled” attacks on critical infrastructure that would deliver maximum impact to “completely destroy” cities in Maryland.

Sarah Clendaniel of Catonsville, Maryland , entered her guilty plea on Tuesday, more than a year after her February 2023 arrest . Her co-defendant, boyfriend and leader of an Atomwaffen chapter, Brandon Russell, awaits trial. As Law&Crime previously reported , Russell had recently completed a 60-month sentence for possessing an unregistered destructive device and improper storage of explosive materials when he was indicted in the grid attack plot last year.

In a statement from the U.S. Justice Department, prosecutors said the group’s white supremacist ideology advocates a concept known as “accelerationism,” or the belief that things as they stand in society are totally irreparable politically and “violent action is necessary to precipitate societal and government collapse.” Atomwaffen has been declared a terrorist organization in the United Kingdom and generally targets racial minority groups and members of the LGBT community.

Clendaniel could face up to 20 years in prison for the conspiracy charge and 15 years on a felony gun charge. She will be sentenced on Sept. 3.

Clendaniel pleaded guilty to multiple felony charges, including conspiracy, and court records say the woman told a confidential human source and informant that she and fellow neo-Nazis planned to target substations in Norrisville, Reisterstown, and Perry Hall, Maryland. She also told the informant that in order to “completely destroy this whole city,” they would need to knock out the “cores” of the substations and “not just leak the oil.”

Clendaniel once told the informant that with a good “four or five shots,” she believed the attack “would permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully,” prosecutors said.

This message was sent in late January 2023.

Clendaniel provided the informant with open source links to maps depicting five Baltimore Gas and Electric, or BGE, electrical substations. It was around this same time, the Justice Department said, that she and Russell disclosed their schemes rapid-fire with the human source feeding investigators details.

It was just a few days before a search warrant was executed on Clendaniel’s in February 2023 that Russell is accused of telling an informant about how closely he had studied a substation and that he understood how to best strike a blow that would create a “cascading” effect and maximize damage.

“Russell and Clendaniel believed that attacking these five electrical substations in the greater Baltimore area would serve accelerationism and help to break down society,” the Justice Department said.

Clendaniel was previously arrested in 2006 for a number of crimes including felony armed robbery. She was sentenced to five years, with two years suspended. During the armed robbery, she wielded a large butcher knife inside a convenience store. Police said when she was arrested, she had “track marks, cuts and infections” on both of her arms at the time.

In response to the guilty plea, Maryland U.S. Attorney Erek Barron remarked in a statement reported by ABC News on Tuesday: “Ms. Clendaniel’s hate-fueled plans to destroy the Baltimore region power grid threatened thousands of innocent lives. But, when law enforcement and the communities we serve are united in partnership, hate cannot win.”

The post ‘Completely destroy this whole city’: Neo-Nazi leader’s girlfriend admits role in plot to attack Baltimore’s energy grid first appeared on Law & Crime .