Woman sentenced to 18 years for racist plot to attack Baltimore power stations

A Maryland woman who pleaded guilty to a neo-Nazi plot to attack multiple energy substations surrounding Baltimore was sentenced Wednesday to 18 years in prison and a lifetime of supervision upon her release, according the U.S. Attorney's Office for Maryland.

Sarah Beth Clendaniel pleaded guilty in May to federal conspiracy and firearms charges.

Clendaniel communicated her plans to use a high-powered rifle to shoot through key infrastructure at five substations that the U.S. government estimated could have caused roughly $75 million in damage, had the plot not been foiled, according to prosecutors.

Clendaniel and a co-defendant still set to face trial, Brandon Russell -- who co-founded the neo-Nazi group AtomWaffen -- believed the destruction of the substations would lead to a "cascading failure" of Baltimore's electrical grid that would "permanently completely lay this city to waste," Clendaniel said in recorded conversations with a confidential informant, according to federal prosecutors.

Russell had been incarcerated when the two first met, stemming from a 2018 conviction related to his possession of an unregistered destructive device, officials said.

Prosecutors described the scheme as a racism-fueled plot to spark mass chaos in the majority-Black city.

"If we can pull off what I'm hoping ... this would be legendary," Clendaniel was quoted in charging documents telling the informant.

Clendaniel agreed that if she were to carry out the attacks the total costs of repairs to the energy facilities would have exceeded $100,000, according to plea documents.

The pair crafted their plot to shoot up the five substations while both were out on probation, according to charging documents, when Russell began communicating with a confidential FBI source in 2022 about his hopes of attacking critical infrastructure sites.

Russell allegedly told the informant that "putting holes in transformers ... is the greatest thing somebody can do," and told the informant they should carry out an attack "when there is greatest strain on the grid" to incur mass disruption, according to court documents. Russell further told the informant of Clendaniel and his alleged coordination with her to attack an energy facility and offered to connect the two to coordinate their attacks in order to "maximize impact."

Upon meeting the informant, Clendaniel told them in early 2023 that she expected she would die of a terminal illness in a few months and was hoping to obtain a rifle as soon as possible in order to attack five substations she had singled out around Baltimore -- all on the same day, prosecutors said.

"[Clendaniel] described how there was a 'ring' around Baltimore and if they hit a number of them all in the same day, they 'would completely destroy this whole city,'" the affidavit stated.