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“The founder of a Florida-based neo-Nazi group was convicted Monday of conspiring with his former girlfriend to plan an attack on Maryland’s power grid in furtherance of their shared racist beliefs.
Brandon Russell, 29, encouraged Sarah Beth Clendaniel to carry out a series of “sniper attacks”on electrical substations around Baltimore that could have caused significant damage to the regional power grid, according to federal prosecutors. Their goal was to create chaos in the majority-Black city, prosecutors say.
The two were arrested in February 2023 — before the plans were executed.
The 12-person jury deliberated for less than an hour after hearing about four days of testimony in federal court in Baltimore. They found Russell guilty of one count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility, the only charge he faced.
… Several years ago, Russell co-founded the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division …
While prosecutors claimed Russell hoped to incite a race war, his defense attorney downplayed his involvement in the plot, calling the case “a setup from the very beginning.”
Russell was in Florida the entire time with no plans to travel to Maryland and actively assist in carrying out the attack, attorney Ian Goldstein said. Russell may have supported efforts to disrupt modern society and restore white supremacy, but he wasn’t a co-conspirator in this case, Goldstein said during his closing argument.
“He was a cheerleader — as terrible as that sounds,” Goldstein said, acknowledging his client’s “repulsive” ideology. “That’s what he was, and that’s not illegal.” …”