MD Woman Who Plotted To Destroy Baltimore Power Grid Sentenced

BALTIMORE, MD — A woman described by authorities as a racially motivated extremist will spend 18 years in prison for planning an attack on Baltimore's power grid, according to a Baltimore Banner report.

Sarah Beth Clendaniel was sentenced Wednesday months after pleading guilty in May to charges including conspiring to damage or destroy electrical facilities in Maryland and possessing a firearm as a felon.

A judge also sentenced her to a lifetime of supervised release, the Banner reported, after prosecutors said she remained in contact with leaders of the so-called Terrorgram Collective while behind bars.

Defense attorneys had asked the judge to sentence Clendaniel to 10 years, claiming Clendaniel would not have followed through on the attack, the report said.

“As I sit here today, I’m not convinced the defendant isn’t ... capable of acting on that inclination,” U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar said.

According to previously released court documents, from at least December 2022 through February 2023, Clendaniel conspired with Brandon C. Russell, a Florida resident, to damage energy facilities and cause a significant interruption to the Baltimore regional power grid.

Federal authorities arrested Clendaniel and Russell in February, claiming the duo plotted to shoot up five BGE substations in an attempt to cause a “cascading failure” of the power grid, according to an FBI affidavit.

Russell, a formal Florida National Guard member, is the founder of the violent neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen, which targets racial minorities, the Jewish community, the LGBTQ community, journalists, the United States government, and critical infrastructure, according to court documents.

Clendaniel had previously served prison time after she was arrested in 2016 for robbing a Cecil County convenience store using a machete. Clendaniel embraced a white-supremacist ideology during her time in prison, family members told the Baltimore Sun.

Going by online monikers Homunculus and Kali/Nythra88, respectively, Russell and Clendaniel discussed in depth their plans to "completely lay [Baltimore] to waste," according to the criminal complaint.

Court documents show that while speaking to a federal informant on an encrypted chat app, Clendaniel said “If we can pull off what I’m hoping … this would be legendary."

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" and "help to break down society," according to court documents.

Clendaniel planned to destroy substations in Reisterstown, Perry Hall, Norrisville in Harford County and other locations, court documents said.