Sarah Beth Clendaniel, 36, remains a threat to public safety, said U.S. District Judge James Bredar. A 36-year-old Maryland woman was sentenced to 18 years in prison Wednesday for conspiring to shoot up power substations around Baltimore as part of a white-supremacist-inspired plot to sow societal chaos. “This would have been an utter and complete catastrophe,” U. S. District Judge James Bredar said from the bench, describing the defendant, Sarah Beth Clendaniel, as a continued threat to public safety. Clendaniel had earlier admitted to espousing a white-supremacist ideology known as “accelerationism,” which holds that bold actions are needed to cause “societal and government collapse,” according to court records. In late 2022 and 2023, according to prosecutors, she schemed with others to shoot through large transformers at substations around Baltimore to create widespread power outages. (…) Though Clendaniel accepted responsibility for her crimes, prosecutors pointed out in court Wednesday that after being arrested and locked up in the case, Clendaniel had been in touch with a leader of the Terrorgram Collective, described by authorities as a terrorist group devoted to attacking America’s critical infrastructure and carrying out hate crimes. Prosecutors had sought a 18-year term for Clendaniel. Her attorneys, citing her traumatic past and susceptibility to manipulation, had asked for 10 years. Clendaniel’s co-defendant in the case, Brandon Russell, whom federal authorities have described as a neo-Nazi leader, is set be tried in the plot in November. “Mr. Russell was encouraging people to engage in attacks of infrastructure,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathleen Gavin said in court Wednesday.
via washington post: Woman gets 18 years for neo-Nazi plot to shoot up Md. power stations
siehe auch: Neo-Nazi leader’s girlfriend’s chilling chat handle decoded as she learns her fate for plotting to ‘completely destroy’ Baltimore. The girlfriend of a far-right figurehead whose online chat handle is said to have made a nod to Hitler will spend nearly 20 years behind bars after she plotted to ‘completely destroy’ Black areas in the city of Baltimore. Sarah Beth Clendaniel, 36, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to damage an energy facility and one count of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. Clendaniel, who faced a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison, will spend 18 years behind bars. It comes as the 36-year-old from Maryland and her partner Brandon Clint Russell, 28, of Florida, were charged in February of last year with planning to target the city’s energy grid, with the plot said to have been driven by ‘racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist beliefs.’ Images of the Maryland woman show her dressed in full tactical gear bearing swastika insignia, while Russell is allegedly a well-known neo-Nazi figure. Authorities said the couple had a documented ‘personal as well as online relationship.’ According to Law&Crime, court documents showed how Clendaniel and her boyfriend planned their attacks on various substations across Baltimore, which has a large Black population, via online chat. In those chats, Clendaniel’s handle was ‘Nythra88’ ; ACCELERATIONIST PLOT — 18 years for woman who hoped to destroy Baltimore power grid and spark a race war. US says ex-cons exchanged letters while in different prisons, then planned attack. A Maryland woman was sentenced to 18 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release “for conspiring to destroy the Baltimore region power grid,” the US Justice Department announced yesterday. Sarah Beth Clendaniel, 36, admitted as part of a plea agreement in May to conspiracy to damage energy facilities (…) Clendaniel and her alleged co-conspirator, Florida resident Brandon Russell, “became acquainted by writing letters to each other beginning in about 2018, when both were serving prison sentences in different institutions,” the plea agreement said. “At some point, they developed a romantic relationship that continued after their respective releases from incarceration.” The plea agreement’s stipulation of facts that Clendaniel admitted to said she “and Russell espoused a white supremacist ideology and were advocates of a concept known as ‘accelerationism.’ To ‘accelerate’ or to support ‘accelerationism’ is based on a white supremacist belief that the current system is irreparable and without an apparent political solution, and therefore violent action is necessary to precipitate societal and government collapse.” (…) Russell was “an active and founding member of a neo-Nazi group,” the Justice Department said in January 2018 when he was sentenced to five years in prison for possessing an unregistered destructive device and for unlawful storage of explosive material. Russell is now awaiting trial on the charge of conspiracy to damage or destroy electrical facilities in Maryland. The Justice Department said that Clendaniel and Russell used encrypted messaging applications but were caught because, over several weeks in January 2023, they communicated their plans to commit an attack to an informant, referred to as CHS-1 (Confidential Human Source). On February 3, 2023, law enforcement agents executed a search warrant at Clendaniel’s home in Catonsville, Maryland, and found “various firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.”
