US court convicts founder of neo-Nazi group for plot to destroy Baltimore power grid

Brandon Russell could receive a 20-year prison sentence for conspiracy to damage an energy facility.

By MICHAEL STARR FEBRUARY 5, 2025 21:23

FBI van in Texas (photo credit: REUTERS)

A US court has convicted the founder of a neo-Nazi group who planned to destroy the Baltimore power grid in an attempt to accelerate racial violence, the US Justice Department said Tuesday.

Brandon Russell, 29, the founder of Atomwaffen Division (AWD) and a resident of Orlando, could receive a 20-year prison sentence for conspiracy to damage an energy facility, it said.

He had recruited Maryland resident Sarah Beth Clendaniel, and from 2022-2023, they planned to damage electrical infrastructure that could have caused more than $75 million in damages, it added.

Russell had attempted to secure weapons for Clendaniel, the Justice Department said. A few attacks on substations could cause a “cascading failure,” he told her, adding that he wanted multiple targets to be struck at once.

Clendaniel had identified five substations that she said “would completely destroy this whole city” if destroyed the same day.

Illustrative image of an arrest. (credit: PIXABAY)

“Good four or five shots through the center of them... should make that happen,” she was quoted as saying. “[It] would probably permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully.”

Clendaniel was sentenced on September 25 and sentenced to 18 years in prison for her role in the conspiracy and 15 years for felony possession of a firearm.

Russell, a former member of the Florida National Guard, was sentenced in 2018 to five years in prison after pleading guilty to possession of an unregistered destructive device.

Explosive material found

Investigators found explosive material and homemade detonators in Russell’s garage laboratory. Neo-Nazi and white-supremacist materials were also found, along with military gear containing the name Atomwaffen.

The discovery was made in 2017 when Tampa police responded to a double homicide at Russell’s apartment. The shooter, Devon Arthurs, said he, Russell, and the victims were members of Atomwaffen and showed the explosives to the police.

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Russel founded AWD in 2015, but the group reportedly disbanded in 2020 after some of its leaders were arrested. A successor group, National Socialist Order (NSO), was founded several months later with the same objectives and leadership.

NSO seeks to “build an Aryan, national socialist world by any means necessary” under a strategy of “leaderless resistance,” it said.