BALTIMORE — Brandon Russell, the leader of a neo-Nazi group, was found guilty of conspiring to attack Maryland’s power grid in a terrorist plot, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Russell, 29, from Orlando, Florida, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility after jury deliberated for less than an hour on Monday. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.
Russell and Sara Beth Clendaniel plotted to blow up several BGE substations within the Baltimore region in 2023.
Russell, a co-founder of Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi organization, admitted to holding national socialist or neo-Nazi beliefs and subscribing to accelarationism, a white supremacist belief that the current government needs to be violently overthrown to create societal and government collapse.
“Hate-fueled violence has no place in a civilized society. Brandon Russell went well beyond his First Amendment rights, orchestrating a terrorist plot that would have harmed thousands of innocent people,” said Erek L. Barron, the United States Attorney for the District of Maryland. “It won’t always be popular, but this office will do the right thing, the right way, for the right reason.”
Clendaniel, 36, from Catonsville, accepted a plea deal in September 2024 and was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison.
The plot
Officials say Russell recruited Clendaniel to carry out the attacks in Baltimore and elsewhere.
Officials say Russell collaborated with Clendaniel in an attempt to obtain a high-powered rifle to shoot through substations in Reisterstown, Perry Hall, White Marsh, and more locations.
The plan was to be carried out over three months between December 2022 to February 2023.
Clendaniel stated that if they hit a number of substations all in the same day, they “would completely destroy this whole city,” and that a “good four or five shots through the center of them . . . should make that happen,” according to court records, and she further added, “[i]t would probably permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully.”
Court documents revealed that on Oct. 25, 2022, Russell encouraged an attack to be carried out “when there is greatest strain on the grid,” like “when everyone is using electricity to either heat or cool their homes.”
He used encrypted applications to post links to maps of infrastructure that included the locations of electrical substations, according to court records. During his conversations on those apps, Russell described how a small number of attacks on substations could cause a “cascading failure,” and discussed increasing the impact by hitting multiple stations at once.
According to prosecutors, the attack would have resulted in $75 million in damages and caused power outages for much of the state.
Criminal history
In 2018, Russell was sentenced to five years in federal prison for possession of explosives. He was arrested in 2017 after Tampa Police responded to a double homicide at an apartment where Russell had been living with the alleged suspect and two of the victims. Court documents show the four roommates were active members of Atomwaffen. Russell was not home at the time of this incident, according to police.
The alleged homicide suspect told police he saw Russell participate in online neo-Nazi chatrooms where he threatened to kill people and blow up infrastructure. He also told police Russell had explosive materials in the apartment.
Neo-Nazi and white supremacist propaganda were found in Russell’s room, along with various books, military gear and flags often associated with white supremacist extremist organizations, court documents show.
