The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office in Baltimore arrested and charged Sarah Beth Clendaniel of Catonsville, MD, and Brandon Clint Russell of Orlando, FL, with a plan to attack Maryland’s power grid via five substations.
FBI Special Agent Patrick Staub’s criminal complaint explains why he believes there is probable cause to charge Clendaniel and Russell “with conspiracy to damage an energy facility, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1366(a) (Destruction of Energy Facility).
The complaint states that user “Homunculus” (who is Russell) spoke to an FBI Confidential Human Source (CHS-1) on an encrypted communication application #1 (ECA-1) throughout much of 2022. The conversations included “conducting critical infrastructure attacks, including statements about sniper attacks against substations, and how conducting a small number of attacks on electrical substations could cause a ‘cascading failure.'”
Homunculus then directed the CHS-1 to a person he knew in Maryland. Nythra88 (who is Clendaniel) introduced herself to CHS-1 on ECA-1. She said, “she had a terminal illness related to her kidneys and was unlikely to live more than a few months.” She also said she is a felon and couldn’t buy a rifle so she encouraged CHS-1 to get her weapons. Her motivation for the attack was to “accomplish something worthwhile” before she died.
Around January 29, CHS-1 spoke to Clendial on ECA-2 via her alias on that, @kali1889:
On or about January 29, 2023, Kali sent CHS-1 via ECA #2 a link to the publicly available webpage “Open Infrastructure Map” (https://openinframap.org) and instructed CHS-1 to “look at Baltimore and see if you can figure out what I want to do.” She also stated she wanted “to try to do 5 in one day.” CHS reported that he/she understands that to mean Nythra seeks to attack five electrical substations on the same day.On or about January 29, 2023, Nythra told CHS-1 during a recorded voice conversation on ECA #1 that the five substations she planned to target included: “Norrisville, Reisterstown, and Perry Hall.” Nythra 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.” Nythra added that they needed to “destroy those cores, not just leak the oil…” and that a “good four or five shots through the center of them . . . should make that happen.” She added: “It would probably permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully.” CHS-1 asked if it would accomplish a “cascading failure” and Nythra replied: “Yes . . . probably” and that the attack targets are all “major ones.” Nythra added that the most difficult target that they would have to do together has “fire walls on three sides.”
According to the complaint, Russell is an admitted Nazi who formed the group Atomwaffen:
An Atomwaffen member killed a gay, Jewish college student in 2019; another adherent killed his girlfriend’s parents for opposing his Nazi views. Atomwaffen followers have also threatened and harassed journalists, African American churches and Jewish organizations.A former Atomwaffen member named Devon Arthurs, who lived with Russell in Tampa, killed two of their roommates in 2017 and subsequently told authorities they had been planning attacks on U.S. nuclear plants and power lines.
During the response to the 2017 murders, the police found a picture of Timothy McVeigh and the high explosive hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD).
The government charged Russell with possessing an unregistered destructive device and improper storage of explosive materials. He pled guilty and was sentenced to 60 months in prison and three years of supervised release.
Russell was on supervised release during the plans for Maryland.
Clendaniel also has a criminal past:
Clendaniel was previously arrested in a string of robberies in 2016 in Cecil County, in which police said she wielded a machete and made off with cash and cigarettes. Court records indicate she received a sentence of nine years, and three years of probation. Prior to that, she received three years in jail, while pregnant, for robbing a convenience store where she had worked four days earlier until she was fired, according to a report at the time from the Cecil Whig.
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