Woman gets 18 years for neo-Nazi plot to shoot up Maryland power stations

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.

Clendaniel, who had been living in Catonsville, Maryland, at the time of her arrest in 2023, recently pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to damage energy facilities and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

“If we can pull off what I’m hoping,” she wrote in an early 2023 encrypted message, according to court records, “this would be legendary.”

Although 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.

But the hearing otherwise keyed in on Clendaniel – both her plotting to shoot the substations and how she got to such a point in life. The latter was detailed in earlier court filings by her attorney, Sedira Banan.

“The circumstances of Sarah Clendaniel’s youth profoundly shaped her beliefs, development, and self-worth,” Banan wrote.

Clendaniel’s father died in a car accident when she was 10 and she ran away from home two years later. She went on to abuse drugs, leading her to rob and steal from convenience stories, according to Banan.

“In Sarah’s early adult years, she continued to feel worthless,” Banan wrote, adding that her client “never had a positive, protective relationship.”

In 2018, while incarcerated, she and Russell, who was locked up in a different prison, began writing to each other. “At some point, they developed a romantic relationship that continued after their respective releases from incarceration,” prosecutors wrote in a stipulation of facts to which Clendaniel agreed prior to her sentencing.

By 2022, according to her attorneys, she had returned to drug abuse and her mental health was fraying. “Sarah sought meaning and control in toxic beliefs and planning of destruction,” Banan wrote. “She channeled years of abuse outwards into communication outlets spewing caustic, extremist outpourings of hate and disorder.”

In late December 2022, Russell put a person – who unbeknownst to him was a government informant – in touch with Clendaniel. “Someone else I know in Maryland,” Russell told the informant, according to prosecutors, “is gonna be doing same thing as you.”

That led to conversations and online messages between the informant and Clendaniel, according to court filings, during which they discussed attacking the substations. Clendaniel spoke of weapons, ammunition and specific substation targets ringing Baltimore, which if hit on the same day “would completely destroy this whole city.”

Clendaniel discussed the plan in the context of her failing health, telling the informant she expected to live only a few more months because of kidney problems and wanted to “accomplish something worthwhile” before she died.

Federal agents closed in on her in early 2023. In a search of her residence in Catonsville, they found a semiautomatic shotgun, a privately-made 9mm pistol and more than 1,400 rounds of ammunition.

In court Wednesday, Clendaniel said she now is thankful she got arrested when she did. It tracked with what she wrote in an earlier letter to the judge who would sentence her.

“I cannot definitely say whether I would have gone through with the plans or not,” Clendaniel wrote, according to court filings, adding that at some point she did begin to worry how people who could die from the power outages. “I really started rethinking it, but felt in over my head and was already committed.”

Clendaniel acknowledged in court that she still held on to at least some of her views.

“It’s true, your honor, that I still hold National Socialist beliefs,” she said.

In handing down his sentence, Bredar said he was troubled by her recent communication with the Terrorgram Collective leader, and he repeated how alarming her power stations plan was.

“On its face,” he said, “this plot was outrageous, audacious and terrifying.”