Neo-Nazi leader sentenced to 20 years in prison for power grid attack plans

Neo-Nazi leader sentenced to 20 years for plotting to attack Maryland power grid. Brandon Russell, the founder of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division, has been found guilty of plotting to blow up the Baltimore power grid.

The founder of a Florida neo-Nazi group has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for conspiring with his girlfriend to plan an attack on a Maryland power grid in support of their shared racist beliefs.

Brandon Russell, 30, was found guilty by a jury earlier this year, The Guardian reports. Prosecutors presented evidence detailing his long-standing ties to white supremacists and his recent attempts to stage “sniper attacks” on electrical substations around Baltimore.

During his sentencing hearing Thursday afternoon in federal court in Baltimore, U.S. District Judge James Bredar chastised the defendant for his reprehensible views, saying Russell was clearly the brains behind an operation designed to hasten social collapse by targeting the majority-black city's energy infrastructure.

After the planned attacks, Russell and his accomplice, Sarah Beth Clendaniel, intended to “create their own bizarre utopia, populated by people who only look and think like them,” Judge Bredar said.

“Well, that’s not how it works,” the judge continued. “The law doesn’t allow that. We don’t change the course of this country by violent overthrow.”

Judge Bredar imposed the maximum sentence available for Russell's conviction for conspiracy to damage an energy facility. The judge also ordered a lifetime of supervised release, including close monitoring of Russell's electronic devices.

Bredar previously sentenced Clendaniel to 18 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to participating in the plot. He said Russell should get a longer sentence because he was more culpable and made the “intellectual contribution” that brought the plot to fruition.

The two were arrested in February 2023 - before their plans were carried out, The Guardian notes.

The trial heard that the planned attacks could have affected a large portion of Baltimore and caused damage to electrical transformers worth about $70 million.

An FBI agent who communicated with Russell online while undercover as a neo-Nazi testified at his trial about conversations in which Russell urged him to attack power plants and transmission lines.

Russell's attorney, Ian Goldstein, argued that Clendaniel posed a greater threat because she had taken steps to obtain a firearm and shoot up electrical substations. Russell, meanwhile, lived in Florida and had no plans to travel to Maryland, according to his attorney.

"For Mr. Russell, it was all just talk," Goldstein told the court.

“Brandon Russell is an educated young man who served in the armed forces of this country,” his lawyer wrote, tying his Nazi leanings to long-standing mental health issues. “His family relationships speak volumes about the kind of person he can be.”

The judge was not convinced, but he noted Russell's "somewhat complex psychosocial history" and recommended that he undergo psychiatric treatment while in prison.

Russell declined to address the judge directly. He appeared in court in maroon prison garb and showed no obvious signs of emotion during the hearing.

Several years ago, Russell co-founded the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division, which translates from German as "atomic weapons." The group was involved in five murders and several bombing plots, but was dismantled by federal agents in 2020.

California prosecutors say a man convicted last year of fatally stabbing Blaze Bernstein, a Jewish university student, had ties to the Atomwaffen unit.

The Guardian previously reported that Russell's trial has cast a spotlight on the Biden administration's efforts to combat right-wing extremists. Current and former State Department officials have expressed concern that the Trump administration has minimized the threat of violence from the far-right and white supremacists, The Guardian reports.

It wasn’t Russell’s first run-in with law enforcement. In 2017, police responded to a double homicide at a Tampa apartment building and found Russell crying in the street, dressed in a military uniform. Officials said one of his roommates had killed the other two. During a search of the home, police found a cache of high-powered explosives and neo-Nazi graffiti, posters, books, and flags. Russell pleaded guilty to possession of an unregistered explosive device and improper storage of explosives.