Neo-Nazi-linked woman plotted to destroy Baltimore’s power grid

Sarah Beth Clendaniel sentenced to 18 years in jail after boasting plan ‘would completely destroy this whole city’

A woman with links to a neo-Nazi group plotted to destroy Baltimore’s power grid in an attempt to destabilize the government according to court records.
Sarah Beth Clendaniel, 36, planned to target five electricity substations around Maryland’s largest city to further a white supremacist ideology that called for the collapse of American society, prosecutors said.
The Washington Post reported Clendaniel had earlier admitted to support for a white-supremacist ideology known as “accelerationism,” which suggests drastic actions are needed to bring about “societal and government collapse”.
“The Justice Department will continue to aggressively counter, disrupt and prosecute those who seek to launch these kinds of hate-fueled attacks that target our critical infrastructure, endanger entire cities, and threaten our national security,” Merrick Garland, the US attorney general, said in a statement.
Clendaniel pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to damage an energy facility and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Clendaniel was recorded telling an associate that the plan, if successful, “would completely destroy this whole city,” according to prosecutors.
Sedira Banan, a lawyer for Clendaniel, asked a judge to impose a 10-year prison sentence, arguing that she had had a difficult upbringing and “sought meaning and control in toxic beliefs and planning of destruction,” according to a court filing.
“Her inherent goodness may at times be buried beneath destructive ideologies, but it is not destroyed,” the lawyer said.
Clendaniel was sentenced to 18 years behind bars followed by supervised release for the rest of her life.
Clendaniel was charged last year along with Brandon Russell, the founder of a neo-Nazi group called the Atomwaffen Division, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that tracks US hate groups.
Russell pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial in his case.