"Brandon Russell, the founder of a Florida-based neo-Nazi group, was convicted Monday of conspiring to plan an attack on Maryland’s power grid.
Russell encouraged his former girlfriend Sarah Beth Clendaniel, of Maryland, to carry out various “sniper attacks” on electrical substations near Baltimore, The Associated Press reported.
Prosecutors allege the attacks could have caused damage to the region’s power grid and were intended to cause chaos in the majority-Black city to further Russell’s “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist beliefs.”
“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,” Erek L. Barron, a U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland, said in a Department of Justice release."
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