2023 Baltimore Power Grid Conspiracy

In early February 2023, the FBI arrested Brandon Russell (then 28, Orlando, Florida), the founder of Atomwaffen Division, and Sarah Beth Clendaniel (then approximately 35, Catonsville, Maryland) for conspiring to attack multiple electrical power substations in the Baltimore area simultaneously, with the goal of triggering widespread blackouts they believed would produce social breakdown and accelerate the race war they sought. Both were charged in the District of Maryland. Clendaniel pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison on September 24, 2024; Russell was convicted at trial and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on August 7, 2025. The conspiracy represented Russell's second federal conviction, following his 2018 explosives conviction arising from the 2017 Tampa Atomwaffen Murders.¹

Operational Timeline

The conspiracy's operational phase began in June 2022, when Russell made contact through encrypted neo-Nazi Telegram channels with Christopher Jackson, a confidential human source (CHS) working for the FBI. Jackson was a civilian researcher specializing in extremism and domestic terrorism who had been recruited into FBI informant work through an agent acquaintance.

Between November 2022 and February 3, 2023, Russell and Clendaniel finalized their operational planning through encrypted communications monitored by Jackson. Their methodology called for simultaneous rifle attacks on multiple Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) transformer substations, using the simultaneity to prevent grid operators from rerouting power and inducing a cascading failure across the Baltimore metropolitan area. Clendaniel had scouted specific substations and identified five target sites.

On January 29, 2023, Clendaniel told Jackson in a recorded telephone conversation that the five targeted substations were located near Norrisville, Reisterstown, and Perry Hall, with two additional substations near Baltimore City. She described the plan as capable of causing a city-wide blackout: "it would permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully." The plan's explicit framing was accelerationist: destroying infrastructure serving a majority-Black city to ignite racial conflict and social collapse.²

The theoretical framework underlying the conspiracy was AWD's core accelerationist doctrine, derived from James Mason's Siege and developed through AWD's organizational history: that infrastructure attacks are catalysts for the collapse of the existing political order, and that collapse creates the conditions for racial reconstitution. The Baltimore power grid attack was the most concrete application of AWD's infrastructure attack theory ever brought to prosecution.

Dallas Humber, who led the Terrorgram Collective inner circle during the same period, was separately alleged in court documents to have remained in contact with Clendaniel and Russell, though Humber was not charged as a co-conspirator specifically in the substation plot.

Charges and Case Numbers

Russell and Clendaniel were arrested on February 3, 2023. Both were charged under 18 U.S.C. § 1366(b) (conspiracy to damage an energy facility). The single-count superseding indictment returned by a federal grand jury alleged that the pair conspired to destroy energy facilities causing damage exceeding $100,000 and causing a "significant interruption and impairment" of the facilities. Federal prosecutors estimated the intended monetary loss at over $75 million.

Clendaniel faced a second count of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person (18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)) for weapons she had acquired in furtherance of the plot despite her felon status.

Case numbers: Russell was docketed as United States v. Russell, 1:23-cr-00029 (D. Md.) and Clendaniel as United States v. Clendaniel, 1:23-cr-00056 (D. Md.). Both cases were assigned to Senior U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar, District of Maryland.³

The FISA Section 702 Issue

During pretrial proceedings, Russell's defense attorneys Kobie Flowers and Ian Goldstein filed a motion on June 10, 2024, arguing that the government had used Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to surveil Russell and had failed to provide the statutorily required FISA notice. The specific documentary basis was the ODNI's "FISA Section 702 Value Vignettes," a February 14, 2024 public document released at intelligence.gov to demonstrate Section 702's operational value. One vignette described a 2023 FBI investigation in which U.S. person queries of Section 702 databases showed that "a person located inside the U.S. was in regular contact with an unspecified foreign terrorist group, had acquired the means to conduct an attack and had already identified specific targets in the U.S." The FBI disrupted a "potentially imminent terrorist attack" against critical infrastructure within a month, using "iterative U.S. person queries" as the subject shifted communications platforms. The defense argued Russell's case matched every disclosed detail of that vignette and that no other known open case did.⁴

The American Civil Liberties Union's ACLU National Security Project joined the defense for the limited purpose of pressing the Section 702 challenge. ACLU senior staff attorney Ashley Gorski stated: "Based on the government's own disclosures, the ACLU has good reason to believe that Mr. Russell was subjected to Section 702 surveillance and his case is a rare and important opportunity to challenge the government's practice of conducting warrantless 'backdoor searches' of its Section 702 databases to locate the communications of Americans."^4b

The classified ex parte hearing before Senior U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar took place on July 23, 2024. Bredar's August 9, 2024 public order stated he was "satisfied" the government would not use FISA-derived evidence at trial and that "there is no basis on which to believe or suspect that the rights of the defendant have been violated in any way with respect to any government activities authorized by FISA." Bredar held Russell was "not entitled to notice." The ruling's critical limitation was its scope: Bredar addressed only whether FISA evidence would be introduced at trial and whether that triggered a notice obligation, and did not resolve whether Section 702 collection had occurred at an investigative stage prior to the FBI informant's June 2022 contact with Russell. The question of whether a Section 702-derived tip initiated the investigation remained publicly unresolved after the verdict.⁴

Witness Disguise Ruling

In September 2024, Bredar ruled that the three government witnesses who had operated as undercover sources (CHS-1 Christopher Jackson, CHS-2, and one FBI employee) could testify using "light disguise" (altered hairstyle or facial hair), pseudonyms, and with partial courtroom closure. Members of the public and press were permitted in an overflow room with audio and video feed. The ruling cited Russell's demonstrated capacity to threaten witnesses, finding that "Russell, and those sympathetic to him, present an unusually heightened threat of danger to societal institutions and witnesses seen as cooperating with those institutions." Russell's defense attorney Ian Goldstein argued the ruling created "a huge impediment to investigating and presenting a defense."⁵

Trial

The trial began January 28, 2025, and concluded February 4, 2025, with Russell's conviction on the single conspiracy count. The government presented recorded phone calls, encrypted messages, and testimony from the three disguised witnesses. Jackson testified January 29-30. The government also introduced voluminous material from private Terrorgram Telegram channels in which Russell, under the pseudonyms "Ouroborus," "Homunculus," and "Raccoon," had shared infrastructure attack instructions, including the Terrorgram publication "Make It Count," and had attempted to recruit Jackson into the National Socialist Resistance Front (NSRF) in fall 2022.⁶

The prosecution was cited in subsequent terrorism policy discussions as the first major federal case treating AWD-derived infrastructure attack planning as terrorism-level conduct, providing a template for how law enforcement might address similar accelerationist infrastructure plots from successor networks.

The Undisclosed Payment and New-Trial Motion

On January 27, 2025 (the night of jury selection, two days before Jackson testified), the government paid Jackson an additional $7,180.11. Jackson testified he had received "about $70,000." The Department of Justice disclosed the additional payment on March 19, 2025, six weeks after the verdict.

Russell moved for a new trial, arguing Jackson had committed perjury and that the failure to disclose the additional payment before testimony violated Brady v. Maryland. On April 29, 2025, Bredar denied the motion, finding the non-disclosure "unfortunate" but the error insufficient to undermine the verdict given Jackson's limited scope of testimony, corroborating evidence, and the jury's knowledge of Jackson's prior disclosed compensation. The total FBI payments to Jackson across all investigations was approximately $80,000.⁷

Clendaniel Plea and Sentencing

Clendaniel pleaded guilty on May 14, 2024. On September 24, 2024, Bredar sentenced her to 18 years in federal prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release. Bredar stated the crime was "a means of furthering her violent white supremacist ideology," found the planned attacks "extreme in every respect," and concluded he was "not convinced she wouldn't act on them in the future."⁸

Russell Conviction and Sentencing

Russell was convicted February 4, 2025, and sentenced August 7, 2025. Bredar imposed the statutory maximum of 20 years in federal prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release, including close monitoring of electronic devices. Bredar called Russell "the brains" behind the operation, the source of its "intellectual horsepower," and characterized him as "profoundly dangerous," noting: "He seeks to destroy the very fabric of society. As his conduct before and after the conviction demonstrates, there is nothing that will stop him." Bredar also identified Russell as having "significant mental health issues."⁹

The FBI Monitoring Gap

The conspiracy took shape during Russell's three-year supervised release term following his August 23, 2021, release from federal prison on his 2018 explosives conviction. Russell's 2018 sentence from Senior U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew in the Middle District of Florida included three years of supervised release administered by the U.S. Probation Office in Tampa, Florida. The conditions imposed no restrictions on Russell's ability to associate with extremist organizations or his former AWD comrades. Pete Simi, a sociologist at Chapman University who has studied American far-right movements for more than two decades, stated publicly that Russell "could've restarted the Atomwaffen Division without violating the conditions of his release." Requests for comment on Russell's supervision made to the Tampa probation office went unanswered.¹⁰

The FBI had monitored Russell's prison communications since at least 2018 and was aware of his correspondence with Clendaniel throughout his incarceration. The June 2022 FBI informant contact with Russell represented proactive deployment of an asset rather than a response to a surveillance alert, suggesting either that monitoring produced no actionable concern before that point or that the FBI's intelligence was siloed from probation authorities in a way that prevented intervention during Russell's free movement in late 2021 and the first half of 2022. No congressional oversight hearing specifically addressed the Russell case monitoring gap; no DOJ Office of Inspector General report on the supervision failure had been released as of mid-2026.¹⁰