Sarah Beth Clendaniel

Sarah Beth Clendaniel (born approximately 1987, Cecil County, Maryland) conspired with Atomwaffen Division founder Brandon Russell to destroy multiple electrical power substations operated by Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) in a coordinated attack intended to trigger a cascading city-wide power failure. The plot followed the accelerationist strategic logic at the center of AWD's founding ideology: that destroying infrastructure could function as a catalyst for the societal breakdown and race war that Clendaniel and Russell believed would ultimately produce a white nationalist state. She pleaded guilty on May 14, 2024, and was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison on September 24, 2024.⁶

Cecil County Origins and Pre-2018 Criminal History

Clendaniel grew up in rural Cecil County, a heavily white, conservative area bordering Delaware and Pennsylvania in Maryland's northeastern corner. She later stated that she had held Nazi beliefs since 2001.

Her first documented felony arrest occurred in 2006 in Cecil County, when she was charged with armed robbery at a convenience store (she wielded a large butcher knife) and several other offenses. That 2006 case resulted in a plea in Cecil County Circuit Court and a five-year prison sentence, though the sentencing did not occur until April 2015 when she received one year of jail time for the 2006 robbery under a deferred resolution structure.¹

In March 2016, Clendaniel committed three armed robberies of convenience stores within a four-day period, all in Cecil County: the Pantry 1 Mart near Rising Sun on March 21, the High's Dairy Store at 3155 Joseph Biggs Memorial Highway in Bay View on March 22, and the same Pantry 1 Mart again on March 25. She brandished a machete during each robbery and demanded cash and cigarettes. Maryland State Police arrested her in the act of robbing the High's Dairy Store in Bay View on March 29, 2016. She pleaded guilty in Cecil County Circuit Court to three counts of robbery and received a nine-year sentence in June 2016.¹

Prison-Period Correspondence with Russell

Clendaniel began exchanging letters with Russell in approximately 2018 while both were serving federal and state sentences in different facilities. The FBI was aware of the correspondence at least from 2018; investigative files cited the relationship in the Russell case as evidence of a pre-existing connection that preceded any FBI informant involvement in the later conspiracy.²

During this period Clendaniel is also reported to have been in contact with the White Prison Newsletter, the neo-Nazi accelerationist prison publication that Russell co-organized from his Federal Correctional Institution placement. The newsletter was also endorsed by Robert Gregory Bowers, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting perpetrator.³

Release (2020) and Post-Prison Radicalization

Clendaniel was released from custody in approximately 2020 after serving several years of her nine-year 2016 sentence. Court records filed in connection with her 2024 plea state that after release she "fell back into familiar patterns of addiction and embraced increasingly radical views." Her post-prison ideology expanded beyond the general white nationalist beliefs she had held since 2001 into the accelerationist framework Russell had developed through AWD, specifically the theory that targeted infrastructure destruction could precipitate systemic collapse and race war.⁴

After her own release, Clendaniel moved to Catonsville, Maryland, in Baltimore County, where she was living at the time of her 2023 arrest.

The Baltimore Power Grid Conspiracy

Clendaniel and Russell's plan called for the simultaneous physical destruction of five BGE transformer substations in the Baltimore metropolitan area. Their operational theory held that striking multiple substations at the same time would prevent grid operators from rerouting power, producing a city-wide blackout. Clendaniel served as the operational executor of the conspiracy's Maryland component: while Russell, then living in Orlando, Florida, provided the ideological framework and sought to procure weapons through the FBI informant Christopher Jackson, Clendaniel conducted physical reconnaissance of the targeted substations and identified five sites to be struck simultaneously, selecting locations near Norrisville, Reisterstown, and Perry Hall, plus two additional substations near Baltimore City proper.

In a recorded telephone conversation with Jackson on January 29, 2023, Clendaniel stated: "it would permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully." She described a "ring" of substations surrounding Baltimore and argued that hitting multiple facilities simultaneously would prevent BGE grid operators from rerouting power, producing a city-wide blackout. The attack was explicitly framed as targeting a majority-Black city as a precondition for racial conflict.⁵

Clendaniel possessed firearms that she had acquired for the plot despite her status as a convicted felon, making firearm possession independently illegal. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) documented the firearms as part of the investigation.

The pair communicated the plan through encrypted channels; the case was prosecuted in the District of Maryland under Senior U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar. Federal investigators disrupted the conspiracy before any attack was carried out.

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 Plea

Clendaniel was arrested February 3, 2023. A federal grand jury returned an indictment in the District of Maryland, case number 1:23-cr-00056, before Senior U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar, charging her with one count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility (18 U.S.C. § 1366(b)) and one count of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person (18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)).⁶

Clendaniel pleaded guilty on May 14, 2024, in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, admitting to both counts.

Sentencing: September 24, 2024

Bredar sentenced Clendaniel to 18 years in federal prison on September 24, 2024, followed by a lifetime of supervised release. The government recommended the 18-year term; Bredar accepted it. The judge stated he "wanted to believe" she would not have carried through on the plot but concluded he was "not convinced she wouldn't act on them in the future" given the "extreme" nature of the planned attacks. Bredar found the crime was "a means of furthering her violent white supremacist ideology" and declined to credit claims that her participation had been primarily passive.

Clendaniel received a shorter sentence than Russell (18 years vs. 20 years) based on Bredar's later analysis at Russell's sentencing that Russell had supplied the "intellectual horsepower" and was the more culpable party.⁴