Sarah Beth Clendaniel, who pleaded guilty to trying to attack and destroy the power grid in the Baltimore region, was sentenced to 18 years in prison with lifetime supervision post-release.

Prosecutors said Clendaniel, 36, from Catonsville, planned to blow up power stations around Baltimore to destabilize the government in a white supremacist plot.

According to prosecutors, the attack would have resulted in $75 million in damages and caused power outages for much of the state.

This sentence comes after Clendaniel accepted a plea deal and ultimately was found guilty of the crimes in May.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    How fucked up is it that a Nazi Plot to destroy Maryland’s power grid only got thwarted a year and a half ago and so many insane things have happened in the intervening time that I totally forgot about it?

  • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The mom arguing that her daughter is under the influence of bad spirits, that prison won’t help, and that only when god pours his spirit over her will the bad spirits flee… welcome back to the middleages!

    • undergroundoverground@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      They think the only thing holding us back from a race war where we kill all the non-whites is our access to electricity.

      I think it genuinely doesn’t even cross their minds that the vast majority of all the other people aren’t violent, racist monsters.

      • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        This is key. It’s why they tend to message on virtue signaling so much, there’s kinda a fundamental belief that all people are shitty deep down, and they’re just more “real” about it. All the rest of us are just pretending so we look good, but we’re all just as bad as they are, and they’re just the courageous ones.

        It’s pretty twisted.

      • Carmakazi@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        If anything it should make everyone want to go after the bloodthirsty terrorists. You know, the ones who made everyone’s lives worse by knocking out the power grid?

        But reaching that conclusion requires reasoning not addled by lead poisoning and hookworms I guess.

        • NABDad@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          They also believe that everyone else is too stupid to put it together. They think they’re such geniuses that they will be able to cover their tracks and convince everyone that it’s the brown people’s fault.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            They were right for a while but now they’re literally the first suspects when a sub station goes down.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        2 months ago

        There’s an important aspect to this: they think all or nearly all whites are just as racist as they are, but the Liberal Media censors them to make it seem otherwise. All they need to do, in their minds, is unshackle everyone and the Master Race will sweep out all the untermenschen.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Nazis aren’t really known for being smart. The thought process goes like this:

      • America is shit
      • (Too cowardly to actually plan an assault against the institutions they hate)
      • A race war will solve things
      • Something has to start a race war
      • Attack unguarded substations and cause blackouts
      • ???
      • Race war.
      • ???
      • White, Christian monocultural ethnostate.
      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        The question marks are murder. Yes before and after, to instigate and then to get rid of undesirables left after the war. Even if they fought on your side.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The podcast Weird Little Guys has an episode about it, but the general gist is that American Nazis are under the mistaken belief that in emergency situations people will turn on each other instead of the well documented behavior of our instincts to help each other and cooperate going into overdrive. From there they believe that we will band together based on race instead of something reasonable like neighborhoods. And so, despite ample evidence from the increasingly frequent natural disasters, they believe a single catastrophe that shuts society down shortly will trigger a race war.

      Additionally thanks to a combination of Pax Americana, the nature of the equipment, the massive benefits everyone knows it provides, and the danger of fucking with it, the electrical grid contains a large amount of unattended critical equipment such as substations. Nazis, being losers that are sometimes only half brain dead have figured out that this is potentially the easiest catastrophe to manufacture and as such have begun shooting at substations in an attempt to trigger a race war instead of just waiting for a storm or heat wave to shut down the power for a few days and seeing that people don’t do a race war over that.

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    2 months ago

    Agents recovered various firearms from her bedroom and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Clendaniel is prohibited from possessing a firearm because she is a convicted felon.

    Evidence used in the trial included transcripts of recorded phone conversations between Clendaniel and a confidential informant, revealing that she wanted to obtain a high-powered rifle to shoot through substations in Reisterstown, Perry Hall, White Marsh, and more locations.

    I tried to find data about how seriously straw purchases are being treated these days, as enforcement always seemed very lax. This is how this person seems to have obtained her weaponry. A straw purchase in the case of firearms is when someone buys a firearm with the intent of it ending up in the hands of someone else. It is common to have a partner or acquaintance purchase a gun to get around the background check.

    I searched for “straw purchase jail” to try to find conviction rates, and oddly all the results looked to be only from Pennsylvania, and are pretty recent. There does seem to be some enhanced penalties put into place nationally, after a number of mass shootings traced back to straw purchases.

    Prosecutors say Clendaniel has been in communication with her co-defendant, Russell, through Dallas Humber, an alleged transnational terrorist group leader from California. Humber is accused of soliciting hate crimes, the murder of Federal officials, and conspiring to provide materials to terrorists. The communication between Clendaniel, Humber and Russell persisted until July 2024.

    Prosecutors allege this communication shows that Clendaniel is still conspiring during recorded phone calls while incarcerated.

    Before receiving the sentence, Clendaniel addressed the courtroom saying she is more likely to hurt herself than others. She says she still retains her national socialist beliefs, which she has had since she was 13 years old, but that she would not act on them.

    Judge Bredar explained that she is not being sentenced for her beliefs, rather she is being put behind bars because she was prepared to act on them and cause significant harm. He said he is not convinced she wouldn’t act on them in the future.

    And she has learned nothing. Hopefully she will continue to incriminate herself on a regular basis to ensure she serves the full 18 years of her sentence.

    • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Dallas Humber was one of the lead members of the large nazi “terrorgram” network on telegram. She was also recently arrested after France forced Telegram to start enforcing the law by arresting its billionaire CEO.

      • anon6789@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Humber has one heck of a backstory. Meth addict dildo seller turned Nazi audiobook narrator.

        I don’t know how to feel about the arrest of the person running the platform. I typically lean toward siding on it’s the responsibility of the posters for what they post, but at the same time, if you are knowledgeable people are using something of yours for a crime, and not just anything, but terrorism or supporting murder, it seems like he should definitely have some share of the responsibility for not even taking any form of action.

        • Baggins@feddit.uk
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          Meth addict dildo seller turned Nazi audiobook narrator.

          That’s a sentence I never expected to hear.

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            2 months ago

            Sometimes I feel like I’m living in the latest season of The Boys.

            I’d be fine with a meth using lady with some form of legit self run business. This Nazi stuff is a bridge too far though.

            • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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              The Boys is written to specifically mirror modern life in way that calls out the fucked up nature of things.

              • anon6789@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                That’s much of what I didn’t enjoy about the last season. It didn’t really feel like satire so much anymore.

                • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  They did that because people didn’t get that it was satire and were unironically calling Homelander the good guy.

        • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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          She was working as a terrorist go between in this case. I guarantee she was involved with hundreds or even thousands of nazi terror plots as the admin of a nazi terror network.

          This isn’t someone running a tropical fish forum that was negligent and let it become a hotbed for racists. She started and directly participated in many of these plots. I have no sympathy at all.

          • anon6789@lemmy.world
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            I don’t recall where they all were, but I do remember there being a string of these power station shootings for a while. It’s somewhat nice to know the reasoning behind it all now, though also more disturbing seeing how widespread it is and not just a couple of local yahoos. Both these women deserve to put away.

            My unsureness was only about the level of responsibility for Durov, though it seems some of his charges are for his complicities in allowing things like this to continue and failing to cooperate with requests to do something from authorities. It does sound like he is now cooperating to turn over any evidence he may have about crimes arranged over Telegram, so why I don’t feel this should give him a free pass, it’s good he may allow other crimes to be prevented or prosecuted.

            I don’t follow much of this news lately, as I’ve just been overwhelmed by it becoming such a regular thing, so I’ve had to catch up on all these details.

            • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              It’s the same logic as terrorists in the middle east, degrade government legitimacy by degrading services and protection. Then offer yourself as the alternative. It’s fucked up but it can definitely work. We should not be laughing this shit off. FBI Counter-terror needs to turn it’s attention inward because so much of what the alt-right is doing is terrorist stuff related to setting up an insurgency.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      The kind a terrorist gets. The crimes she pleaded to had a max range of 20-35 but the stuff they left off would easily have seen her in prison the rest of her life. They left off the hate crime charges, conspiracy to murder charges, terrorism charges and I’m sure a few others. She wasn’t robbing a bank with a note. She planned to destroy the electrical grid of an entire state and snowball that into a race war.

      I forgot to add, her method of choice was a high power rifle, and Maryland specifically is never going to get over the Beltway Sniper attacks.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          It’s just a step in a whole ass plan. This is the part where they spread the word with something perceived to be low risk criminal activity. Once they have enough buy in they want to crash the entire grid because it would be a lot harder to recover from. At that point though they will also prevent maintenance either from fixing the sub stations. The point there is to cause chaos. During the chaos they will murder key leaders from minority communities and unaligned political groups. That’s the part they think will kick off a race war.

          They believe black people are inherently violent and criminal so they’ll start killing all the white people near them and the white people will organize to defend themselves. They cannot conceive of a world in which black people ask the government to send in the military to deal with terrorists or a world in which the military actually comes after them.

          So it’s pretty divorced from reality, but that’s their line of logic.

        • barsquid@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          It would be more like the exact opposite when sane people come together for mutual aid and dimwitted Trumper preppers cower in their basements with rifles to guard their silver coins and MREs.

          • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Projection. Considering the rejections of restrictions from the “rugged individuals” during covid, they would crumble first. They would also figure out pretty quickly that many liberals DO own fire arms, but keep them in a safe at home instead of making it a part of their personality.

      • NauticalNoodle
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        Also according to the article she was alleged to have continued conspiring over recorded phone calls with her codefendant (after she was already charged)

        Judges don’t like when alleged crimes continue after a person is already charged for similar crimes.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          Yup. You’re already getting the find out part. They can always make it worse if you don’t show understanding.

      • Aaron@lemmy.nz
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        I don’t understand why she cared… supposedly she had a terminal illness in her kidneys and so had to hurry up and get that rifle.

  • hoch@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I knew I recognized the guy in that article; not his first run-in with the law. There’s a really wild police interrogation of Brandon Russel’s (the co-conspirator) ex-roommate who warned police about their plans to attack power plants. Dude ended up killing their other 2 roommates with a rifle and then led police to his bomb making equipment. Very crazy story.

  • BigMacHole@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    It’s AGAINST her Constitutional Rights to Punish her BEFORE she’s done anything! Who CARES if she had a Gun and PLANNED to use it? It’s her 2A RIGHT to do that UNTIL Women Children and Men die!