She wanted to create chaos in a majority black city, conspiring with a Neo-Nazi leader to blow up Baltimore’s power substations. Sarah Beth Clendaniel’s own words sealed her conviction on federal conspiracy and firearms charges, and last month, she learned her fate: 18 years behind bars.
U.S. District Court Judge James K. Bredar dismissed the defense’s claim that Clendaniel, 36, wouldn’t have followed through on the elaborate plot that, as she boasted to an informant, would “completely lay this city to waste.” Prosecutors said, if successful, the attack would cause $75 million in damage to the substations alone.
Clendaniel needed to be “incapacitated,” the judge said, followed by a lifetime of supervised release.
“I’m not convinced the defendant isn’t … capable of acting on that inclination,” Bredar said.
Clendaniel faced up to 35 years had she not pleaded guilty in May to federal conspiracy and firearms charges. Public defender Seidra Banan asked for a 10-year sentence, saying Clendaniel had suffered more trauma in her life, including physical abuse and homelessness, than anyone she had ever represented.
She knew but one family, the Terrorgram Collective, a neo-Nazi sect from which the plan originated. Clendaniel stayed in touch with the group even after she pleaded guilty, prosecutors said.
Their plot was “driven by their ideology of racially motivated hatred,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew G. Olsen. Baltimore’s population is 61 percent African-American.
Russell, 27, a founder of the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group, began devising the plan in June 2022. Clendaniel, who prosecutors said held racist beliefs since she was 13 years old, was brought on soon after. They were both on probation at the time.
The duo targeted five substations, which form a ring around Baltimore, according to charging documents. By attacking them all on the same day, they would “completely destroy this whole city.”
Clendaniel was to be the shooter, she told the cooperating source. She was “determined to do this,” according to prosecutors, and stated she would have done something earlier on her own if she had not lost her rifle a few months earlier.
Russell allegedly told the informant that “putting holes in transformers … is the greatest thing somebody can do” and wanted to carry out the attack “when there is greatest strain on the grid” to cause maximum disruption.
Clendaniel met the informant in early 2023. She told the federal source she believed she had only a few months to live, expecting to die from a terminal illness.
“If we can pull off what I’m hoping … this would be legendary,” Clendaniel told the informant.
