Neo-Nazi leader’s girlfriend sentenced in planned attacks
Sarah Beth Clendaniel (Maryland State Police and U.S. Department of Justice).
A Baltimore County neo-Nazi woman will spend nearly two decades behind bars for attempting to destroy multiple majority-Black areas of the city of Baltimore, a judge determined on Wednesday.
In May, Sarah Beth Clendaniel, 36, pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiring to damage an energy facility and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. She faced a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison. Prosecutors pushed for an 18-year sentence and U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar agreed with the state’s recommendation.
The court assessed an 18-year term for the conspiracy charge and 15 years for the gun charge — with each sentence to run concurrently, or at the same time. Once Clendaniel is outside the walls of the prison, however, she will remain on supervised release for the rest of her life.
In February 2023, the since-condemned woman and her boyfriend, Brandon Clint Russell, 28, a leader of a neo-Nazi group well known to law enforcement, were indicted by federal authorities.
In court documents, prosecutors documented the couple’s alleged efforts to “completely destroy” Baltimore with strategic attacks on various power substations. One such substation was described in a chat log by Clendaniel, speaking at the time to a government source, as “literally like a life artery” to the city. And, she added, if destroyed, would “definitely cut out a lot of s—.”
In those chats, Russell allegedly went by the handle “Homunculus.” Clendaniel went by “Nythra88” and later gave the source her handle for another chat app as: “@kali188.”
Among various ideologies associated with the radical right, “88” is considered code signaling white supremacist beliefs — because “H” is the eighth letter of the alphabet and therefore 88 becomes “HH” which stands for “Heil Hitler.” The numerical signal is often, but not always, used in conjunction with the number “14,” which refers to an infamous 14-word slogan about securing white supremacy.
Prosecutors allege Russell began plans to attack the critical infrastructure in June 2022. Clendaniel took an active role in planning those attacks sometime in December of that year.
“As part of her guilty plea, Clendaniel admitted that she communicated and planned over encrypted communication applications (ECA) to carry out attacks against energy facilities,” a U.S. Department of Justice press release reads. “Russell and Clendaniel communicated their plans to commit an attack on the Baltimore Region power grid to a confidential human source.”
In early January 2023, Russell and the source allegedly discussed working with Clendaniel to “maximize impact” and “to coordinate to get multiple [substations] at the same time.” Later that day, Clendaniel wrote to the source to signal that she was in on the plan.
In late January 2023, Clendaniel herself was chatting with the source. She said that to “completely destroy this whole city,” they would need to take the “cores” of the substations offline and “not just leak the oil.”
Clendaniel also told the source that with a good “four or five shots,” the attack “would permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully,” court documents note.
In the ensuing raid on Clendaniel’s residence, law enforcement found various firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in the woman’s bedroom. That discovery compounded legal matters for her — she was previously convicted of robbery in 2006 as well as robbery and attempted robbery in 2016, in Cecil County, Maryland.
“This alleged planned attack threatened lives and would have left thousands of Marylanders in the cold and dark,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Erek L. Barron said in a statement. “We are united and committed to using every legal means necessary to disrupt violence, including hate-fueled attacks.”
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