A Florida man who co-founded a violent neo-Nazi group has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for conspiring with his girlfriend to attack Maryland’s power grid: a plan prosecutors say was driven by his extremist, white supremacist ideology.
Brandon Russell, 30, was found guilty earlier this year of plotting to damage an energy facility. Federal prosecutors said he was the “brains” behind a scheme to carry out sniper attacks on electrical substations around Baltimore, aiming to trigger widespread chaos in a majority-Black city.
US District Judge James Bredar, who handed down the maximum sentence on Thursday, sharply condemned Russell’s intentions. The judge said Russell and his co-defendant, Sarah Beth Clendaniel, envisioned “a bizarre utopia populated only by people who look and think like they do,” a vision Bredar made clear has no place in the United States.
Clendaniel, who previously pleaded guilty, received an 18-year prison sentence. Judge Bredar said Russell deserved more time because he provided the “intellectual horsepower” to advance the plan.
The pair were arrested in February 2023 before their attack could be carried out. Authorities say the plot could have caused nearly $70 million in damage and disrupted power for large parts of Baltimore.
An undercover FBI agent testified at trial that Russell encouraged attacks on power infrastructure during online conversations. Prosecutors argued that even though Russell never traveled to Maryland, his strategic guidance significantly increased the threat.
Russell’s attorney claimed that “for Mr. Russell, everything was talk,” insisting Clendaniel posed the greater danger because she actively sought firearms. Defense filings also pointed to his military service, difficult family history, and mental health struggles. His mother, in a letter to the court, described him as educated but adrift, linking his radicalization to an absent father and life disruptions after moving to the Bahamas.
Judge Bredar acknowledged Russell’s “complicated psycho-social history” and recommended mental health treatment during incarceration. Still, he stressed that the crime’s severity required the harshest possible sentence, along with lifetime supervised release and electronic monitoring.
Russell, wearing maroon prison attire, declined to speak in court and showed little visible emotion.
This isn’t Russell’s first brush with the law. In 2017, after police responded to a double homicide at his apartment, they discovered he had stored explosives and neo-Nazi propaganda. He pleaded guilty to explosives charges and served prison time.
Russell also co-founded the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi organization tied to multiple murders and bomb plots before being dismantled by federal authorities in 2020. Members of the group have been linked to high-profile hate crimes, including the killing of Blaze Bernstein, a gay, Jewish student, in California.
The case underscores the federal government’s heightened focus on violent rightwing extremism under the Biden administration, a stark contrast, some officials say, to what they viewed as the Trump administration’s tendency to downplay such threats.
