NBC News’s Senior Legal Correspondent Laura Jarrett joined MSNBC on Monday to report on the arrest of a known neo-Nazi leader and his girlfriend who allegedly plotted to blow up power stations in Maryland.

“Yeah, Lindsey, it was a disturbing plot that a federal authorities appear to have thwarted successfully. As you mentioned, this couple allegedly conspired to shoot up power stations in the Baltimore area,” Jarrett began, adding:

Five different power stations, at least according to federal authorities, was their goal. Brandon Russell, someone who is well known within the law enforcement community, an avowed neo-Nazi who had recently only gotten out of prison. He had been previously incarcerated for possessing explosive material.

And then this woman, Sarah Clendaniel, also someone he apparently met in prison. The couple struck up a relationship and then through the process of actually speaking to a federal informant, managed to get entangled in this situation. Now, as for their motive, we’re still learning a little bit about that.

“But federal authorities did confirm at that press conference just a short time ago that they were described as racially or ethnically motivated. It appears that they wanted to wreak havoc. Russell allegedly saying that ‘attacking the power grid is the greatest thing that somebody could do,’ in his words. The pair will be in court later today on those charges,” Jarrett added.

“It would probably permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully,” court documents cited one of the defendants as saying.

The arrests follow a string of such attacks across the country, but authorities have yet to connect this arrest with other incidents.

“We’ve seen these in other states, people shooting power stations, disrupting the grid for tens of thousands of customers. It doesn’t appear that anything like that happened here. Authorities were questioned about whether this was part of some larger plot. And it doesn’t appear, at least for now, based on what we know that it was. But certainly, if they had managed to go through with this, it would have been quite disruptive,” Jarrett concluded.

The Washington Post added some background on Russell, writing:

Russell, a former Florida National Guard member, is the founder of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen, which attempted to use violent attacks to spark a race war in the United States. Experts say the group, while small, is dangerous because of its influence on the broader far-right movement to eschew politics and spill blood.

An Atomwaffen member killed a gay, Jewish college student in 2019; another adherent killed his girlfriend’s parents for opposing his Nazi views. Atomwaffen followers have also threatened and harassed journalists, African American churches and Jewish organizations.

A former Atomwaffen member named Devon Arthurs, who lived with Russell in Tampa, killed two of their roommates in 2017 and subsequently told authorities they had been planning attacks on U.S. nuclear plants and power lines.

Watch the full clip above

The post JUST IN: Neo-Nazi Leader Arrested For Plotting Attack on Baltimore Power Stations In Effort to ‘Lay This City to Waste’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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