Woman behind Neo-Nazi plot to destroy Maryland's power grid sentenced to 18 years in prison

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Woman behind Neo-Nazi plot to destroy Maryland's power grid sentenced to 18 years in prison
cbsnews.com

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.

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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.

I’ve never understood why people think destroying the power grid is going to cause a race war.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

Yup. You're already getting the find out part. They can always make it worse if you don't show understanding.

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.

That's probably just an attempt by the defense lawyer to reduce sentencing.

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