'the FBI had intercepted the plans of two neo-Nazis — 27-year-old “Atomwaffen Division” founder Brandon Russell and his 34-year-old girlfriend, Sarah Clendaniel — to attack power stations that provide electricity to the people of Baltimore.
The criminal complaint reportedly stated that Russell and Clendaniel, from Florida and Maryland respectively, were “taking steps” toward shooting up Baltimore’s power stations after a winter storm “when most people are using max electricity.”
The conspirators’ reported hope was to “lay this city to waste.”
Nine actual attacks on power stations have occurred since mid-November: six in Washington state and Oregon and three in North Carolina.
A year ago, white supremacists Christopher Cook of Ohio, Jonathan Frost of Texas and Jackson Sawall of Wisconsin pleaded guilty to a plot to blow up regional power stations across the United States with an aim of sowing civil unrest. The FBI’s Joint
Terrorism Task Force ran the investigation.
More famously, leaders of the extremist Michigan Wolverine terrorist group were convicted last year in their plot to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Again, the FBI did the investigating. In the defendants’ federal trial, according to
the BBC’s reporting, FBI agent Timothy Bates testified “that he had posed undercover as a bomb-maker and infiltrated the plotters’ group,” and that “it was ‘excited’ to buy bombs” if only it had the money.
In November Oath Keepers Stewart Rhodes and Kelley Meggs were convicted for seditious conspiracy. Rhodes is from Virginia and Meggs from Texas, reflecting the national reach of the militant organization.
At their trial, former Oath Keeper Abdullah Rasheed of West Virginia testified that he had gone to the FBI after a video call in which he heard Rhodes and others discuss bringing arms to Washington for Jan. 6. He told the jury that it sounded to him that
they “were going to war against the United States government.”
The FBI’s crucial role in holding domestic terrorists to account has been proven in court repeatedly, as has the national scope of the threat.
How Repubicans responded:
In October, a Republican staff report from the House Judiciary Committee, where Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) was the ranking member, laid the groundwork for him attacking the FBI when he took the gavel. The report stated that the Bureau had “create[d] the
illusion” of “a groundswell of domestic terrorism cases, giving the impression that the threat of [domestic violent extremism] is present in jurisdictions across the nation.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was hawking “Defund the FBI” T-shirts back in August.
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3850863-new-arrests-show-why-the-coming-maga-house-attacks-on-the-fbi-endanger-law-and-order/
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