3 neo-Nazis have pleaded to blame to home terrorism fees associated with a plot to assault energy grids throughout the US.
Jonathan Frost, 24, Christopher Cook dinner, 20, and Jackson Sawall, 22, every pleaded to blame to at least one depend of conspiring to supply subject material enhance to extremists, the Justice Division mentioned Wednesday.
“In keeping with those pleas, 3 folks engaged in a tense plot to assault our nation’s power infrastructure, injury the financial system and stoke department in our society, all within the title of white supremacy,” Assistant Lawyer Basic Matthew G. Olsen mentioned in a observation.
Frost and Cook dinner met in an extremists’ chat room in 2019 to talk about a plan to assault an influence grid. Sawall, a pal of Cook dinner’s, joined them later that yr to assist with recruitment efforts and operation safety, in step with the Justice Division. As a part of recruitment, Cook dinner circulated studying fabrics that promoted white supremacy and neo-Nazism.
The plan concerned attacking energy grids in several areas around the nation the usage of rifles. The 3 believed the plan “would value the associated fee the federal government hundreds of thousands of greenbacks and motive unrest for American citizens within the area,” the Justice Division mentioned, including, “That they had conversations about how the opportunity of the facility being out for lots of months may just motive warfare, even a race warfare, and induce the following Nice Melancholy.”
In 2020, the 3 males met up in Columbus, Ohio, the place Cook dinner lived, to additional plan the assault and unfold neo-Nazi propaganda, together with by means of portray a swastika flag beneath a bridge.
Cook dinner supplied Frost and Sawall with AR-47 rifles and the lads practiced at capturing levels. Frost additionally gave Cook dinner and Sawall “suicide necklaces” that have been full of fentanyl capsules in case they have been stuck, in step with the Justice Division. Sawall swallowed his tablet all the way through a site visitors prevent in Ohio however survived.
“Those folks sought after to hold out this sort of plot as a result of their adherence to racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist perspectives,” Timothy Langan, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Department, mentioned in a observation.
All 3 males face a most sentence of 15 years in jail.