Three Men Plead Guilty To Planning Power Grid Attacks ‘All In The Name Of White Supremacy’
Three white men who hoped to start a race war pleaded guilty on Wednesday (Feb. 23) to a domestic terrorism plot that involved attacking power grids across the United States.
The U.S. Department of Justice identified the defendants as Christopher Brenner Cook, 20, of Ohio, 24-year-old Jonathan Allen Frost of Texas and Indiana, and Jackson Matthew Sawall, 22, of Wisconsin.
Prosecutors charged the defendants on Feb. 7 in what’s known as a bill of information. They each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, and the trio now faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in federal prison.
According to federal prosecutors, the group believed that months-long, widespread power outages would cost the government millions of dollars, cause unrest and possibly ignite a race war.
“According to these pleas, three individuals engaged in a disturbing plot to attack our country’s energy infrastructure, damage the economy, and stoke division in our society, all in the name of white supremacy,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
The plot began in fall 2019, according to prosecutors. Frost and Cook discussed attacking a power grid and recruiting others to join. Part of the recruitment process involved circulating a list of books that promoted white supremacy and Neo-Nazism ideology.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cook wanted the group operational by 2024, but if former President Donald Trump lost his 2020 reelection campaign, the plan was to get organized even sooner.
Prosecutors said a few months later, Sawall joined the plot. He assisted Cook with online recruitment, operational security and organization. At that point, each defendant was assigned a regional substation or power grid to attack with powerful rifles.
“The defendants in this case wanted to attack regional power substations and expected the damage would lead to economic distress and civil unrest,” said Assistant Director Timothy Langan of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. “These individuals wanted to carry out such a plot because of their adherence to racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist views.
In February 2020, the three men met in Columbus, Ohio to advance their scheme, according to the DOJ. They began training at an Ohio shooting range with AR-47 assault rifles. Frost provided the weapons and suicide necklaces filled with fentanyl to ingest if caught by law enforcement. They also hatched propaganda plans that included spray painting a swastika under a bridge at a park with the caption, “Join the Front.”
Although Sawall survived swallowing his suicide pill during a traffic stop, Cook and Frost continued their efforts, prosecutors said. They traveled to Texas in March 2020 where they continued recruitment efforts.
Federal counterterrorism agents apparently first took note of the co-conspirators when a fourth man crossed the U.S. border from Canada in 2019, according to the Journal Sentinel. He had several firearms, images of white power propaganda on his phone, and told authorities that he was on his way to visit Cook.
An informant also alerted the FBI that Cook had online discussions about an operation he called “Lights Out” that would involve forming an 18-member group to attack electrical substations around the southeastern U.S.
In August 2020, The Columbus Dispatch reported that the FBI searched the homes of the three men. Investigators found weapons, Neo-Nazi literature, instructions for attacking energy infrastructure, as well as chemicals and components to could be used to make explosive devices.
