According to the government, the men ‘prepared, and trained to attack America’s power grid in order to advance their violent white supremacist ideology.’
The three men who plotted a white supremacist attack on an energy facility in Idaho or its surrounding states were sentenced on July 25, according to a press release from the Department of Justice.
According to United States Attorney General Merrick Garland, “As part of a self-described ‘modern day SS,’ these defendants conspired, prepared, and trained to attack America’s power grid in order to advance their violent white supremacist ideology. These sentences reflect both the depravity of their plot and the Justice Department’s commitment to holding accountable those who seek to use violence to undermine our democracy.”
Paul James Kryscuk, a 38-year-old from Boise, Idaho; Liam Collins, a 25-year-old from Johnston, Rhode Island; and Justin Wade Hermanson, a 25-year-old from Swansboro, North Carolina, were all sentenced in connection to their roles in the plot.
According to USA Today, federal officials did not specify where the targeted facility was located, but court documents indicated that agents seized a list consisting of approximately a dozen locations in Idaho and surrounding states that held “a transformer, substation, or other component of the power grid for the Northwest United States.”
This reduced cost is likely attractive to white supremacist groups, who according to High Country News, have been historically active in the Western United States. These groups have increasingly been implicated in plots or attacks on energy substations in the United States, including three men who were arrested at a Las Vegas Black Lives Matter protest with Molotov cocktails in their car.
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Source: Black Enterprise
