COLUMBUS, Ohio — Three men have pleaded guilty to attempting to disrupt the U.S. power grid in furtherance of white supremacy ideology, the Department of Justice said Wednesday.
Christopher Brenner Cook, 20, of Columbus, Ohio; Jonathan Allen Frost, 24, of Katy, Texas and of West Lafayette, Indiana; and Jackson Matthew Sawall, 22, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin; have each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, the DOJ said.
Prosecutors said the trio met in Columbus in February 2020 to further their plot. The Department of Justice said after arriving in Columbus, Sawall and Cook purchased spray paint and painted a swastika flag under a bridge at a park spraying, “Join the Front.” The trio had additional propaganda plans for their time in Ohio, but the DOJ said the plans were foiled by a traffic stop.
“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 Justice Department will continue to investigate and disrupt such violent plots, and to hold perpetrators accountable in a courtroom, where the rule of law and the Constitution prevail.”
The DOJ said, citing court documents, Frost and Cook met in an online chat group in October 2019. Frost shared the idea of attacking a power grid with Cook, and within weeks, they tried to recruit others to join in their plan, prosecutors said.
“The plan was to attack the substations, or power grids, with powerful rifles,” said the Department of Justice in a statement. “The defendants believed their plan would cost the government millions of dollars and cause unrest for Americans in the region. They had conversations about how the possibility of the power being out for many months could cause war, even a race war, and induce the next Great Depression.”
They could each face sentences of up to 15 years.
