US: Two men convicted for planning to attack electric substations as part of white supremacist scheme

Washington: According to the US Justice Department, two men were convicted on Friday for planning to assault US power substations as part of a white supremacist scheme to cause unrest and economic hardship.

According to a news statement from the DOJ, Jonathan Frost, 25, of Katy, Texas, and West Lafayette, Indiana, received a 60-month sentence while Christopher Cook, 21, of Columbus, Ohio, received a 92-month term.

In February 2022, Cook and Frost each entered a guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to finance extremists. Jackson Sawall of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, was also accused, entered a guilty plea in February 2022, and will now undergo sentencing, according to the DOJ.

Their plan was to attack substations with powerful rifles, which they believed would result in millions of dollars in damages while causing civil unrest, the department said. But they never carried out any attacks.

Plots against power infrastructure and electric substations have come to light recently in different parts of the country including North Carolina, Washington State and South Carolina. Incidents of vandalism have left thousands in the dark.

Frost and Cook hatched their plans in an online chat group in the fall of 2019, according to DOJ. Within weeks, the two began to recruit others including Sawall.

As part of the recruitment process, Cook circulated a list of readings that promoted white supremacist ideology and neo-Nazism, DOJ said.

It said the three men met in Columbus, Ohio, in February 2020 to train. A planned attack in Ohio was thwarted when police stopped their car in a routine encounter.

Cook and Frost later attempted to recruit juveniles in Texas to their cause, prosecutors said.

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