Dublin man and another white supremacist sentenced in plot to attack U.S. power grid
A Dublin man and another man identified by federal prosecutors as white supremacists who plotted to attack the U.S. power grid were sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in Columbus.
Christopher Brenner Cook, 21, of Dublin, was sentenced to seven years and eight months in prison. Jonathan Allen Frost, 25, who had addresses in Katy, Texas, and West Lafayette, Indiana, was sentenced to five years in prison.
A third man convicted in the scheme, 22-year-old Jackson Matthew Sawall, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, will be sentenced at a later date.
All three men pleaded guilty in February 2022 to one count each of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.
In late 2019 and 2020, the men plotted, amassed weapons and recruited juveniles to the cause using neo-Nazi propaganda, according to court documents.
The plan was to attack substations with powerful rifles, federal prosecutors said. The three men believed disrupting the power supply for many months would cost the government millions of dollars and cause unrest, possibly sparking a race war or inducing the next Great Depression, prosecutors said.
The men, according to court records, had "suicide necklaces" containing fentanyl that they planned to ingest should law enforcement capture them.
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“These defendants plotted armed attacks against energy facilities to stoke division in furtherance of white supremacist ideology and now they are being held accountable,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Department of Justice's National Security Division said Friday in a statement. “The Justice Department will not tolerate the use of violence to advance any extremist ideology and we remain determined to protect our communities from such hateful acts of terror.”
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio Kenneth Parker said in a news release that at the root of every terrorist plot — whether foreign or domestic — is hate.
“As a society, we must be vigilant against online radicalization, which is a powerful tool used by extremists to recruit both juveniles and adults,” Parker said.
Columbus criminal defense attorneys Sam Shamansky and Peter Scranton, representing Frost and Cook, respectively, said in court documents the co-conspirators were immature at the time of their crimes and are now remorseful.
"(Cook) was young and has matured over the last few years. He would be the first to tell you he does not recognize himself from that period," Cook's defense attorney Peter Scranton said in court documents. "However, he understands the seriousness of his actions and is eager to put this behind him."
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The plot to sow unrest
Frost and Cook met online in fall 2019 and Frost shared the idea of attacking the power grid, according to court documents. Within weeks, the men began recruiting others to their cause. By late 2019, Sawall — a friend of Cook’s — joined them, documents state.
Cook asked possible recruits about a list he circulated of reading material that promoted white supremacy and neo-Nazism, according to court documents.
In February 2020, the men met at a hotel in Columbus, where prosecutors say Frost sold Cook an AR-47 rifle with no serial number — known as a "ghost gun" due to the difficulty for law enforcement to trace it. The two took the weapon to a shooting range to train, court documents state.
While in Columbus, Frost provided Cook and Sawall with the so-called "suicide necklaces."
In addition, Sawall and Cook while in Columbus also purchased spray paint and painted a swastika flag under a bridge at a park with the recruitment message, “Join the Front.” The graffiti was the first step in an apparent propaganda campaign that included plans to hang posters and record or photograph the group defacing a mosque, court documents state.
That campaign was derailed during a traffic stop in which Sawall swallowed his suicide pill, but survived, prosecutors said.
Undeterred, Cook and Frost traveled together to Texas in March 2020, where Cook stayed in different cities with various juveniles he was attempting to recruit for their plot, court records state.
Cook and Frost were again stopped by law enforcement in Texas, which led to the discovery of a small amount of fentanyl that had been left over from the necklaces as well as multiple electronic devices and burner phones, court records state.
The FBI searched the residences of the three men in August 2020, uncovering a cache of weapons, neo-Nazi literature and instructions for attacking energy infrastructure. In Frost's residence, FBI agents reported seizing chemicals and components that lab testing later revealed could be used to create an explosive device, court records state.
Dispatch reporter Eric Lagatta contributed to this report.
jlaird@dispatch.com
@LairdWrites
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: White supremacists sentenced in Ohio for plot to attack U.S. power grid
