COLUMBUS – A Columbus man and two others, who espoused white supremacist and neo-Nazi beliefs, face up to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to their roles in a racially motivated terrorism plot to cripple portions of the U.S. power grid by attacking utilities while carrying “suicide necklaces” to be used when they were caught.
Christopher Cook, of Columbus, and two other men each pleaded guilty during a virtual court hearing in Columbus Wednesday to one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists “advocating for the supremacy of the white race.”
Federal authorities said the men hoped to create economic distress and civil unrest States “in furtherance of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism.”
Authorities say Cook, 20; Jonathan Frost, 24, of Katy, Texas and West Lafayette, Ind.; and Jackson Sawall, 22, of Oshkosh, Wisc., planned to storm regional electric substations with rifles, causing such extensive damage to the nation’s power grid that it could bring about “a race war and induce the next Great Depression.”
“These individuals wanted to carry out such a plot because of their adherence to racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist views,” said assistant director Timothy Langan of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division.
At a 2020 meeting in Columbus, the men trained with an automatic rifle and Frost provided the others provided with “suicide necklaces” filled with fentanyl, to be ingested if they were caught, authorities said.
Frost’s attorney said his client accepts responsibility for his conduct and “has completely disavowed his racist and white supremacist views.”