Three Men Plead Guilty in Plot to Attack US Power Grids

The U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday that three men pleaded guilty to crimes linked to plans to attack power grids in the U.S. to promote white supremacist ideology.

“These three defendants admitted to engaging in a disturbing plot, in furtherance of white supremacist ideology, to attack energy facilities in order to damage the economy and stoke division in our country,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew G. Olsen said in a statement.

“The Justice Department is committed to investigating and disrupting such terrorist plots and holding perpetrators accountable for their crimes,” Olsen added.

The statement said 20-year-old Christopher Brenner Cook of Columbus, Ohio; Jonathan Allen Frost, 24, of West Lafayette, Indiana, and Katy, Texas; and 22-year-old Jackson Matthew Sawall of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, each pleaded guilty to “one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.”

The agency said the terrorists were preparing to “carry out the federal offense of destroying energy facilities.”

A recent report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis concluded that domestic extremists “have developed credible, specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020.”

The report warns that extremists “adhering to a range of ideologies will likely continue to plot and encourage physical attacks against electrical infrastructure,” which includes more than 6,400 power plants and 450,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines that span the country.

The report also says that without inside help, it is unlikely the three could have caused a multistate outage, but they could have caused injuries and damage.

The three defendants each face a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.

Navy Engineer Pleads Guilty to Selling Submarine Secrets

Washington — 

A Navy nuclear engineer pleaded guilty Monday to trying to pass information about American nuclear-powered warships to someone he thought was a representative of a foreign government but who was actually an undercover FBI agent.

Jonathan Toebbe, 43, pleaded guilty in federal court in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to a single count of conspiracy to communicate restricted data. The sentencing range agreed to by lawyers calls for a potential punishment between roughly 12 years and 17 years in prison.

Toebbe and his wife, Diana, were arrested in October after prosecutors said he abused his access to top-secret government information and repeatedly sold details about the design elements and performance characteristics of Virginia-class submarines.

Toebbe acknowledged during the plea hearing to conspiring to pass classified information to a foreign government in exchange for money with the intent to “injure the United States.”

“Yes, your honor,” Toebbe said when asked if he considered himself guilty.

The FBI has said the scheme began in April 2020, when Jonathan Toebbe sent a package of Navy documents to a foreign government and wrote that he was interested in selling to that country operations manuals, performance reports and other sensitive information. That package was obtained by the FBI in December 2020 through its legal attaché office in the unspecified foreign country. That set off a monthslong undercover operation in which an agent posing as a representative of a foreign country made contact with Toebbe and agreed to pay thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency for the information Toebbe was offering.

Diana Toebbe was accused of serving as a lookout at several prearranged “dead-drop” locations at which her husband deposited memory cards containing government secrets, concealing them in objects such as a chewing gum wrapper and a peanut butter sandwich. She has pleaded not guilty and the case against her remains pending.

The country to which Jonathan Toebbe was looking to sell the information has not been identified in court documents and was not disclosed in court during the plea hearing Monday.

Toebbe, who as part of his job had a top-secret security clearance, agreed as part of the plea deal to help federal officials with locating all classified information in his possession, as well as the roughly $100,000 in cryptocurrency that was paid to him by the FBI.

FBI agents who searched the couple’s Annapolis, Maryland, home found a trash bag of shredded documents, thousands of dollars in cash, valid children’s passports and a “go-bag” containing a USB flash drive and latex gloves.

Arkansas Professor Pleads Guilty to Lying About China Patents

FAYETTEVILLE, ARKANSAS — 

A University of Arkansas professor pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about patents he had for inventions in mainland China.

Simon Saw-Teong Ang pleaded guilty in federal court in Fayetteville, Arkansas, to one count from a 58-count federal indictment.

Prosecutors say that 24 patents bearing Ang’s name were filed with the Beijing government but that he failed to report the patents to the university and denied having them when questioned by the FBI.

The university requires disclosure of all faculty patents, which the university would own. The plea deal calls for a one-year prison sentence, but the crime could be punishable by up to five years in prison.

The 64-year-old Fayetteville resident was suspended from the university faculty when he was initially indicted in July 2020. The university website no longer lists him on its faculty directory.