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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Man pleads guilty to charges that he meant to blow up a Nashville power | |
site with a bomb-laden drone | |
By Associated Press | |
Updated: | |
6:36 PM EDT, Tue September 9, 2025 | |
Source: AP | |
A 24-year-old man with ties to White nationalist groups pleaded guilty | |
Tuesday to charges that he attempted to use a drone to , according to | |
prosecutors. | |
Skyler Philippi, of Columbia, Tennessee, pleaded guilty to attempting | |
to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to destroy an energy | |
facility, the US Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of | |
Tennessee said in a statement. He faces up to life in prison at his | |
January 8 sentencing. | |
“For months, Philippi planned what he had hoped would be a | |
devastating attack on Nashville’s energy infrastructure. He acquired | |
what he believed to be explosives, surveilled his target, and equipped | |
a drone to attack an electrical substation. Motivated by a violent | |
ideology, Philippi wanted ‘to do something big.’ Instead, the FBI | |
disrupted his plans, and Philippi now awaits sentencing,” Assistant | |
Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said in the | |
statement. | |
Philippi’s lawyer, R. David Baker, didn’t immediately respond to an | |
email seeking comment. | |
Philippi told a confidential FBI source in July 2024 that he wanted to | |
attack several electricity substations to “shock the system,” an | |
FBI agent wrote in the criminal complaint. That source later introduced | |
Philippi to an undercover FBI employee, who began to collect | |
information about Philippi’s plan with other undercover agents. | |
In November 2024, Philippi and undercover employees drove to his | |
intended Nashville launch site and prepared to fly a drone that | |
authorities say Philippi believed had 3 pounds (1.4 kilograms) of C-4 | |
plastic explosive attached to it. The material had been provided by the | |
undercover employees, according to prosecutors. | |
When he was arrested, Philippi had the drone powered up and was | |
preparing to attach the armed explosive device to it as undercover | |
employees pretended to be acting as lookouts for him, prosecutors said. | |
Philippi allegedly told undercover officials that he was affiliated | |
with several White nationalist and extremist groups, including the | |
National Alliance, which calls for eradicating Jews and other groups of | |
people. Such extremist groups increasingly view attacking the U.S. | |
power grid as a means of disrupting the country. | |
Philippi pleaded not guilty in January. In a March letter to the judge | |
from jail, Philippi claimed that the undercover FBI agents had violated | |
his due process rights and that his public defender had provided | |
ineffective counsel. | |
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