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White supremacists sentenced over electricity substation plot [1]
['Rob Beschizza']
Date: 2023-05-22
Christopher Cook, 21, was sentenced to 7½ years in prison, and Jonathan Frost, 25, of Katy, Texas, to 5 years for their role in electricity substation attacks that the Department of Justice described as a white supremacist plot. Another man, Jackson Sawell, awaits sentencing. All three pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to provide material support to extremists; their plan did not come to fruition before they were collared.
According to the statement of fact, Frost and Cook initially met online in a chatroom called "The Front" where Frost raised the idea of attacking the power grid. Sawall, a friend of Cook's, later joined their group and helped recruit young people who were less likely to be law enforcement officers. Those who passed muster were invited to join another online chat group called "Lights Out."
Frost traveled to Columbus in February 2020 where he gave Cook an AK-47 rifle with no serial number and provided Cook and Sawall with "suicide necklaces" made of the powerful synthetic painkiller fentanyl.
Their plans to hang propaganda posters, record themselves spray painting a mosque and cut down a telephone pole in Columbus went awry during a traffic stop that led Sawall to use his suicide necklace. He survived and later ended his association with Cook and Frost, according to the statement of facts.
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