3 convicted of plotting to destroy Idaho power grid

Three men with ties to white supremacist groups were convicted in federal court on July 25 for plotting to destroy a power grid in the northwestern United States, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Paul James Kryscuk, 38; Liam Collins, 25; and Justin Wade Hermanson, 25, were all convicted for their years-long involvement in a plan to hit the electrical grid as part of a larger violent extremist plot, according to a Justice Department news release. Two of the men, Collins and Hermanson, were members of the same U.S. Marine unit at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, during the planning, according to a federal indictment.

Collins received the longest sentence of 10 years in prison for aiding and abetting the interstate transportation of unregistered firearms. Kryscuk received a six-and-a-half-year sentence for conspiracy to destroy a power plant, and Hermanson was sentenced to one year and nine months for conspiracy to manufacture and ship firearms interstate.

“These sentences reflect both the depravity of their plan and the Justice Department’s commitment to holding accountable those who use violence to undermine our democracy,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in the statement.

In 2016, Collins was a frequent poster on a neo-Nazi internet forum, seeking recruitment for a paramilitary group he described as “a modern-day SS,” prosecutors said. He explained on the forum that he had joined the Marines “for the cause” and that he would devote most of his income to funding the proposed group, the indictment said.

Collins and Kryscuk, who were living in New York at the time, connected through the forum in 2017, authorities said. As part of his ideology, Kryscuk discussed forming a guerrilla organization with guns to “slowly take back the land that is rightfully ours,” the indictment said.

“We will have to go out into the streets and deal as many blows as possible to the remaining power structure to keep it in check,” Kryscuk said in a message accompanying the indictment.

The two recruited more members to their group, including Hermanson, and studied in depth an earlier attack on a power plant carried out by an unknown group using assault rifles, the Justice Department said. Between 2017 and 2020, the group began illegally manufacturing and selling firearms and stealing military equipment, prosecutors said.

They eventually met in 2020 in Boise, Idaho, where Kryscuk had moved earlier that year, for a live firearms training session that they filmed, authorities said. The video showed the group firing assault rifles and giving the “Heil Hitler” salute while wearing skull masks associated with a neo-Nazi group called Atomwaffen Division, prosecutors said.

Kryscuk was also seen at a number of Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 and discussed shooting protesters in a conversation with another co-defendant, Jordan Duncan, the complaint said.

Later that year, a handwritten note was found in Kryscuk’s possession stating that there were approximately a dozen locations in Idaho and other states that contained a transformer, substation or other component of the electrical grid in the northwestern United States.

According to the court filing, the Eastern District of North Carolina issued arrest warrants for Kryscuk and Collins on October 15, 2020. Three days later, the arrest warrant for Hermanson was issued.

Kryscuk and Collins were arrested on November 25, 2020. Hermanson was arrested a few months later, on January 28, 2021.

Kryscuk pleaded guilty in February 2022, while Collins and Hermanson later pleaded guilty in 2023, according to an earlier Justice Department news release. Another man involved in the ring, 25-year-old Joseph Maurino, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to manufacture and ship firearms interstate in April 2023. Duncan was the final defendant to take his deal on June 24, pleading guilty to aiding and abetting the manufacture of a firearm.