WASHINGTON (AP) — A New Jersey man who authorities say was on his way to Ukraine to join a volunteer fighting unit has been arrested in an alleged plot to attack a U.S. electrical substation to advance his white supremacist views, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Andrew Takhistov, 18, was arrested Wednesday at the Newark Liberty International Airport, where he was headed to Paris before going to Ukraine to join the Russian Volunteer Corps, a pro-Ukrainian group fighting Russian forces, officials said.
Authorities say Takhistov began talking in January with the person he did not realize was an undercover agent, and he began discussing a plan to attack an electrical substation. They drove together to two electrical substations in North Brunswick and New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Takhistov provided information on how to construct Molotov cocktails, the type of clothing to wear and where to park to avoid detection, authorities said.
Was just worrying if we were due for one of these:
Over the course of 19 minutes, about one hundred bullets caused $15 million dollars in damage to our power grid, damaging components that take months to manufacture: 2013’s Metcalf sniper attack near San Jose, California
Edit: sheesh! Happened AGAIN in 2022!
Moore County, NC: Gunmen shot up two power substations. 40K customers lost power. Took days to fix. FBI had warned about extremist threats to grid. Investigators found shell casings, offered $75K reward. Theories: anti-drag show motive or generic extremism. One lady died when her oxygen machine stopped (homicide). Schools closed, curfew imposed. NC governor pissed. White House “monitoring.”