 Shades of the Hutaree
[Jpost] A group of men who united via a neo-Nazi forum were criminally charged last week after allegedly devising a terrorist attack on the power grid in Idaho and the US Northwest, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced.
On Friday, Paul James Kryscuk, 35, Liam Collins, 21, Jordan Duncan, 26, and Joseph Maurino, 22, were indicted in North Carolina. According to the DOJ document, Collins and Duncan are former Marines previously assigned to Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina. The defendants are charged with conspiracy to damage the property of an energy facility in the US, the document states.
According to the accusations, the defendants researched, discussed, and reviewed in depth a previous attack on the power grid by an unknown group. The group in the earlier attack used assault-style rifles in an attempt to explode a power substation. Between 2017 and 2020, Kryscuk produced firearms while Collins stole military gear, including magazines for assault-style rifles and had them delivered to the other defendants. During that time, Duncan gathered a collected information, some military-owned, regarding firearms, explosives, and nerve toxins.
The indictment also states that the group members discussed using homemade Thermite, a combination of metal powder and metal oxide which burns at over 4000°F to destroy power transformers.
In mid-2020, Collins allegedly asked the group to each buy 50 pounds of Tannerite, a binary explosive containing aluminum powder and oxidizers, and can be used to make Thermite. Later that year, a handwritten list of approximately one dozen intersections and places in Idaho and nearby states was found in Kryscuk’s possession, including places with components of the power grid for the northwest US. The harm caused, if destroyed, could exceed $100,000.
Court documents claim that Collins and Kryscuk met each other on the now-defunct online neo-Nazi medium Iron March and used the forum to recruit the others. According to court documents, Collins wrote on the forum that he hoped the group would be "a modern-day SS," referring to the infamous Nazi force.
Their training was administered in a desert area near Boise, Idaho, Newsweek reported. A propaganda video the group recorded during training shows participants dressed in masks associated with the neo-Nazi group AtomWaffen Division firing assault rifles before displaying the "Heil Hitler" sign under a Nazi symbol. The video ends with a message stating "come home white man."
If convicted, Collins, Duncan, Kryscuk and Maurino could each face up to 40 years in prison. 
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