Nashville, Tennessee
AP
—
A 24-year-old man with ties to White nationalist teams pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges that he tried to use a drone to bomb a Nashville electricity substation, in accordance to prosecutors.
Skyler Philippi, of Columbia, Tennessee, pleaded guilty to trying to use a weapon of mass destruction and trying to destroy an vitality facility, the US Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee mentioned in a assertion. He faces up to life in jail 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 mentioned within the assertion.
Philippi’s lawyer, R. David Baker, didn’t instantly reply to an electronic mail in search of remark.
Philippi instructed a confidential FBI supply in July 2024 that he wished to assault a number of electrical energy substations to “shock the system,” an FBI agent wrote within the legal grievance. That supply later launched Philippi to an undercover FBI worker, who started to acquire details about Philippi’s plan with different undercover brokers.
In November 2024, Philippi and undercover workers drove to his supposed Nashville launch site and ready to fly a drone that authorities say Philippi believed had 3 kilos (1.4 kilograms) of C-4 plastic explosive hooked up to it. The materials had been offered by the undercover workers, in accordance to prosecutors.
When he was arrested, Philippi had the drone powered up and was making ready to connect the armed explosive system to it as undercover workers pretended to be performing as lookouts for him, prosecutors mentioned.
Philippi allegedly instructed undercover officers that he was affiliated with a number of White nationalist and extremist teams, together with the National Alliance, which requires eradicating Jews and different teams of individuals. Such extremist teams more and more view attacking the U.S. power grid as a technique of disrupting the nation.
Philippi pleaded not guilty in January. In a March letter to the decide from jail, Philippi claimed that the undercover FBI brokers had violated his due course of rights and that his public defender had offered ineffective counsel.