A screenshot from a training video shows four of the five men who federal prosecutors say plotted an attack on the U.S. power grid performing Nazi salutes. Another frame of the video displays the phrase “Come home white man.” (U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of North Carolina)
The final defendant in a group of five former military members with ties to white-supremacist organizations pleaded guilty this week to weapons charges stemming from a plot to attack the power grid in the northwestern United States.
Jordan Duncan, a Marine veteran who was previously stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, appeared Monday in a federal court in Wilmington, N.C., and admitted to aiding and abetting the manufacture of firearms.
The charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. His plea follows those of co-defendants Paul James Kryscuk, 38; Liam Collins, 25; Justin Wade Hermanson, 25; and Joseph Maurino, 25.
Motivated by white supremacist ideologies, the defendants studied a prior assault on a power substation, intending to replicate and escalate the violence using firearms and explosives, according to court documents.
From 2017 to 2020, the group coordinated through encrypted messaging apps and conducted paramilitary training in the desert near Boise, Idaho, authorities said.
Court documents detail purchases of modified weapons, which were transferred from Idaho to various locations across the country.
“During that time, Duncan gathered a library of information, some military-owned, regarding firearms, explosives, and nerve toxins and shared that information with Kryscuk and Collins,” federal prosecutors said in a statement Monday.
When Duncan was arrested in Boise in October 2020, investigators found secret Defense Department documents on his hard drive, along with documents detailing how to craft homemade explosives, news site RawStory reported last year.
Both Collins and Duncan were previously stationed at Camp Lejeune, according to prosecutors.
Duncan, 29, left the Marine Corps in late 2018. Afterward, he worked as an Air Force contractor at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. In September 2020, he began working as a contractor for the Navy near Boise, court documents state.
During the time of the group’s crimes, Hermanson belonged to the same unit to which Collins was last assigned and was still enlisted in the Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune. Maurino was a member of the Army National Guard at the time, according to the indictment.
The investigation into the group began after the October 2020 discovery of a handwritten list in Kryscuk’s possession detailing intersections and power grid components in Idaho and neighboring states.
This list, along with online communications and recruitment efforts on the now-defunct “Iron March” forum, provided critical evidence of their intentions, according to prosecutors.
They said Collins and Kryscuk had been active on Iron March, a hub for neo-Nazi recruitment, until its closure in 2017. Collins discussed his goal to create “a modern day SS” made up of former military members, according to prosecutors.
By 2020, the group had amassed an arsenal of unregistered weapons. Video footage of their training sessions showed the men firing assault-style rifles and ended with them performing Nazi salutes while wearing skull masks, which have become a symbol associated with the Iron March forum and the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division group.
The last frame of the video displayed the phrase “Come home white man.”
Collins pleaded guilty Oct. 24, 2023, to aiding and abetting the interstate transportation of unregistered firearms, with a maximum sentence of 10 years. Kryscuk pleaded guilty Feb. 15, 2022, to conspiracy to destroy an energy facility, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment.
On March 8, 2023, and April 11, 2023, respectively, Hermanson and Maurino pleaded guilty to conspiracy to manufacture firearms and ship them across state lines. Each faces up to five years in prison.
All five defendants await sentencing.
