Boise man pleads guilty to firearms charges targeting Idaho’s power grid
BOISE, Idaho (US Attorney News Release) – On Monday, in Wilmington, North Carolina, a Boise man with white supremacist ties pleaded guilty to a federal firearms charge stemming from his participation in a group that had discussed targeting the power grid in Idaho and had conducted live-fire training near Boise.
Jordan Duncan, 29, of Boise, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the manufacturing of a firearm as charged in a superseding criminal information filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina. This crime carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in federal prison. Duncan is a former Marine assigned previously to Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina.
According to court documents, Duncan, with co-defendants Paul James Kryscuk, 38, Liam Collins, 25, Justin Wade Hermanson, 25, and Joseph Maurino, 25, researched, discussed, and reviewed at length a previous attack on the power grid by an unknown group. The group depicted in the attack used assault-style rifles in an attempt to explode a power substation. Between 2017 and 2020, Kryscuk manufactured 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 library of information, some military-owned, regarding firearms, explosives, and nerve toxins and shared that information with Kryscuk and Collins. In October 2020, a handwritten list of approximately one dozen intersections and places in Idaho and surrounding states was discovered in Kryscuk’s possession, including intersections and/or places containing a transformer, substation, or other component of the power grid for the northwest United States.
Previously filed charges allege that Collins and Kryscuk were members of and made multiple posts on the “Iron March” forum, a gathering point for young neo-Nazis to organize and recruit for extremist organizations, until the forum was closed in late 2017. Collins and Kryscuk met through the forum and expanded their group using an encrypted messaging application as an alternate means of communication outside of the forum. Collins and Kryscuk recruited additional members, including Duncan, Hermanson, and Maurino, and conducted training, including a live-fire training in the desert near Boise. From video footage recorded by the members during the training, Kryscuk, Duncan, and others produced a montage video of their training. In the video, the participants are seen firing short barrel rifles and other assault-type rifles, and the end of the propaganda video shows the four participants outfitted in AtomWaffen masks giving the “Heil Hitler” sign, beneath the image of a black sun, a Nazi symbol. The last frame bears the phrase, “Come home white man.” Prior to their arrests, Collins and Duncan had recently relocated to Boise from North Carolina and Texas, respectively, to be near Kryscuk.
Kryscuk, Collins, Maurino, and Hermanson each earlier entered pleas of guilty to various crimes: on February 15, 2022, Kryscuk entered a plea of guilty to conspiracy to destroy an energy facility, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison; on October 24, 2023, Collins pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the interstate transportation of unregistered firearms, which carries a maximum of 10 years in federal prison; and on March 8, 2023 and April 11, 2023, respectively, Hermanson and Maurino pleaded guilty to conspiracy to manufacture firearms and ship interstate, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.
All five defendants now await sentencing before Chief United States District Judge Richard E. Myers II.
Michael Easley, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, made the announcement. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the FBI field offices in Salt Lake City and Charlotte with assistance from field offices in Boston, New York, and Newark, the Boise Police Department, the United States Postal Inspection Service, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, are investigating the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys from the Eastern District of North Carolina are prosecuting the case for the government with assistance from Assistant U.S. Attorneys for the District of Idaho, District of New Jersey, Eastern District of New York, the District of Rhode Island, and attorneys from the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
