By Joe Saunders October 9, 2024 at 8:14am
An Afghan man who entered the country in the chaotic days after President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan has been charged with plotting an Election Day terrorist attack on behalf of the Islamic State group.
The Department of Justice announced the arrest in a news release Tuesday, stating the man — identified as 27-year-old Oklahoma City resident Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi — had purchased two semi-automatic rifles and 500 rounds of ammunition from an undercover FBI operative.
And with less than a month to go before Nov. 5 election, the political angle of the news quickly boiled over.
Tawhedi’s brother-in-law, an unidentified juvenile, was arrested as a co-conspirator in the attack, according to The Oklahoman.
Tawhedi, who came to the United States under a special visa in September 2021, the month after the calamitous Afghan withdrawal, planned the attack on behalf of the terrorist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — or ISIS, according to the criminal complaint against him.
His brother-in-law, who entered the country in 2018, according to The Oklahoman, apparently acted as a translator for him, according to the complaint. The brother-in-law’s age was not released.
According to the news release, Tawhedi’s communications “indicated that his attack was planned for Election Day, and in a post-arrest interview, Tawhedi allegedly confirmed the attack was planned for Election Day targeting large gatherings of people, during which he and the juvenile were expected to die as martyrs.”
In the release, Attorney General Merrick Garland, a man who has become better known for painting concerned American parents as domestic terrorists than battling international Islamic threats, managed to sound tough against Islamists.
“As charged, the Justice Department foiled the defendant’s plot to acquire semi-automatic weapons and commit a violent attack in the name of ISIS on U.S. soil on Election Day,” he said in the release.
Are you worried about who the Biden-Harris administration has allowed into the country?
“We will continue to combat the ongoing threat that ISIS and its supporters pose to America’s national security, and we will identify, investigate, and prosecute the individuals who seek to terrorize the American people.”
Coming less than a month before Americans choose between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump, the news set off a firestorm on social media.
BREAKING:
The FBI has arrested an Afghan man that was plotting an attack on Election Day.
Remember all those Afghan refugees that Biden and Kamala ushered into our country in 2021? He’s one of them and surely he’s not the only one.
Keep your head on a swivel! pic.twitter.com/OY1o0ZcHZu
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) October 8, 2024
AFGHAN NATIONAL ARRESTED FOR PLOTTING AN ELECTION DAY TERRORIST ATTACK IN THE NAME OF ISIS
How many more are secretly plotting attacks?
Biden & Kamala Harris should be kicked out of politics forever after making America this unsafe! pic.twitter.com/FCQMk0llYG
— LionHearted (@LionHearted76) October 9, 2024
The Trump campaign wasted no time trying Harris directly to the story.
In a social media post, it included a video of an interview with Harris in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” in April 2021 praising Biden’s “extraordinary amount of courage” in deciding to pull out of Afghanistan.
That was before the developments of August and September, which saw Marines murdered in a suicide bombing and the United States disgraced before the world as its military was ordered to flee Afghanistan and the terrorist Taliban took over.
But the events were already in motion. That makes Harris’ statement to “The View” on Tuesday that she would have done nothing different over the past four years a particular problem for her campaign amid the news of the Election Day plot.
FLASHBACK: Kamala claims she was “the last person in the room” on the Afghanistan debacle.
SHE OWNS THIS. pic.twitter.com/vaaeRjZyLe https://t.co/PYX3lHgykl
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 8, 2024
“FLASHBACK: Kamala claims she was ‘the last person in the room’ on the Afghanistan debacle,” the Trump War Room account on the social media platform X noted. “SHE OWNS THIS.”
Tawhedi is charged with “with conspiring and attempting to provide material support to ISIS” and “receiving a firearm to be used to commit a felony or a federal crime of terrorism,” the DOJ release states.
Between the two crimes, he faces 35 years in prison, according to the release.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn’t need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American
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