(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The 2015 ISIS-inspired shooting at a contest to draw the Prophet Muhammed in Garland, Texas remains one of the starkest examples of the FBI provoking a terrorist attack.
In that case, FBI informants had been monitoring the shooters for years, the bureau allowed one of them to purchase a weapon from a gun store involved in the Operation Fast & Furious scandal, and an undercover agent even encouraged the shooting by telling the attackers to “tear up Texas.”
Perhaps most damningly, the same undercover agent who provoked the shooters was at the “Draw the Prophet” event when the attack occurred. Then, when local cops detained the undercover agent because he thought he was one of the attackers, other FBI agents intervened immediately. They placed a hood over the undercover agent’s head and whisked him away to another location before confiscating footage of the incident from bystanders.
Despite all those damning facts, the FBI continues to defend itself some 10 years later. In a brief filed weeks ago in an ongoing appeal, Justice Department prosecutors said the undercover FBI agent’s presence at the “Draw the Prophet” contest was a total coincidence.
There are cases that make you go "mmm that's weird" when you hear a shooter was on the FBI's radar.
Then, there's the 2015 Garland, Texas shooting: pic.twitter.com/LbugxglzqF
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) June 27, 2025
The ongoing appeal is from Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, whom the government says conspired with the shooters, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, ahead of the attack. Much of the information about the FBI’s shady undercover activities was only revealed after Kareem was convicted in 2016, and he’s been seeking a new trial ever since then.
According to the DOJ’s March 26 brief, the undercover agent was at the Garland event as part of a sting operation against an “unrelated person.”
“The unarmed, undercover FBI agent was in Garland as part of a sting operation against an unrelated person; he did not know where Simpson was; and his proximity to the shooting was, as the district court found, a coincidence,” prosecutors argued.
Kareem’s current appeal doesn’t argue that his convictions should be overturned due to the undercover agent’s actions per se. Rather, his lawyers argue that the U.S. government violated his right to a fair trial by withholding exculpatory information, including about the undercover agent.
🚨Why am I posting about the Garland shooting 10 years later?
Well, there's still an ongoing appeal in that case. And the DOJ is still defending the actions of the undercover FBI agent who told the shooters to "tear up Texas" and who was conducting surveillance when the attack… https://t.co/PoyIPQyMMA pic.twitter.com/bQwUca4CRp— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) June 27, 2025
Moreover, the FBI continues to suppress evidence about the Garland attack to this day, according to Kareem’s brief.
Information that the FBI has yet to produce includes documents about its investigation of Simpson in spring 2015; information on Simpson’s gun purchase in 2010 and whether Soofi’s 2012 gun purchase was authorized by agents working the failed “Fast and Furious” gun-running operation; and more information on the attack and the undercover agent’s involvement in it, according to Kareem’s appeal brief.
Kareem’s lawyers and the DOJ are set to make oral arguments about the matter at an appeals hearing that’s yet to be scheduled. According to the court docket, the hearing could take place as soon as September.
People still want answers . .
This is what @JD_Cashless had posted about . . pic.twitter.com/nO2eBKfKri— Lawyerforlaws (@lawyer4laws) June 27, 2025
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
