(Ken Silva, Headline USA) In December 2024, the Justice Department announced the arrest of a teenage Egyptian national named Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, who allegedly sent bomb-making instructions to an FBI informant, and who allegedly told the informant to attack the Consulate General of Israel in New York City.
However, in a motion to dismiss filed Friday, Hassan’s defense lawyers have accused the FBI informant of “grooming” their client. The defense’s motion reveals that the FBI informant is an illegal immigrant and convicted heroin dealer who’s been working for the bureau since 2012. The FBI’s New York office even stopped using the informant in 2012 because he was committing “unauthorized illegal activity”—but the FBI’s Washington field office then hired him six months later.
Despite the informant’s sketchy record, he’s been paid at least $329,389.18, according to the motion. Moreover, the FBI has worked to obtain him permanent residency, noting that he’s motivated to work for the bureau to avoid deportation.
🚨NEW: In a motion filed Friday, defense lawyers have accused a criminal FBI informant of grooming their client in a plot to attack the Consulate General of Israel in New York City.
According to the defense, the FBI informant is an illegal immigrant and a convicted heroin dealer… https://t.co/YfYDNMNx2E pic.twitter.com/QWOFgObuiO— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) October 27, 2026
Additionally, the motion says the government previously tried prosecuting Hassan unsuccessfully when he was a minor. The prosecution, a state case, seems to have collapsed when Hassan’s autism diagnosis and “susceptibility to influence” came to light, according to the motion.
“Three days after his eighteenth birthday, the same FBI agent who had attended those hearings deployed his own long-term paid informant—a convicted felon under a final order of removal, kept in this country for twelve years only through FBI-sponsored immigration benefits—to ‘befriend’ Abdullah online,” the motion says.
“The agent then directed that informant to pose as Abdullah’s ‘soldier,’ to call him ‘Emir,’ to feed him fabricated surveillance reports, and to send him a propaganda video that the FBI’s own counterterrorism unit had produced,” the motion adds, explaining that the propaganda video was produced by the FBI’s counterterrorism human source unit.
The DOJ has yet to respond to the motion to dismiss. The parties are also litigating a number of other issues, including whether body-cam footage of Abdullah’s arrest will be allowed to be shown to a jury. The trial is currently set for December 7.
Read Headline USA’s initial story about Abdullah’s arrest here.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
