The FBI paused for a moment last Sunday from the persecution of pro-lifers, parents who attend school board meetings, and Trump supporters to arrest an actual terrorist. Clearly, the agents involved have gone rogue and departed from the Biden-era FBI’s focus on crushing what Old Joe called “an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” which emanates, of course, from “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans.” But in their little extracurricular excursion back into reality, the feds netted a live one: Mohammad Rafi Mohammadi, an Islamic State (ISIS) operative who was living in Kansas City. Back in Afghanistan, Mohammadi had been a translator for the Department of Defense. And that fact points up a great deal of what is wrong with our entire counterterrorism approach — not that anyone in the FBI or DoD will notice.
The Kansas City Star reported that Mohammadi, “a Kansas City area man,” was “once employed under contract as a translator in Afghanistan for the U.S. Department of Defense,” but is now “accused of lying about his contacts with two recruiters aligned with the ISIS group that was responsible for the bombing of Kabul’s airport in August 2021, which killed 13 American service members.” Mohammadi now “faces one charge in the U.S. District of Kansas of making false statements in reference to obtaining his security clearance, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison.”
That means that if Mohammadi is convicted, he will be back out on the streets well before five years are out, and then the Defense Department can rehire him. It’s inconceivable that the DoD would do such a thing, right? Well, they already made multiple mistakes in dealing with him, so what are a few more? “According to an affidavit filed in the case by an FBI agent,” reports the Star, Mohammadi was seeking his security clearance in order to get work “as a contract linguist, and answered a question falsely on a federal form in August 2019. On that document, Mohammadi denied ever associating ‘with anyone involved in activities to further terrorism.’”
However, “before then, the FBI and federal prosecutors allege Mohammadi sought to provide support for two people who were actively seeking to recruit and train members of ISIS-K, a division of the terrorist organization centered in Afghanistan’s Khorasan province. Investigators based their conclusions in part on a review of Mohammadi’s public Facebook posts, social media messages, and statements he allegedly made to a confidential informant in 2021. Mohammadi was also interviewed by the FBI in early October.” That seems to suggest that the evidence that Mohammadi was mixed up with ISIS-K comes from long after he filled out his form requesting security clearance, but there is some from before then.
Related: Hundreds of Biometric Watch List Afghanis Allowed into the U.S. Thanks, Joe!
The Star adds that “among the evidence referenced in support of the criminal charge were records obtained from Western Union that allegedly show Mohammadi wired $2,000 from a branch in Lenexa to a person in Afghanistan with the aim of having $400 given to an ISIS-K recruiter, identified as Individual #1, in May 2018. Authorities allege Mohammadi also shared Facebook posts around the time concerning that person’s arrest by Afghani national security forces.” That means that when Mohammadi filled out his form saying he had never associated with anyone “involved in activities to further terrorism,” he had already posted pro-ISIS material on Facebook, and American officials couldn’t be bothered to check even that before he was given his security clearance.
Then there is the fact that he was arrested in Kansas City. He was apparently one of the Afghans Old Joe Biden and his henchmen brought over here after their catastrophically botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, when Americans were told that we owed it to the people who had helped us over there to help them start a new life over here. Would Mohammad Rafi Mohammadi have repaid the kindness he was shown by connecting with other ISIS supporters and plotting a jihad attack on American soil? We may never know, but there is no indication at this point that he has had some major change of heart.
The real problem is within the DoD. The Defense Department was happy to hire Mohammad Rafi Mohammadi. Doing so proved they weren’t “Islamophobic.” At the same time, the Defense Department would never dream of hiring an opponent of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women. That would be “Islamophobic” in their eyes, and the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) would be all over it, with lavish media coverage. And so this episode with Mohammad Rafi Mohammadi will get hardly any media coverage at all. The DoD will repeat the same mistake any chance it gets. No lessons have been learned or will be, as long as the same corrupt establishment remains in charge.
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