The FBI arrested an 18-year-old for allegedly planning a mass casualty attack at the Minnesota mall, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota said.
Page A206From§Eachthe matinee edition — 7 October 2026
THE SUPPLIED RIFLE
FBI thwarts Mall of America shooting by supplying the rifle, then arresting the 18-year-old for receiving it
As it ran on the front
The press release is a good piece of work, and I'd have left it in the glovebox with the registration if the New York Post hadn't boiled that same Wednesday down to one sentence with the word supplied sitting in the middle of it. I'm not being smart about the release. Two paragraphs, the district named, a petition filed Wednesday in St. Paul, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota standing behind it on camera. Somebody drafted that and somebody else read it back and tightened it; you can tell when a thing's been read twice. What spoiled it for me isn't in the release at all. It's the count. Wednesday's was the fourth one since mid-September.
I wrote this down. Hold on — back of an envelope, it's in here with the dog's shot record. Here. CBS News, Wednesday: federal authorities allege Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud "knowingly received a firearm and ammunition" while knowing, or having reasonable cause to believe, they would be used to commit a felony and a federal crime of terrorism. That's the petition in St. Paul. ABC has the U.S. attorney saying an 18-year-old was arrested for allegedly planning a mass casualty attack. Fox has it that Mohamud, 18, allegedly pledged allegiance to ISIS and allegedly discussed a mass shooting at the Mall of America before buying an AK-47. I'm keeping every allegedly in there, because Fox kept them in and there hasn't been a trial.…
…(cont) Then the Post, same arrest, same Wednesday: the FBI thwarted an attack on the Mall of America by a teenager after its agents provided an assault rifle. So I went back to the petition and read received one more time. Received is a verb with two ends on it. Does the sentence CBS quotes name the other end? Does the Post's? Fox has an AK-47 being bought and the Post has agents handing the rifle over — do the receipts carry two rifles, or one?
I had the same trouble in September, which is why I'm bothering you. On the 15th, CBS said the Bureau had thwarted a mass casualty attack inspired by ISIS in Pennsylvania: a 21-year-old, allegedly tracked to a hotel and arrested there, and the piece called it the second ISIS-related plot to surface since August. On the 16th came a details piece on that same arrest. Also on the 16th, and again on the 18th, one headline ran twice with one sentence under it: Jonathan Kramer "had armed himself to carry out a mass casualty attack against the American people." Four items on that case, three dates, one arrest. Armed himself. Wednesday's sentence from the Post runs the other direction. Does either sentence say where the gun came from?
Which brings me to the feeder, and I'm sorry, it's a small thing. Eleven dollars at the corner store last spring, hung off the maple in the yard. Inside a week I counted four squirrels on it. Four. Saturday I took it down, carried it out to the garage, set it on the shelf over the toolbox, came back in and told my wife I'd solved the squirrel problem. She asked where the squirrels came from. The maple. She asked what was in the feeder. Eleven dollars of sunflower seed, and I put it there. The dog watched the whole operation from the step and kept its own counsel. So here's my trouble. If I count those four squirrels as four problems, is the count a count of squirrels, or of feeders? There was one feeder. I bought it, I filled it, and I'm the one who announced the result.
Excuse me — before you get your coat, one more and I'm out of your way. The government's filing uses the word received. The Post's sentence fills in the end of that verb the filing leaves open: agents. Four announcements since mid-September, and the one Wednesday has the Bureau on both ends of a single sale. So the small question, and then I'll go: of the two sentences a reader got that day, which one is the government's word, and which one is the word supplied?
“Two sentences came out of the same Wednesday: the Bureau thwarted the attack, and the Bureau's agents handed over the rifle — the press conference wants credit for both, and only one of them is a rescue. That's four of these announcements since mid-September, and the hardware keeps arriving from the same outfit that announces the arrest. Now an 18-year-old is facing a federal terrorism charge for taking a gun off the one counter in Minnesota where the seller writes the indictment.”
“Nobody got shot at the Mall of America — that's the headline, that's the whole ballgame, and you want the version where a real seller fills that order? Did I say seller? That doesn't sound like me; the point is the agents controlled that weapon the entire time, which is exactly why it was safe to give it to him. Look, the U.S. attorney said mass casualty attack and I'm not second-guessing the U.S. attorney, I'm just saying four announcements since September is four attacks that didn't happen, and nobody's sending the Bureau a thank-you note.”
The receipts
Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, 18, allegedly pledged allegiance to ISIS and discussed a mass shooting at the Mall of America before buying an AK-47 rifle.
An 18-year-old Twin Cities man accused of telling an FBI informant he planned to carry out an attack later this month at Mall of America was arrested at gunpoint Tuesday in Richfield, Minnesota, during an arranged meeting to buy an assault rifle, according to a federal criminal complaint filed Wednesday.
The FBI thwarted an attack on the Mall of America by a teenager after agents supplied him with an assault rifle, authorities announced Wednesday.
· FBI says it foiled an ISIS-inspired plot in Pennsylvania from the morgue, 15 Sep 2026
· FBI investigation thwarts "mass casualty attack" from man accused of ISIS allegiance from the morgue, 18 Sep 2026
· FBI investigation thwarts "mass casualty attack" from man accused of ISIS allegiance from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
· Details on arrest of 21-year-old man for alleged ISIS-inspired "mass casualty attack" plot from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.