FBI says it stopped an ISIS inspired teen from shooting up the Mall of America

The FBI says it has stopped a mass shooting before it started, and the target was one of the busiest public buildings in America.

Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, 18, an American citizen of Somali descent living in the Twin Cities, was arrested Tuesday and charged Wednesday with terrorism offenses. According to the criminal complaint, Mohamud bought an AK-47 rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition from a person he believed was a weapons supplier. The supplier was an undercover FBI agent.

Prosecutors say Mohamud planned to attack the Hmong Arts Celebration at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota on October 24, a crowded cultural event at the country's largest shopping mall. In messages recovered by investigators, he wrote that he wanted to "harm the Jew" and to kill "maybe 30 to 60 people." He chose the mall in part, prosecutors say, because it is Jewish owned. He pledged allegiance to ISIS in a video posted to Discord and cited the Bondi Beach attack as his inspiration.

U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen of Minnesota announced the case Wednesday. The arrest came after months of investigation in which agents tracked the teenager's online activity and then inserted an undercover operative into the plot, a classic sting structure that law enforcement has used for decades and that defense lawyers will surely attack as entrapment.

The plot sits at the intersection of two currents this country keeps failing to dam. The first is the reach of foreign terrorist branding into the phones of American teenagers, where a pledge video on Discord can turn a lonely kid into a self declared soldier of the Islamic State. The second is the selection of targets by faith, the open selection of Jewish owned spaces for murder. Both currents were present in the Bondi attack he studied. The FBI got to him before the celebration. The celebration goes on.