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A 17-Year-Old in Texas Tried to Assassinate a Congressman for ISIS

On October 17, Rep. Keith Self went to a veterans' fundraiser in North Texas, a chili cook-off featuring former Dallas Cowboys players, and spent the afternoon tasting.

"I judged 19 different chilies and three different pots of beans," he said afterward.

According to federal law enforcement sources, that cook-off was supposed to be the scene of an ISIS attack.

Twelve days earlier, on October 5, FBI agents arrested a 17-year-old in McKinney, Texas, a suburb north of Dallas in Self's own district. Investigators believe the teen had been radicalized by ISIS material he found online and was planning a terrorist attack on the terror group's behalf, with Congressman Self as his main target. Agents had been monitoring him, and they moved in after he got his hands on a firearm.

Self's team learned about the arrest from U.S. Capitol Police the next day. Law enforcement told the congressman the teen had planned to "perhaps try to shoot at me," along with a broader terrorist attack.

"I am grateful to the FBI and law enforcement for stopping this threat," Self said. "We understand it could have been a very serious incident from what we've been told."

The teen hasn't been named, and no charges have been made public. Federal cases involving minors are kept confidential by law, which is why the public learned about the arrest more than two weeks later, when the story broke and Self confirmed it on October 21. The FBI has declined to comment while the investigation continues.

The target makes sense. Self represents Texas's 3rd District and has become one of the loudest voices in Congress against radical Islam. He has backed legislation denouncing Sharia law and opposing any attempt to bring it into American life, and he helped found the Sharia-Free America Caucus with Rep. Chip Roy.

Critics have called that kind of work overblown. Now a teenager in Self's own district stands accused of planning to kill him for ISIS.

The plot didn't come from a training camp overseas. Investigators believe it came from a phone or a laptop in a Texas suburb. ISIS lost its so-called caliphate years ago, but its propaganda still reaches American kids online, and it only takes one of them with a gun.

Self has been in Congress long enough to know threats come with the job. "We knew there were threats," he said, "but nothing has risen to the level of an arrest." His team "did change our situational awareness," he said, and he kept his schedule anyway.

"This will not deter me," Self said. He has vowed to keep fighting radical Islam, the cause that apparently made him a target in the first place.

Even his Democratic opponent in next month's election, Evan Hunt, publicly condemned the alleged plot.

In the end, the FBI found the teen, watched him, and stopped him after he got a gun and before he could use it. The chili cook-off went ahead with Self as a judge, and as he put it: "nothing, of course, happened."

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