If you’re applying for a job at the FBI, it’s probably a good idea not to shitpost a heap of jihadi memes and jokes about blowing up Israelis. But if you simply must, don’t lie about your secret alt account when questioned by agents.
That’s allegedly what got Abdulwuhab Humayun in trouble, according to newly filed court records. FBI agents say Humayun posted anti-Semitic, jihadi-cheerleading memes on a Twitter account, @AmericanEmirate, for two years before he applied for a technical position at the bureau. Humayun later allegedly lied about owning the account and then tried to hide his tracks after agents questioned him about his online activities.
Humayun is now charged with one count of lying to federal agents after he allegedly covered up his association with the account.
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Neither Humayun nor his attorney responded to requests for comment from The Daily Beast. Prosecutors declined to comment on the charges.
In September 2019, court documents claim Humayun applied for an unspecified technical job at the FBI as part of the bureau’s Collegiate Hiring Initiative, kicking off a lengthy background investigation into him. In January 2020, FBI agents from the bureau’s Washington Field Office opened up an investigation into him “based on the determination that he owned and operated” the @AmericanEmirate account.
According to a federal affidavit filed Monday, Humayun allegedly opened his Twitter account, @AmericanEmirate, in 2018 and used it to post a variety of memes, many of which appeared to express pro-jihadist and Islamist sentiments. Agents wrote that they managed to trace the account to Humayun through subscriber records obtained from Twitter and Apple showing links to Humayun’s email address, phone number, and an IP address associated with his home address in northern Virginia.
“This is me,” one meme proclaimed next to a picture of a video game character dabbing, “After I cripple Israel’s ability to occupy Palestine by using improvised explosives.” Another showed a doctored picture of Yoda in Islamic dress with the words “Do jihad, I must. Kill infidels, I will.”
In another, singled out in an affidavit by FBI agents, Humayun allegedly tweeted “Let these kuffar n***** know that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) still has shooters out there” next to a picture of a man showing off assault rifles.
Other memes posted on the @AmericanEmirate account celebrated homophobia and ISIS’s murder of men accused of being gay in Iraq. “Cranky because you’re transphobic aren’t you. Oh no wait what are you do-AHHHHHHH” one meme read next to an ISIS propaganda photo of jihadist executioners throwing a blindfolded man off a building in Fallujah.
Shortly after the FBI began investigating the Twitter account, agents visited a Virginia gun range where Humayun allegedly visited and told staff he “had never fired a gun, and that he had never visited the range before.” Agents learned that he had “purchased an Arsenal SLR-106F semiautomatic assault rifle from an online firearms retailer” but didn’t understand basic range safety rules and was banned from returning to the facility.
In October, the FBI decided to question Humayun about his Twitter account and used the ruse of a fake pre-employment processing interview to raise the subject. Agents outfitted the room with covert cameras and microphones and told him their questions were part of a “routine public trust background investigation.”
When pressed about his Twitter accounts, Humayun allegedly first told them he had a Twitter account registered in his first name (no such account existed). After agents reminded him that intentionally withholding information could end his hopes of a job, Humayun allegedly told agents he remembered using a Twitter account with the name @mrdangeroush. According to the complaint, @mrdangeroush was the handle previously associated with Humayun’s account before he switched it a number of times—most recently to @AmericanEmirate.
After the interview, agents claim that Humayun tried to hide his association with the @AmericanEmirate Twitter account by setting it to private. He then allegedly registered a new account using the @mrdangeroush name he had mentioned in the interview and gave it a bio (“Placeholder for a Twitter Bot that utilizes Twitter API”). Agents called the account a “decoy made with the intention of highlighting his computer science and computer programming skills” and thereby making his Twitter use seem more innocuous to help him get a technical job at the bureau.
Humayan was arrested on Tuesday. He was released on his own recognizance with the condition that he stay off social media. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Friday afternoon.
The @AmericanEmirate account continued to post memes after Humayun’s interview in October up until its final post on Dec. 5, shortly before his arrest. “Take it easy Yahudi,” a photoshopped image of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson says to an anti-Semitic caricature of a Jewish man. “They're just Islamist memes.”
