Daoud also expressed doubts. He often asked questions—and argued—with leaders of his mosque. They told him violence was wrong, and his parents also dissuaded him from thinking about it. But the “cousin” told Daoud that his sheikh had signed off on an attack.
On September 14, 2012, the undercover agent drove Daoud downtown to a parked green Jeep and told Daoud a bomb was in it. Daoud drove the Jeep to a downtown bar—the name hasn’t been released—and walked a block away. Daoud hedged for a moment, but the agent “dispelled the doubts [the] defendant had even in the final minutes, and stood next to him when [the] defendant pressed the trigger to detonate the fake bomb,” his attorneys wrote in a court filing.
There was no explosion—but FBI agents appeared on the scene and placed Daoud under arrest.
In the time since, Daoud’s lawyers have battled prosecutors over access to evidence against him that was collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which gives the government broad powers to gather electronic data without warrants. But in June 2014 the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Daoud’s attorneys would not get to see all of the evidence because “there are indeed compelling reasons of national security for their being classified.”