Following the deadly Jan. 1, 2025, attack on New Orleans' Bourbon Street, rumors circulated that the attacker had donated to the Democratic Party via ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising platform.
The claim seemingly originated with an X post that said (archived): "Well, well, well. Look who donated to Democrats on ActBlue then drove a truck through a crowd in New Orleans with an ISIS flag," in reference to a flag authorities reportedly found on the vehicle used in the attack. The post included a screenshot from the Federal Election Commission's (FCC) website showing $20 of contributions in 2014 and 2020 via ActBlue under the name "Shamsud-Din Jabbar."
The FBI identified the driver, who was killed by police, as someone with the same name — Shamsud-Din Jabbar. According to the FBI, he was a 42-year-old Texas resident.
(X user @DC_Draino)
A similar screenshot supposedly showing political donations by the attacker also circulated on X, and the Daily Wire published the headline, "Alleged New Orleans Terrorist Donated To Democrats."
The screenshots authentically showed contributions to ActBlue by someone with the Jabbar name, according to the FEC's website. However, there was no concrete evidence to link those donations to the attacker specifically.
Media reports and a social media page (archived) indicate that person named by the FBI was likely in North Carolina in 2014 and Texas in 2020, as the contributions state. We reached out to the employers listed on the donations to ask whether a person with the "Jabbar" name indeed worked for them and whether that same person was named by the FBI as the driver in the New Year's Day attack.
(Federal Election Committee)
The first contribution listed by the FEC was a $5 donation made on Aug. 31, 2014, to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee via ActBlue. The DCCC works to elect Democratic candidates to the U.S. House of Representatives. The donor identified as a soldier in the U.S. Army based in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
The U.S. Army said in a statement that the driver in the attack was a veteran. According to the agency, he served as a human resource specialist and information technology specialist from 2007 to January 2015, a period that overlapped with the in-question donation.
Citing unidentified court documents, CNN reported he was stationed at Fort Liberty — then called Fort Bragg — near Fayetteville in November 2014. We reached out to the Army to confirm that reporting. If true, the attacker's location was the same as the person who donated the $5.
The second contribution listed by the FEC was a $15 donation made on May 7, 2020, to the "Action PAC - Unlimited" — a federal political action committee that's now called the Grassroots Law PAC. The PAC works to elect candidates "committed to reducing mass incarceration and police violence," according to its website. The donor identified as a consultant at EY, a consulting firm, in Fresno, Texas.
We have reached out to EY to confirm whether the attacker was employed with them in Fresno in 2020. According to a RocketReach page (archived), Jabbar held a handful of roles at EY in 2020 and 2021. Deloitte, another firm listed on the page as an employer of Jabbar, said in a statement that Jabbar started working there in 2021, per The Associated Press. But reputable sources have not confirmed his alleged employment with EY.
Grassroots Law PAC, unlike the DCCC, is not run by the Democratic Party. It was founded by Lee Merritt, a civil rights lawyer, and Shaun King, a civil rights activist. However, according to Open Research, a research group that tracks the flow of money in U.S. politics, contributions in 2022 supported only Democratic candidates. That was the only election cycle that the PAC had contributed in, as of this writing.