Federal charges were filed in a thwarted Iranian plot to kill Donald Trump before the presidential election. The Justice Department said Iranian officials asked Farhad Shakeri, 51, in September to focus on surveilling and ultimately assassinating Trump. Shakeri is at large in Iran. Prosecutors say Shakeri – who participated in recorded conversations with law enforcement – was tasked by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to carrying out other assassinations against U.S. and Israeli citizens IRGC officials told Shakeri on October 7 to focus only on Trump, court documents say, and that he had seven days to formulate an assassination plan, CNN reports.
Shakeri, an Afghan national living in Tehran, told investigators that if he was unable to do come up with a plan in that timeframe, the IRGC would wait until after the presidential election to move forward, as they believed Trump would lose. Two others charged on Friday, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt, were arrested in New York and accused of helping the Iranian government surveil another U.S. citizen of Iranian origin. “There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland. “The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump.” The U.S. has repeatedly raised concerns that Iran may try to retaliate for a 2020 US drone strike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a top general in the IRGC, by trying to kill Trump, who ordered the strike. ,
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