U.S. authorities thwarted an Iranian plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, new documents reveal.
The Justice Department unsealed criminal charges on Nov. 8 against three men who allegedly were involved in a murder-for-hire network orchestrated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which the United States designates as a terrorist organization.
“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,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in an associated statement.
“We will not stand for the Iranian regime’s attempts to endanger the American people and America’s national security.”
The Justice Department said that authorities arrested Carlisle Rivera and Jonathon Loadholt in the New York City area and that a third man, Farhad Shakeri, remained at large and was believed to be in Iran.
Shakeri immigrated to the United States as a child and was deported in about 2008 after serving 14 years in prison for a robbery conviction.
The criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan alleges that an unnamed official in the IRGC instructed Shakeri in September to put together a plan to surveil and ultimately kill Trump.
Shakeri was unable to create a plan by then, the complaint said, and the official told him Iran would pause its plan until after the presidential election because the official believed Trump would lose and it would be easier to assassinate him then.
Shakeri then went to work building a network of accomplices, offering $100,000 to locate and kill Trump and other people of U.S. and Israeli origin, according to the complaint.
“We have also charged and arrested two individuals who we allege were recruited as part of that network to silence and kill, on U.S. soil, an American journalist who has been a prominent critic of the regime,” Garland said.
The plot, with the charges unsealed just days after Trump’s defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election, reflects what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target U.S. government officials, including Trump, on U.S. soil.
The Justice Department’s statement said that these efforts include assault, kidnapping, and murder, both to repress and silence dissidents critical of the Iranian regime and to take vengeance for the January 2020 death of then-IRGC Commander Qasem Soleimani, who was killed by a Trump-ordered U.S. drone strike in Baghdad.
“The charges announced today expose Iran’s continued brazen attempts to target U.S. citizens, including President-elect Donald Trump, other government leaders and dissidents who criticize the regime in Tehran,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in an associated statement.
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — a designated foreign terrorist organization—has been conspiring with criminals and hitmen to target and gun down Americans on U.S. soil and that simply won’t be tolerated.”
