Iranian agents plotted to kill Donald Trump, Justice Department says

The FBI thwarted an Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump before he was re-elected as president, in a case that underscores the barrage of security threats Trump faces even before he takes office.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, left, and US President-elect Donald Trump, right. Picture: AFP

The FBI thwarted an Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump before he was re-elected as president, the Justice Department said in a case unsealed Friday that underscores the barrage of security threats Trump faces even before he takes office.

An Iranian operative told law enforcement that an official in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard directed him in September to put together a plan to surveil and ultimately kill Trump, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said in the criminal complaint.

The operative, identified as Farhad Shakeri, warned the official that crafting such a plan would cost a huge amount of money. In response, the official said, “we have already spent a lot of money ... money’s not an issue.”

The official in October told Shakeri if he couldn’t pull together a plan within seven days, they would put the assassination plot on hold until after the election, believing Trump would lose and it would be easier to kill him then, the complaint says.

Iran’s foreign ministry on Saturday called the allegations that Tehran was behind a plot against Trump “totally unfounded”.

The foreign ministry “rejects allegations that Iran is implicated in an assassination attempt targeting former or current American officials”, spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said in a statement reported by AFP.

The foiled plot, revealed just days after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, highlights what officials have described as ongoing attempts to target US government officials, dissidents and political figures, including Trump, on US soil. Federal prosecutors in August charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran with plotting to kill Trump, prompting officials to bolster his security while on the campaign trail.

Officials have long warned that Iran continues trying to retaliate for the January 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, leader of Iran’s Quds Force, the group responsible for Iran’s covert military operations abroad. Trump ordered the strike, which occurred in Baghdad, while he was in the White House.

The newly unsealed complaint also says authorities disrupted another plot to kill a Brooklyn human-rights activist who has been vocally critical of Iran’s treatment of women.

Iran “has been conspiring with criminals and hit men to target and gun down Americans on US soil, and that simply won’t be tolerated,” Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray said.

Shakeri, 51, and two others – Carlisle “Pop” Rivera, 49, of Brooklyn and Jonathan Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island – were charged in what prosecutors described as a network of criminal associates tasked by Iran to further assassination plots on targets including Trump. The three were each charged with murder-for-hire and other, related crimes. Court records don’t indicate who is representing the three.

Rivera and Loadholt were arrested and appeared in federal court Thursday; Shakeri remains at large living in Iran. He immigrated to the US as a child and was deported sometime around 2008 after serving 14 years in prison for robbery.

Prosecutors said Shakeri had recently recruited men he met in prison, including Rivera and Loadholt, to help participate in other assassinations against other targets, including the activist.

Investigators learned of the plot against Trump while interviewing Shakeri, who told them he did not intend to propose a plan to kill Trump within Iran’s tight time frame, according to the complaint.

The Wall Street Journal