The Department of Justice announced Friday that it charged three people in connection to an alleged plot that originated in Iran to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump before the 2024 election.
DOJ prosecutors said in charging documents that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a militant group based in Iran, asked one of the defendants in September to monitor Trump and develop a plan to kill him.
The defendant, Farhad Shakeri, is based in Tehran and still at large, prosecutors said.
The prosecutors alleged, based on interviews the FBI conducted with Shakeri and other evidence, that an IRGC official asked Shakeri to “put aside his other efforts on behalf of the IRGC and focus on surveilling and, ultimately, assassinating former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.”
After Shakeri told the IRGC official that the task would be costly, the official allegedly responded that the IRGC had spent a lot of money already and that “money’s not an issue.”
Shakeri “understood [the response] to mean that the IRGC previously had spent a significant sum of money on efforts to murder [Trump] and was willing to continue spending a lot of money in its attempt to procure [Trump’s] assassination,” prosecutors wrote.
Intelligence officials have said in recent months that Iran poses a growing threat to Trump and other political leaders. The indictment, which was brought in the Southern District of New York, underscored that notion.
The revelation that the IRGC allegedly planned to murder Trump came as part of a broader set of charges against Shakeri and two others, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathon Loadholt, who have been arrested by authorities and are being detained until their trial.
Shakeri, Rivera, and Loadholt allegedly were also in the process of carrying out an elaborate plan to kill a U.S. journalist whose coverage has been critical of the Iranian government. They also face allegations of money laundering, which was part of their “murder-for-hire” plot against the journalist, prosecutors said.
FBI Director Christopher Wray praised his agents in a statement for thwarting what he described as “deadly schemes” to take out Trump, the journalist, and others.
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“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,” Wray said. “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.”