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The US Justice Department has uncovered an Iranian assassination plot to kill Donald Trump, charging a man who said he was instructed by a government official before this week’s election to plot to kill the Republican president-elect.
Investigators learned of the plot to assassinate Trump from Farhad Shakeri, an accused Iranian government aide who spent time in US prisons for robbery and who authorities say maintained a network of criminal associates hired by Tehran to oversee and plan the assassinations.
Shakeri told investigators that a contact in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard directed him last September to put aside other work he was doing and put together a plan within seven days to surveil and ultimately kill Trump, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court.
Shakeri quoted the official as saying that he had “already spent a lot of money” and that “money is not the problem”.
Shakeri told investigators that the official told him that if he failed to come up with a plan within seven days, the plot would be put on hold until after the election because the official assumed Trump would lose and it would be easier to kill him then, the complaint said.
Shakeri is free and remains in Iran.
Two other men were arrested on charges that Shakeri had recruited them to follow and kill prominent Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, who suffered multiple Iranian assassination plots foiled by law enforcement.
“I’m very shocked,” Alinejad told The Associated Press by phone from Berlin, where she was scheduled to attend a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the fall of the wall.
“This is the third attempt against me and it’s shocking.”
In a post on social media platform X, she said: “I came to America to exercise my First Amendment right to free speech – I don’t want to die.”
“I want to fight tyranny and I deserve to be safe. I thank the police for protecting me, but I call on the US government to protect America’s national security.”
Attorneys for the other two defendants, identified as Jonathan Loadholt and Carlisle Rivera, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
The Iranian mission to the UN declined to comment.
Shakeri, an Afghan national who immigrated to the U.S. as a child but was later deported after spending 14 years in prison for robbery, also told investigators that his contact with the Revolutionary Guard tasked him with planning the murders of two Jewish-Americans who lived in New York. York and Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka.
Officials say he overlapped with Rivera while in prison, as well as an unidentified co-conspirator.
The criminal complaint says Shakeri revealed some of the details of the alleged plot in a series of taped phone conversations with FBI agents while in Iran.
The stated reason for his cooperation, he told investigators, was to try to get a reduced prison sentence for an associate behind bars in the US
According to the complaint, although officials determined that some of the information he provided was false, his statements about a plot to kill Trump and Iran’s willingness to pay large sums of money were found to be true.
The plot, revealed just days after Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris, reflects what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target US government officials, including Trump, on American soil.
Last summer, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran in an assassination plot targeting US officials.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as serious a threat to the national security of the United States as Iran,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Friday.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said the case demonstrates Iran’s “continued brazen attempts to target American citizens,” including Trump, “other government leaders and dissidents critical of the regime in Tehran.”
Iranian operatives also carried out an operation to hack and leak emails belonging to Trump campaign aides, in what officials described as an attempt to interfere in the presidential election.
Intelligence officials said Iran opposes Trump’s re-election, seeing him as more likely to increase tensions between Washington and Tehran.
The Trump administration ended the Iran nuclear deal, reimposed sanctions and ordered the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, an act that prompted Iranian leaders to vow revenge.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said the president-elect was aware of the assassination plot and that nothing would stop him “from returning to the White House and restoring peace around the world.”
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