The US Department of Justice announced this Friday (8) federal charges against three people believed to be responsible for an Iranian plot to kill Donald Trump before the presidential election.
According to court documents, Iranian authorities asked one of the accused men, Farhad Shakeri, in September to focus on surveilling and assassinating Trump. Shakeri is still at large in Iran, the Justice Department said.
This alleged conspiracy was recently revealed and marks a possible assassination attempt on Trump by the Iranian regime.
Prosecutors allege that Shakeri – who participated in recorded conversations with police – was originally tasked by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to carry out other assassinations against American and Israeli citizens inside the US.
But guard officials told Shakeri on Oct. 7 to focus only on Trump, court documents say, and that he had seven days to formulate an assassination plan.
Shakeri told investigators that if he was unable to come up with a plan within that time, the guard would wait until after the presidential election to move forward, as they believed Trump would lose.
The other two accused individuals, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathon Loadholt, who are American citizens, were arrested in New York and are accused of helping the Iranian government surveil an American citizen of Iranian origin.
They made their first court appearance on Thursday, the Justice Department said, and are being held pending trial.
In statements, both Attorney General Merrick Garland and the director of the FBI, the US federal investigations agency, Christopher Wray denounced the Iranian government’s continued threats against individuals in the United States.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as Iran. The Department of Justice has charged an Iranian regime asset who was tasked by the regime with directing a network of criminal associates to further assassination plots of Iran against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump,” Garland said.
The U.S. government has repeatedly raised concerns that Iran may try to retaliate for a 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a top general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, by trying to kill Trump, who ordered the strike, or his former advisors.
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This content was originally published in USA formally accuses three people of alleged Iranian plot to kill Trump on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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