US charges man over alleged Iranian plot to kill Trump
The U.S. government has filed charges against an Afghan national about an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump before he was elected president.
On Friday, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against 51-year-old Farhad Shakeri, accusing him of being tasked with “developing a plan” to kill Trump.
The U.S. authorities have stated that Shakeri has not been arrested and is believed to be in Iran.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan, prosecutors claim that an official from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard instructed Shakeri in September to create a strategy to surveil and assassinate Trump.
“The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was directed to lead a network of criminal associates to advance Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement.
The Justice Department also charged two other individuals allegedly recruited for a plot to kill an American journalist critical of Iran.
The two individuals were identified as 49-year-old Carlisle Rivera, also known as “Pop,” from Brooklyn, and 36-year-old Jonathon Loadholt from Staten Island.
The pair appeared in court in the Southern District of New York on Thursday and are being held pending trial.
This year, Trump has been targeted in two separate assassination attempts. In July, a gunman shot at him during a rally in Pennsylvania, grazing his ear. In September, another man was arrested after pointing a rifle at Trump while he was golfing at his course in West Palm Beach.
Mr Shakeri was asked to come up with a plan to kill Trump in seven days, the indictment alleges.
According to prosecutors, Mr Shakeri told law enforcement that he did not intend to propose a scheme to kill Trump within that seven-day timeframe, so the Iranian Revolutionary Guard officials put the plan on pause.
Mr Shakeri said the Iranian government told him it would be easier to try to assassinate Trump after the election because they believed he would lose, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors described Mr Shakeri as an Afghan national who came to the US when he was a child. He was eventually deported around 2008 after spending 14 years in prison for a robbery conviction.
Prosecutors say the 51-year-old used “a network of criminal associates”, from prison, including Mr Rivera and Mr Loadholt, to conduct surveillance on the Iranian government’s targets.
Mr Shakeri promised Mr Rivera and Mr Loadholt $100,000 to murder the American journalist, who had reported on the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses and corruption, prosecutors alleged. The journalist, who was not named, had been targeted in the past, prosecutors said.
In a post on social media Friday, Brooklyn-based journalist Masih Alinejad said the FBI had arrested two men for attempting to kill her. She said the alleged killers came to the front of her house in Brooklyn.
“I came to America to practice my First Amendment right to freedom of speech—I don’t want to die,” Ms Alinejad wrote. “I want to fight against tyranny, and I deserve to be safe.”
In addition to the American journalist and Trump, the indictment alleges the Iranian government sought to kill two Jewish American businesspeople living in New York City, who were supportive of Israel on social media.
Mr Shakeri also told prosecutors that his Iranian contacts asked him to plan a mass shooting to target Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka in October 2024, a year after the Hamas attacks on Israel.
Mr. Shakeri, Mr. Rivera, and Mr. Loadholt were all charged with murder-for-hire, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. They also face counts of money laundering conspiracy – which could lead to 20 years in prison – and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire.
