The Justice Department unsealed criminal charges Friday in a thwarted Iranian plot to kill President-elect Donald Trump before this week’s presidential election.
A criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan alleges that an unnamed official in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) instructed a contact this past September to surveil and ultimately assassinate Trump. In October, the complaint says the individual was tasked with putting together a plan to kill Trump.
If the man, identified as Farjad Shakeri, was unable to create a plan by then, the complaint said, the official told him Iran would pause its plan until after the presidential election because the official believed Trump would lose and it would be easier to assassinate him then, the complaint said.
According to the complaint, two other men were also arrested and charged for their alleged involvement in a “plot to murder a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin in New York.”
“We have also charged and arrested two individuals who we allege were recruited as part of that network to silence and kill, on U.S. soil, an American journalist who has been a prominent critic of the regime,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a release.
The two men are allegedly part of a network of criminal associates Shakeri set up, the criminal complaint says, to allegedly supply the IRGC with operatives to “conduct surveillance and assassinations of IRGC targets.”
The plot, with the charges unsealed just days after Trump’s defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris, reflects what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target U.S. government officials, including Trump, on U.S. soil.
“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,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in the release.
The complaint goes on to allege that the government of Iran is “actively targeting” U.S. nationals and its allies living in countries around the world for “attacks, including assault, kidnapping, and murder.” It says this is to both repress and silence dissidents critical of the Iranian regime and take vengence for the January 2020 killing of its top general Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. airstrike.
Shakeri, who has not been arrested or located, as well as the two men taken into custody, have all been charged with murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and money laundering conspiracy. Shakeri also faces charges of conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and sanctions against the Iranian government.
—with files from Global News’ Sean Previl