US authorities file charges over alleged Iranian plot to kill Trump

Court documents show how Iranian officials asked Farhad Shakeri in September to focus on surveilling and ultimately assassinating Donald Trump

By: maltatoday.com

Nov 09 2024
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US authorities file charges o

The US Justice Department has charged an Iranian man in connection with an alleged murder-for-hire plot to kill Donald Trump before he was elected president.

“The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

According to court documents, Iranian officials asked Farhad Shakeri, 51, in September to focus on monitoring and assassinating Trump. Shakeri is still at large in Iran, the Justice Department said.

The official was quoted by Shakeri as saying that, "money’s not an issue."

The justice department also charged two others allegedly recruited to kill an American journalist who was an outspoken critic of Iran.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said in a statement carried by Iranian media on Saturday that the claim was a "repulsive" plot by Israel and Iranian opposition outside the country to "complicate matters between America and Iran."

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said the president-elect was aware of the assassination plot and nothing will deter him, "from returning to the White House and restoring peace around the world."

Shakeri told investigators that he was also tasked by his Revolutionary Guard contact with plotting the killings of two Jewish-Americans living in New York and Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka.

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.

The DOJ described Shakeri as a Revolutionary Guard asset residing in Tehran. It said he emigrated to the US as a child and was deported around 2008 following a robbery conviction.