Three individuals have reportedly been charged for involvement in an Iran-linked effort to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Friday.
Three men have been charged for their connections to an alleged conspiracy to kill a critic of the Iranian regime on American soil and to a broader effort to carry out plots against Trump and other enemies of Tehran, according to the DOJ. Two suspects — Carlisle Rivera and Jonathon Loadholt, both of New York City — have been arrested, while Farhad Shakeri of Iran remains at-large and is thought to be in his home country.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “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. 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. We will not stand for the Iranian regime’s attempts to endanger the American people and America’s national security.”
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The DOJ describes Shakeri as an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “asset” who used contacts he established in American prison to carry out plots against targets of the Iranian regime. The IRGC asked Shakeri to devise a plot to assassinate Trump on Oct. 7, though he purportedly did not plan to develop a strategy to do so within the timeline requested by the IRGC, a State Department-identified Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).
All three men have been hit with murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and money laundering conspiracy charges, and Shakeri also faces charges related to providing support for a FTO, according to the DOJ.
The IRGC operative who allegedly asked Shakeri to devise a plot to kill the president-elect gave Shakeri a week to come up with a plan, stating that the IRGC would pause its effort to assassinate Trump after that amount of time until after the U.S. elections, according to the DOJ’s complaint. The IRGC operative allegedly instructing Shakeri believed that Trump would lose the election and would be easier to target as a result, the indictment states.
“President-Elect Trump is aware of the attempted assassination plot by the Iranian terrorist regime,” Trump communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Nothing will deter President Trump from returning to the White House and restoring peace around the world.”
“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 a statement. “The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — a designated foreign terrorist organization — has been conspiring with criminals and hitmen to target and gun down Americans on U.S. soil and that simply won’t be tolerated.”
In his first term, Trump and his administration cracked down hard on the Iranian regime with sanctions and by eliminating former IRGC leader Qassem Soleimani in 2020. The president-elect has pledged to significantly harden America’s posture against the Iranians again in his second term in the White House.
Featured Image Credit: Michael Vadon
