FBI thwarts Iranian plot to murder Donald Trump
A suspect, identified as Farhad Shakeri, was allegedly ordered by an official to come up with a plan to kill Trump before the election
The US Justice Department on Friday disclosed an Iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill Donald Trump, charging a man who said he had been tasked by a government official before this week’s election with planning the assassination of the Republican president-elect.
Investigators learned of the plan to kill Trump from Farhad Shakeri, an accused Iranian government asset who spent time in American prisons for robbery and who authorities say maintains a web of criminal associates who participate in Tehran’s assassination plots.
Shakeri told investigators that a contact in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed him this past September to assemble a plan within seven days to surveil and ultimately kill Trump, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Manhattan.
The official was quoting by Shakeri as saying that “We have already spent a lot of money” and that “money’s not an issue”.
Shakeri told investigators the official told him that if he could not put together a plan within the seven-day time frame, then the plot would be paused until after the election because the official assumed Trump would lose and that it would be easier to kill him then, the complaint said.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said in a statement on Saturday that the claim was a “repulsive” plot by Israel and Iranian opposition outside the country to “complicate matters between America and Iran”.
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