Iran ordered an operative to assassinate Trump before the election, federal prosecutors say
NEW YORK — The Iranian government ordered an operative to assassinate Donald Trump before the 2024 election, Manhattan federal prosecutors said Friday, the latest in a string of assassination plots directed at the former and future president in recent months.
Prosecutors charged Farhad Shakeri with murder-for-hire and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He is believed to be in Iran and remains at large, prosecutors said.
In addition to the plot to kill Trump, Shakeri and two other men — Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt — were charged with a separate attempted murder-for-hire scheme targeting a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin who has publicly opposed the Iranian government.
According to a criminal complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court, Shakeri said during an FBI interview that in September he was directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran to surveil and kill Trump, whom the charging papers identify as "Victim-4."
When Shakeri told an IRGC official that doing so would prove expensive, the official responded that "money's not an issue," which Shakeri "understood to mean that the IRGC previously had spent a significant sum of money on efforts to murder Victim-4 and was willing to continue spending a lot of money in its attempt to procure Victim-4's assassination," according to the charging papers.
One month later, on Oct. 7, according to prosecutors, the IRGC ordered Shakeri to put forward a plan to assassinate Trump within one week and, if that proved impossible, to pause the plan until after Election Day, because the IRGC assumed Trump would lose, making him easier to kill. According to the complaint, Shakeri claimed in the FBI interview that he didn't "intend to propose a plan to murder" Trump within the timeframe dictated by the IRGC official.
Shakeri is an Afghan national who immigrated to the U.S. as a child, according to the complaint, and then was deported in 2008 after serving 14 years in New York state prisons after a 1994 conviction for robbery. The complaint describes Shakeri as having developed and used a network of criminal associates during his time in prison "to supply the IRGC with operatives to conduct surveillance and assassinations of IRGC targets."
In September and October of this year, according to prosecutors, Shakeri, while located in Tehran, participated in voluntary phone interviews with the FBI. Prosecutors said his reason for agreeing to speak to the FBI was "to attempt to obtain a sentence reduction for another individual" who is imprisoned in the U.S.
"Actors directed by the Government of Iran continue to target our citizens, including President-elect Trump, on U.S. soil and abroad," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian WIlliams said. "This has to stop."
FBI Director Chris Wray said that Iran "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 August, Brooklyn federal prosecutors charged a Pakistani man suspected of plotting on behalf of Iran to kill high-ranking U.S. politicians or officials — including perhaps Trump. The man is accused of trying to hire hit men to carry out the plot.
Separately, two Americans in unrelated incidents attempted to assassinate Trump this summer. One, Thomas Crooks, was shot and killed by the Secret Service after firing shots at Trump during a Pennsylvania rally in July. Another, Ryan Routh, was arrested and charged with attempted assassination after authorities said he waited with a semiautomatic rifle at Trump's Florida golf course while Trump was playing there.
Trump has been a target of Iran since January 2020, when, as president, Trump ordered a drone strike killing Qassem Soleimani, then Iran's most powerful military general.
Since then, Tehran has issued statements promising revenge for the drone strike as well as published videos depicting the death of Trump and others connected to the attack.
