Published: 1:42am, 9 Nov 2024Updated: 3:19am, 9 Nov 2024
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.
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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.
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Shakeri is at large and remains in Iran. Two other men who the authorities say were recruited to participate in other assassinations, including of a prominent Iranian-American journalist who has been targeted in murder-for-hire plots, were arrested Friday.