An Iranian has been charged with plotting to kill president-elect Donald Trump in the run-up to the election.
According to a criminal filing in federal court in Manhattan, an Iranian official contacted a man called Farjad Shakeri in September and tasked him with finding a means of killing Trump.
Shakeri claims to have been told that if he couldn’t kill Trump before the election, he should wait until afterwards, because the Iranian regime anticipated that Trump would lose, and therefore be easier to target then.
The official told Shakeri, “We have already spent a lot of money” on the plot and that “money’s not an issue.”
Shakeri spent time in American prisons for robberies and authorities say he maintains a network of contacts and assets for surveillance and murder missions on behalf of the Iranian regime.
Shakeri remains at large in Iran.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland 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.”
In addition to the apparent plot against Trump, Shakeri claims to have been tasked with murdering Jewish Americans in New York and Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka.
The criminal complaint states that Shakeri disclosed details of the alleged plots in a series of recorded telephone interviews with FBI agents while in Iran. The reason for his cooperation, he told investigators, was to get a reduced prison sentence for an associate who remains in prison in the US.