US Justice Department announces charges in alleged Iranian plot to kill Trump

'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 says

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - The Justice Department announced charges Friday in a murder-for-hire plot to kill President-elect Donald Trump alleged to have been orchestrated by a Iranian official.

Farhad Shakeri, 51, of Iran; Carlisle Rivera, 49, of Brooklyn, New York; and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island, New York have been charged with murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and money laundering conspiracy. They face a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison if convicted on all charges.

Shakeri was separately charged with conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and sanctions against the Government of Iran.

Each of those charges carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.

“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," he added.

The charges reflect just the latest development in what authorities say are Iran's ongoing efforts to avenge the death of longtime Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) leader Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated in a US airstrike in Baghdad in 2020 at Trump's direction.

Shakeri told investigators during an interview that the IRGC tasked him on Oct. 7 with developing a plan to assassinate Trump, which Shakeri claimed he did not intend to fulfill within Iran's timeline, the Justice Department said in a statement.

He further said he was tasked with surveilling two Jewish Americans, and was offered $500,000 by an IRGC official to kill either of them, according to the Justice Department.

Shakeri remains in Iran.

The two other men -- Rivera and Loadholt -- were arrested Friday in New York. They had met Shakeri in prison while he was serving a 14-year sentence after being convicted of robbery, law enforcement said. Shakeri, who immigrated to the US as a child, was deported in 2008 after serving his term.

The Justice Department said "in recent months" Shakeri used the criminal contacts he developed in prison to provide the IRGC with operatives, including Rivera and Loadholt, to use to conduct surveillance against assassination targets in the US.

Sharkeri directed Rivera and Loadholt to surveil a US citizen of Iran, whom authorities describe as a journalist who was an "outspoken critic" of Tehran and was "the target of multiple prior plots for kidnapping and/or murder directed by the Government of Iran," the department said.

They then spent months monitoring the victim, who has not been named.

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