An Iranian government asset has been charged in a foiled plot by the regime to assassinate Donald Trump ahead of the presidential election, the Department of Justice announced Friday.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps instructed Farhad Shaker to surveil and kill Trump, with an official asking the asset on October 7 to formulate an assassination plan within seven days, according to court documents.
If Shaker failed to meet the deadline, IRGC would "pause its plan to kill [Trump] until after the U.S. presidential elections" because the official believed that Trump would "lose the election and, afterward, it would be easier to assassinate [Trump]," the documents allege.
Shaker remains at large in Iran, prosecutors said. Shaker is an Afghan national who immigrated to the United States as a child but was deported around 2008 after serving a 14-year sentence for robbery, NBC reported.
The thwarted plot marks the latest effort by the Islamic Republic to target Trump and other American officials in retaliation for the 2020 drone strike, ordered by Trump, that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, a key figure in Iran’s military leadership.
Authorities also charged two American citizens, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathon Loadholt, for helping Iran in its plot to "silence and kill, on U.S. soil, an American journalist who has been a prominent critic of the regime," Attorney General Merrick Garland said. Arrested in New York, Rivera and Loadholt will be detained until their trial.
"There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran," Garland said. "We will not stand for the Iranian regime’s attempts to endanger the American people and America’s national security."