The US. Justice Department unveiled criminal charges on Friday in connection with an Iranian plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump before this week’s election.
A federal complaint filed in Manhattan accuses an unnamed Iranian official from the Revolutionary Guard of directing a contact in September to develop a plan to surveil and kill Trump.
The complaint states that if Farjad Shakeri, the contact, was unable to develop a plan by the specified time and the Iranian official instructed him to halt the plot until after the presidential election, as the official believed Trump would lose, making it easier to carry out the assassination later.
According to the complaint, Shakeri informed the FBI that he had no intention of proposing a plan to assassinate Trump within the seven-day timeframe set by the Iranian official. The charges, revealed shortly after Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris, what federal officials have described as continued Iranian attempts to target US government officials on home soil.