An Iranian government plot to hire hitmen to assassinate Donald Trump was thwarted just a month before the election, documents unsealed Friday reveal.
An Iranian man has been charged in the murder-for-hire scheme to take down the president-elect – who has survived two plots on his life in recent months – as revenge for the 2020 killing of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani.
Would-be assassin Farhad Shakeri, 51, has been described by the FBI as an ‘asset’ of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and is now on the run in Tehran.
Shakeri – along with New Yorkers Carlisle Rivera, 49, and Jonathan Loadholt, 36, – are also accused of targeting an Iranian-American activist and were offered $500,000 to kill two Jewish businessmen living in the U.S.
Iran repeatedly assured the hitmen that they would spend as much money as possible to make sure the assassinations were carried out.
The IRGC tasked Shakeri with surveilling and killing Trump to avenge the devastating drone strike that killed Soleimani, the leader of Iran‘s elite Quds Force, in January 2020.
Trump has been a target ever since Soleimani’s slaying, and during the campaign asked for military planes and larger Secret Service detail to protect him from Iranian threats.
In September he said he’d threaten to blow Iran ‘to smithereens’ if he was back in the White House and there were threats from Tehran.
Shakeri was ordered to assassinate Trump with just a month until millions of Americans went to the polls on November 5.
However, he told the FBI in recorded phone calls he didn’t plan to carry out the operation in the timeframe he was given.
Shakeri was then told to delay the plot, because Iran thought Trump would lose the election and it would then be easier to get to him without his full presidential-level Secret Service detail.
Shakeri was deported back to Iran in 2008 after serving a 14-year sentence for robbery in New York state prisons.
He maintained an extensive prison contact base that he eventually tapped into while planning the murder-for-hire plots.
