Three people have been charged in an alleged Iran-linked plot to assassinate Donald Trump prior to the election, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Friday in New York.
According to court documents, Iranian officials asked one of the men charged, Farhad Shakeri, in September to focus on surveilling and assassinating Trump. He remains at large in Iran.
Two New Yorkers, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt, have also been arrested and charged with murder-for-hire, the DOJ said.
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Shakeri told investigators that his Revolutionary Guard contacts paused the effort to try to kill Trump when he failed to come up with a solid plan.
Shakeri allegedly met Rivera and Loadholt while in prison on robbery charges and hired them to assassinate Brooklyn human-rights activist Masih Alinejad, who has criticized Iran’s oppression of women.
Alinejad posted on social media that she was one of the targets. “I am shocked. I just learned from the @FBI that two men were arrested yesterday in a new plot to kill me at Fairfield University, where I was scheduled to give a talk.”
In 2022, an assassin went to Alinejad‘s house and knocked on the door, which she didn’t answer because she was in the middle of a Zoom meeting. The suspect then returned to his car, ran a stop sign and was stopped by police, which led to his arrest on the murder-for-hire scheme.
Rivera and Loadholt made their initial appearance in court on Thursday, the Justice Department said, and are being detained pending trial.
The U.S. government has repeatedly raised concerns that Iran may try to retaliate for a 2020 U.S. drone strike, ordered by Trump, which killed top IRGC Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
Trump survived a couple of attempts on his life in the final few months of his campaign. He was shot at during a campaign rally in July. In August, a second man was accused of attempted assassination when he was found staking out Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and golf course in Florida.
