Three people are accused of participating in an alleged Iranian plot to kill Trump during the campaign. And, according to a person familiar with the investigation cited by The Washington Post, two of the individuals are in custody and face conspiracy charges: Carlisle Rivera, 49, of Brooklyn, and Jonathan Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island .
Rivera and Loadholt appeared before a federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday and were ordered detained pending trial. His attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Indeed, the United States Department of Justice has filed criminal charges for an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump that was thwarted by the FBI, reports the Associated Press agency. The federal government has thus explained that these are criminal charges of an alleged murder-for-hire plot to take down Trump before this week’s presidential election, which he won over his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris.
The criminal complaint, filed in federal court in Manhattan, alleges that Farhad Shakeri, a suspected Afghan agent of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG), began an assignment to try to assassinate Trump in mid-to-late September, according to the criminal complaint filed this Friday. On October 7, the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel, Shakeri was given a deadline to come up with a plan to assassinate Trump, according to the complaint.
According to an FBI agent’s account included in court documents, Shakeri told investigators that his contacts believed Trump would lose the election and that it would be easier to go after him once he was defeated.
According to The New York Times, federal prosecutors report in their complaint that the contacted agent responded to the member of the Revolutionary Guard that the plan would cost an “enormous” amount of money, to which the IRGC member responded: “We have already spent a lot of money, money is not a problem.”
The New York newspaper also reports that the complaint also contains details that US authorities had thwarted another plot to assassinate Masih Alinejad, a Brooklyn-based human rights activist who has long denounced Iran’s repression against women.
According to prosecutors, Farhad Shakeri, 51, was in charge of carrying out the plan to assassinate Trump and Alinejad. Prosecutors said he was a fugitive and is believed to reside in Iran.
“The charges announced today expose Iran’s continued and brazen attempts to target American citizens, including President-elect Donald Trump, other government leaders, and dissidents critical of the regime in Tehran,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray: “Iran has been conspiring with criminals and hitmen to attack and shoot Americans on American soil and that will not be tolerated.”
In September, US intelligence services informed Trump of an alleged Iranian plot to kill him, his campaign said at the time. According to sources cited by the American media, the report, from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI, in its acronym in English), referred to a plan unrelated to the two failed assassination attempts against the then Republican candidate for presidency, and came amid reports suggesting that Iran was carrying out a hack against the Trump campaign.
The campaign then said that the information provided referred to “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate [a Trump] in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.”
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