THE Department of Justice has unsealed federal charges against an Iranian official in connection with a thwarted plot to kill President-elect Donald Trump.
The alleged assassination plot against Trump was planned to take place before the November 5 presidential election, according to a criminal complaint.
An unnamed official with Iran‘s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard contacted a man identified as Farhad Shakeri in September and instructed him to put together a plan to take out Trump, 78, federal officials said.
Shakeri, a career criminal who previously served 14 years in a United States prison for a robbery conviction, used a network of criminal associates he met in prison to conduct surveillance and assassination operations on behalf of the Iranian government.
Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt, two of Shakeri’s co-defedants, spent months surveilling a US citizen of Iranian origin residing in America who has been publicly outspoken of the Iranian regime.
Rivera and Loadholt, who were promised $100,000 by Shakeri, worked to locate and kill the US citizen, who was not named in the DOJ’s indictment.
In February, Rivera and Loadholt traveled to Fairfield University, where the victim was slated to appear, and provided Shakeri with photographs of the campus.
Then, in April, Shakeri and Rivera exchanged a series of voice messages discussing their target’s routine and how the victim spent most of her time at home.
“You just gotta have patience,” Shakeri told Rivera in one of the voice notes, according to the DOJ.
“You gotta wait and have patience to catch her either going in the house of coming out, or following her out somewhere and taking care of it.
“Don’t think about going in. In is a suicide move.”
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