The U.S. Department of Justice has revealed federal charges over an Iranian plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump.
This plot, allegedly directed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), involved 51-year-old Afghan national Farhad Shakeri, who remains at large in Iran.
According to court documents, Shakeri was instructed by an IRGC contact in Tehran in September 2024 to surveil and ultimately assassinate Trump within a seven-day timeframe.
FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland detailed the scope of the plot in statements issued Friday.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Garland stated.
Shakeri, who spent 14 years in U.S. prison before being deported in 2008, allegedly used his connections within the American criminal network to recruit two New York-based men for the operation: Jonathan Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island, and Carlisle Rivera, 49, of Brooklyn.
The two men were arrested earlier this week, charged with aiding the Iranian government in surveillance activities targeting Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, and two unidentified Jewish-American businesspeople in New York.
The DOJ complaint states that Shakeri’s associates monitored Alinejad’s Brooklyn residence and her appearances at public events earlier this year.
Rivera allegedly complained in a voice memo, “This [Alinejad] is hard to catch, bro… there ain’t gonna be no simple pull up, unless there the luck of the draw.”
The IRGC, as alleged by Shakeri in interviews with FBI agents, diverted its focus to Trump and asked Shakeri to devise an assassination plan within one week.
According to Shakeri, Iranian officials expressed a willingness to delay the attack until after the U.S. election, assuming Trump might lose.
Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson, responded, “Nothing will deter [Trump] from returning to the White House and restoring peace around the world.”
Shakeri also revealed that his IRGC contact suggested a mass shooting targeting Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka, an alleged retaliation for the October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.
On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei dismissed the allegations as “completely baseless and rejected,” adding, “This is a malicious conspiracy by Zionist and anti-Iranian circles aimed at complicating issues between the U.S. and Iran.”
Alinejad, who was informed of the plot against her, shared her thoughts on X (formerly Twitter): “I came to America to practice my First Amendment right to freedom of speech—I don’t want to die.”
Both Loadholt and Rivera made their initial appearances in the Southern District of New York on Thursday, facing charges of conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, which could carry a maximum 10-year prison sentence, as well as money laundering conspiracy, which carries a possible 20-year sentence.
The U.S. government, which has warned of potential Iranian retaliation following the 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed IRGC General Qasem Soleimani, has heightened security measures.
