The US Department of Justice revealed this Friday the existence of a foiled plot, allegedly behind Iran, to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump before this week’s presidential elections.
It was the US Department of Justice itself that filed criminal charges over an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Trump. An anonymous official from Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards ordered a contact last September to develop a plan to monitor and ultimately kill Donald Trumpaccording to a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.
This complaint alleges that Farhad Shakeri, an alleged Afghan agent of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), ordered the assassination of Trump between mid-September and late September. On October 7, anniversary of Hamas attack on IsraelShakeri was given a deadline to come up with a plan to assassinate Trump, according to the complaint made public Friday.
An FBI agent reported, according to court documents, that Shakeri, the member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, said: His contacts thought Donald Trump would lose the election and that it would be easier to pursue him once defeated.
The FBI agent told the IRGC member during interrogation that the project would cost a “huge” amount of money, to which the IRGC member responded, “We have already spent a lot of money, money is not a problem.”
Three attacks against Donald Trump
The now American president-elect, Donald Trump, was the target of three attacks or attempted attacks during the last election campaign. The most serious was the one that occurred in Pennsylvania on July 13 of this year. An assassination attempt occurred while the former president of the United States and then Republican presidential candidate was holding a rally at a fairgrounds in Butler, Pennsylvania. A shooter, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooksshot Trump, wounding him in the right ear. The attacker fired from an elevated position with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and was killed by a member of the Secret Service’s Rapid Response Team.
The second assassination attempt against Donald Trump took place on September 26, while he was playing golf at his club in West Palm Beach, Florida. The Secret Service had cordoned off the area, as it usually does after the attack in Pennsylvania. Agents shot and killed the terrorist, identified by the FBI as Ryan Wesley Routh, after seeing him with an AK-47. The attacker then fled in an SUV and was later arrested in a neighboring county.
On October 12, police foiled a “possible third assassination attempt” against Trump a minute before his scheduled rally in Coachella, California. A Nevada man was arrested with a shotgun, a loaded handgun and ammunition at a security checkpoint outside a Donald Trump rally, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office reported . Officers stopped the suspect’s vehicle and then charged him with illegal possession of a loaded firearm. He was later released on bail and will appear in court on January 2.
