Donald Trump 'assassination plot' thwarted after Iran 'tries to hire hitmen'

A man who said he had been tasked by an Iranian government official to carry out the assassination of Donald Trump has been charged, the US Justice Department announced

The FBI has thwarted an Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump.

The US Justice Department announced the murder-for-hire plan to kill the president-elect Trump, charging a man who said he had been tasked by a government official to carry out the killing. Investigators learned of the plot while interviewing Farhad Shakeri, an Afghan national identified by officials as an Iranian government asset who was deported from the US after being imprisoned on robbery charges.

He told investigators that a contact in Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed him in September to put together a plan within seven days to surveil and ultimately kill Trump. Two other men who the authorities say were recruited to participate in other assassinations, including a prominent Iranian American journalist, were also arrested today. Shakeri remains in Iran.

"There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement announcing the charges. "The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran's assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald J Trump."

The plot, with the charges unsealed just days after Trump's defeat of Kamala Harris, reflects what officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target US government officials. Last summer, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran in a murder-for-hire plot.

Shakeri emigrated to the States but was deported in 2008 after serving prison time for robbery, according to the Justice Department. While in prison, he met Rivera and Loadholt and hired them to target an Iranian American activist living in Brooklyn, according to the complaint.