The Justice Department announced on Friday that it uncovered more evidence of an Iranian plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump—but the evidence of such a plot is the word of a criminal in Iran, who told the FBI about the conspiracy over the phone.
The DOJ’s announcement was included in charges against Farhad Shakeri, 51, of Iran; Carlisle Rivera, also known as Pop, 49, of Brooklyn, New York; and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island, New York—who are all accused of plotting to kill a U.S. journalist of Iranian origin.
While Shakeri is one of the defendants, the government’s criminal complaint shows that he appears to have been snitching to the FBI in recent months. According to the charging papers, Shakeri participated in phone interviews with the FBI from Iran on September 30, October 8, October 17, October 28 and November 7—ostensibly trading information in exchange for a sentence reduction for an unidentified individual.
I've read some dubious criminal complaints before, but this is truly one to behold.
It's not even a manufactured plot. The FBI's basis for claiming an Iranian assassination plot against Trump comes from one of the defendants charged in this case, who was essentially acting as an… https://t.co/vGzhCDgUvo pic.twitter.com/BD97CsWnaE— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) November 8, 2024
In one of those interviews, Shakeri—who was deported from the United States in 2008 after serving fourteen years in prison for robbery—told the FBI that an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps official was pushing him to assassinate Trump. The IRGC official is unidentified but appears to be known to the U.S. government.
“According to SHAKERI, in approximately mid-to-late September 2024, IRGC Official-I asked SHAKERI to put aside his other efforts on behalf of the IRGC and focus on surveilling, and, ultimately, assassinating, former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump (‘Victim-4’ herein),” the criminal complaint said.
It continues:
“SHAKERI indicated to IRGC Official-I that this would cost a ‘huge’ amount of money. In response, IRGC Official-I said that ‘we have already spent a lot of money…[s]o the money’s not an issue,’ which SHAKERI understood to mean that the IRGC previously had spent a significant sum of money on efforts to murder Victim-4 and was willing to continue spending a lot of money in its attempt to procure Victim-4’s assassination.”
Shakeri further told the FBI that the IRGC official told him on October 7 that he had to provide a plan to kill Trump within seven days. Shakeri said he was unable to do so, and so Iran has paused its plans to kill Trump until after he loses the election—which would have made it easier to kill him.
“During the interview, SHAKERI claimed to the FBI that he did not intend to propose a plan to murder Victim-4 within the timeframe set by IRGC Official-I,” the charging papers added.
The FBI admitted in the charging papers that Shakeri is a liar, but said his claims about Trump “appear to be truthful.”
Shakeri, Rivera, and Loadholt have all been charged with murder-for-hire, which carries a maximum penalty of ten years in prison; conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, which carries a maximum penalty of ten years in prison; and money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum penalty of twenty years in prison.
The DOJ said that at Shakeri’s instruction, Loadholt and Rivera have spent months surveilling a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin residing in the U.S.—likely, based on the description, Masih Alinejad, who has been an outspoken critic of Iran’s government.
Rivera and Loadholt were arrested in the New York area.
The DOJ’s charges against Shakeri, Rivera, and Loadholt mark the latest allegation of an Iranian conspiracy to assassinate Trump.
On July 12—the day before the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania—the FBI arrested a Pakistani man with Iranian ties named Asif Merchant, who was trying to hire hitmen to kill Trump.
The hitmen turned out to be undercover FBI agents, and the whole case appears to be a highly controlled sting operation. While the DOJ claims Merchant has connections to the Iranian government, leaked FBI records show that he had to have his family wire him $5,000 from Pakistan to pay the “hitmen.”
The Merchant case looks similar to the supposed 2022 Iran plot to kill former national security adviser John Bolton. In that case, the FBI claimed that a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tried assassinating Bolton, but the Iranian was never confirmed to be an IRGC-QF member, and the “assassin” he was trying to hire was an FBI informant.
