New York – The US Justice Department on Friday revealed criminal charges in the failed Iranian plot to kill Trump. A criminal complaint filed in court in Manhattan alleges that an officer of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) asked a man named Farzad Shakeri to plan to monitor and kill Trump last September, and when the man was unable to make a plan, the officer told him that Iran would stop the plan until after the election because he believed Trump would lose and it would be easy to kill him.
The US Justice Department has described Shakeri, 51, as an agent of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and said that he came to the US as a child and was deported in 2008 after being accused of robbery. Prosecutors said Shakeri is absconding and is believed to be in Iran.
The Justice Department said Shakeri met two New York residents, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt, and included them in his conspiracy and prepared them to target Trump. Both Rivera and Loadholt have been ordered to be detained until the trial. Their lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The judge overseeing the case of interference by Donald Trump in the 2020 US presidential election on Friday canceled the final deadline for its hearing. Prosecutors told the court that they needed time to assess the ‘appropriate course of action to proceed’ in the case after Republican candidate Trump’s presidential victory this week.
Last year, Trump was accused by special counsel Jack Smith of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and illegally storing secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. However, Smith’s team is now evaluating how to wrap up the two federal cases before the president-elect takes office, given long-standing Justice Department policy that says sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.
