The U.S. Justice Department has filed criminal charges over an Iranian plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump that was foiled by the FBI, the government said.
The federal government has unsealed criminal charges in what the Justice Department says was a murder-for-hire scheme to take out Trump before this week’s presidential election, which he won decisively over his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris.
A criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan alleges that an unnamed official of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps last September instructed a contact to draw up a plan to surveil and ultimately kill Trump.
That month, U.S. intelligence officials told Trump about a suspected Iranian plot to kill him, his campaign said at the time.
The briefing, from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), is said to have focused on a plan unrelated to two failed domestic assassination attempts on the Republican then-presidential candidate, and came amid reports that suggested that Iran was carrying out an ongoing assassination attempt. hack against Trump’s campaign.
The campaign said at the time that the briefing addressed “real and specific threats by Iran to kill [Trump] in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.”
The Associated Press contributed to the reporting.
More details coming soon…
