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Three men charged with foiling Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump: DOJ

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WASHINGTON – Three men have been charged with murder-for-hire in a plot to kill President-elect Donald Trump in revenge for the death of a top Iranian military commander, the Justice Department announced Friday.

Farhad Shakeri, 51, from Iran; and Carlisle Rivera, 49, and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, of New York were named in the indictment.

Rivera and Loadholt were each arrested in New York on Thursday and held pending trial at an initial court appearance. Shakeri remains at large and is believed to be in Iran.

The indictments allege that Iran targeted U.S. citizens to retaliate for the January 2020 death of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, on Trump's orders was killed in a drone strike in Baghdad.

More: Iran is trying to assassinate Donald Trump and other US leaders, officials say

The three defendants were each charged with murder-for-hire, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years; Conspiracy to commit murder, punishable by 10 years, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, punishable by 20 years.

Iran targeted Trump personally with assassination plots and his campaign through hacking attempts to disrupt the 2024 presidential campaign, officials say.

“There are few actors in the world that pose as great a threat to the national security of the United States as Iran,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “The Department of Justice has charged an Iranian regime operative who was hired by the regime to lead a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination attempts against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump.”

According to prosecutors, Shakeri is an Iranian Republican Guard activist living in Tehran, Iran. Shakeri immigrated to the United States as a child and was deported around 2008 after spending 14 years in prison for a robbery conviction.

In recent months, Shakeri has used a network of criminal associates he met in prison to supply Iran's Republican Guard with agents for surveillance and assassinations. Two members of Shakeri's alleged network are his co-defendants Loadholt and Rivera.

More: Trump says US intelligence agencies briefed him on how Iran planned to assassinate him to sow discord in the US

The two men charged in New York were also allegedly recruited to kill an American journalist who was a prominent critic of Iran, Garland said.

Prosecutors did not identify the target, but it matched the description of Masih Alinejad, a journalist and activist who has criticized Iran's head covering laws for women. In 2021, four Iranians were charged in connection with a plot to kidnap her, and in 2022 a man with a rifle was arrested outside her home.

“We will not tolerate the Iranian regime’s attempts to endanger the American people and America’s national security,” Garland said.

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