The US justice department is bringing criminal charges over an Iranian plot to kill president-elect Donald Trump that was thwarted by the FBI, the government said.
The federal government has unsealed criminal charges in what the justice department said was a murder-for-hire plan 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 in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards instructed a contact this past September to put together a plan to surveil and ultimately kill Trump.
That month, US 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), was believed to have focused on a scheme unrelated to two failed domestic assassination attempts against the Republican then nominee for president, and came amid reports suggesting that Iran was conducting an ongoing hack against Trump’s campaign.
The campaign at the time said the briefing concerned “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate [Trump] in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States”.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
More details soon …
