3 charged in Iran-linked plot to assassinate Donald Trump as revenge for killing Qassem Soleimani: DOJ
ABC/Michael Le Brecht II
(WASHINGTON) — Three people have been charged in an alleged Iran-linked plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, an Iranian-American activist and two Jewish Americans living in New York, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Friday in New York.
Farhad Shakeri, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt are charged with murder-for-hire, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Rivera and Loadholt have been arrested, while Shakeri, who the FBI described as an “asset” of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is believed to be in Tehran.
The IRGC tasked Shakeri with surveilling and killing Trump to avenge the death of Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force, in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020, according to the complaint.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran. The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald J. Trump,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement announcing the charges.
Shakeri emigrated to the United States but was deported in 2008 after serving prison time for robbery, according to the Justice Department. While in prison, he met Rivera and Loadholt and hired them to target an Iranian American activist living in Brooklyn, according to the complaint.
The IRGC also tasked Shakeri with carrying out other assassinations against U.S. and Israeli citizens located in the United States, including Trump, the complaint alleges.
Shakeri informed law enforcement officials that he was tasked a month before the election with providing a plan to kill Trump, according to prosecutors. During the interview, Shakeri allegedly claimed he did not intend to propose a plan to kill Trump within the timeframe set by the IRGC.
He also stated he was tasked with surveilling two Jewish-American citizens residing in New York City and was offered $500,000 by an IRGC official for the murder of either victim, according to the complaint. He was also tasked with targeting Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka, the complaint said.
“Actors directed by the Government of Iran continue to target our citizens, including President-elect Trump, on U.S. soil and abroad. This has to stop,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “Today’s charges are another message to those who continue in their efforts — we will remain unrelenting in our pursuit of bad actors, no matter where they reside, and will stop at nothing to bring to justice those who harm our safety and security.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The election will not only decide who will occupy the White House for the next four years, but also which party controls both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 34 seats in the Senate are up for grabs.
Republicans currently control the House while Democrats retain a narrow majority in the Senate.
See how the balance of power is playing out as election results come in:
Significant shifts and what to watch in the Senate race
Jim Justice is projected to win the Senate seat in West Virginia, which flips the state from Democrat to Republican. Incumbent Joe Manchin decided not to run for reelection, putting Justice against Democrat Glenn Elliot and Libertarian Party candidate David Moran.
ABC News also projects that former President Donald Trump will win in West Virginia. As Dan Hopkins, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote for ABC News’ live election coverage, “In most years, a Senate where every state votes for the same party for Senate and president is a Senate where the Democrats fall short of a majority.”
Another Democratic seat was lost in Ohio, where Republican nominee Bernie Moreno is projected to take the Senate position previously held — for three terms — by Sherrod Brown, the Democratic incumbent. The presumed victory makes a large Republican majority in the Senate seem all the more likely.
In Maryland, Democratic Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks is projected to win against former Gov. Larry Hogan, a moderate Republican. She is expected to replace Sen. Ben Cardin, also a Democrat, who did not run for reelection, putting the state’s Democratic Senate seat at risk in a year where the party had none to lose if they hoped to retain their narrow majority.
Alsobrooks currently serves as the first woman elected to a county executive position in Maryland, and she now seems positioned to become the state’s first Black senator. She would also be making history, as Alsobrooks and Lisa Blunt Rochester are projected to be the first two Black women to serve on the Senate at the same time.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump visited Aurora, Colorado, for a campaign rally on Friday where he continued to push misleading narratives about the city’s migrant population.
“My message today is very simple,” Trump told the crowd. “No person who has inflicted the violence and terror that Kamala Harris has inflicted on this community can ever be allowed to become the president of the United States. We’re not going to let it happen.”
In the final weeks of his campaign, Trump has continued to focus on the issue of immigration, escalating his rhetoric on undocumented immigrants he often paints as violent criminals.
“I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered,” Trump said. “These towns have been conquered … And we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail or kick them out of our country. And we will be very, very effective in doing it. It’s going to happen very, very fast.”
Specifically, the former president has used Aurora and Springfield, Ohio, to emphasize his point, both examples stemming from viral online stories he’s been quick to promote, often without proper context.
His false narratives on Aurora began last month when a video of armed individuals roaming around an apartment complex in Aurora went viral among right-wing social media influencers.
Trump, who has shared that video himself, has repeatedly claimed that members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang have “taken over” apartment complexes and “overrun” the city, despite the Aurora Police Department refuting allegations of the apartment complex being run by a Venezuelan gang.
Aurora’s Police Chief Todd Chamberlain has directly refuted Trump’s claims, saying in a press conference late last month that, “This is not an immigration issue. This is a crime issue.”
“We are not, by any means, overtaken by Venezuelan gangs,” he added.
The City of Aurora also provided clarity on the situation in a post on its official X account, stating that while there was a concern about a “small” presence of the Venezuelan gang members in Aurora, the city is taking the situation seriously. The city stressed that Aurora is a “safe community” and that reports of gang members are “isolated to a handful of problem properties alone.”
Mike Coffman, the Republican mayor of Aurora, has also pushed back on Trump’s “grossly exaggerated” claims.
“Former President Trump’s visit to Aurora is an opportunity to show him and the nation that Aurora is a considerably safe city – not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs,” Coffman said.
Still, Trump has continued to amplify these debunked stories to his supporters throughout the country as a rallying cry as he attacks the immigration policies of the Biden-Harris administration.
At his second campaign stop on Friday in Reno, Nevada, Trump continued to repeat baseless and debunked rhetoric on a Venezuelan gang taking over apartment complexes in Aurora even after the city’s Republican mayor denounced his rhetoric, saying his comments “unfairly hurt the city’s identity and sense of safety.”
In Reno, the former president again called the U.S. an “occupied country” and the situation in Aurora a “full-blown invasion.”
“It is a full blown invasion. Armed Venezuelan gang members storming an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado,” Trump said.
In the press release announcing Friday’s event, the Trump campaign described Aurora as a “war zone,” arguing people were crossing the border and descending upon the city “bringing chaos and fear with them.”
Similarly, Trump has repeatedly amplified debunked claims that Haitian migrants are eating pets in Springfield.
Trump’s visit is one that he has been wanting to make for a while to bring more attention to the country’s immigration policies. At recent campaign rallies, Trump has become more vocal about his desire to visit Aurora and Springfield.
While the Republican mayor of Springfield, Rob Rue, discouraged visits from candidates on both sides of the aisle, Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has presented the trip as a learning opportunity for the former president.
“The reality is, Donald Trump continues to tell economically damaging and hurtful lies about Aurora,” Polis said in a statement to ABC affiliate Denver7 amid ongoing discussions of a potential visit. “If former President Trump does visit, he will find the city of Aurora is a strong, vibrant, and diverse city of more than 400,000 hardworking Coloradans and a wonderful place to live, run a business, raise a family, and retire.”
Trump has launched attacks on the local and state officials on the campaign trail, often making baseless claims that Aurora Mayor Coffman and Gov. Polis are “petrified,” saying Coffman “doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing” — and even claiming they don’t want to raise the immigration issue because they want to be “politically correct.”
Campaigning in Uniondale, New York, last month, Trump, while declaring that he planned to visit Aurora and Springfield soon, suggested that he might not make it back out after his visiting those places due to unspecified crime.
“I’m going to go there in the next two weeks. I’m going to Springfield, and I’m going to Aurora,” Trump said in Uniondale. “You may never see me again, but that’s OK. Got to do what I got to do. Whatever happened to Trump? ‘Well, he never got out of Springfield.'”
Trump’s visit to Aurora also came as he’s pledged on the campaign trail to begin his promise of mass deportations in Springfield and Aurora.
“We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country,” Trump said as he took reporter questions in Los Angeles, California, last month. “And we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora, [Colorado].”
“We’re going to take those violent people, and we’re going to ship them back to their country, and if they come back in, they’re going to pay a hell of a price,” Trump also said.
Springfield has many Haitian residents who are either legally authorized to live and work in the U.S. or are protected from expulsion by law.
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday took credit for killing the House Republican-proposed government funding bill, telling ABC News there will be a government shutdown unless Congress eliminates or extends the limit on government borrowing.
“We’re not going to fall into the debt ceiling quicksand,” Trump said in an exclusive phone interview. “There won’t be anything approved unless the debt ceiling is done with.”
Trump said he is concerned that if government borrowing reaches the limit set by the debt ceiling, it could lead to an economic depression. Under current law, the federal government would hit its borrowing limit sometime in the spring of 2025, during the first months of the second Trump presidency. Trump said he wants it taken care of now, while Joe Biden is president.
“By doing what I’m doing, I put it into the Biden administration,” Trump said. “In this administration, not in my administration.”
“The interesting thing is, [the debt ceiling] possibly means nothing, or it means [the] depression of 1929,” Trump added. “Nobody really knows. It means nothing, but psychologically it may mean a lot, right? In other words, it doesn’t have a real meaning other than you’ve violated something. And that may be just, one day, half a story, or it may lead to the depression of 1929 and nobody wants to take the chance, except the Democrats.”
Congress must pass a funding bill by Friday night to avoid a shutdown of major federal services.
Trump said he is more concerned about the debt ceiling, which was not part of the spending bill rejected by the House on Wednesday after Trump and ally Elon Musk weighed in, than he is in the level of government spending.
“I don’t mind the spending for the farmers and for disaster relief from North Carolina, etc., but that’s all,” he said, referring to $100 billion in disaster relief aid and $10 billion in assistance to farmers.
When asked about concerns about a potential shutdown, the president-elect reiterated there will be a shutdown if the debt ceiling isn’t addressed, and claimed it would be Biden’s fault.
“Shutdowns only inure to the person who’s president,” Trump said. “That’s what I tried to teach [former House Speaker] Kevin McCarthy, but I obviously didn’t do a very good job [with] a shutdown because he kept giving them extensions into my territory, a shutdown only hurts or inures to the person who happens to be president.”
As for House Speaker Mike Johnson’s fate, Trump said, “If he’s strong, he’ll survive it. If he’s strong, he will survive it.”
