Donald Trump has a treacherous road ahead before he’s inaugurated in January.
There are forces that want to make sure he never sets foot in the White House.
And Donald Trump got a scary message from the FBI that he wasn’t expecting.
Justice Department announces charges against Iranians over plot against Trump
The Iranian regime is targeting President-elect Donald Trump after he took a hardline against the terrorist state in his first term.
A return to the White House next year by Trump means that the kid glove treatment that Iran got under President Joe Biden is coming to an end.
The FBI arrested Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national, for a murder-for-hire plot against Trump on July 12 – one day before the President-elect was shot at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Another assassination plot against Trump was broken up by the FBI.
Three Iranian nationals were charged with planning to kill Trump, Americans, Israelis, and others inside the United States.
One of the men, Afghan national Farhad Shakeri, is still at large in Iran after he was tasked by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to come up with a plan to assassinate Trump.
The other two men, American citizens Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt, were arrested in New York and are being held until their trial.
Iran isn’t backing down from its threats against Donald Trump
CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez said the federal government’s indictment revealed that Shakeri was working with contacts he had in the United States on the plot.
“According to prosecutors, there are a number of other possible victims that the Iranians were looking for,” Perez said. “One of them is an Iranian citizen who was a critic of the Iranian regime.”
The Iranians were also targeting Jewish-American citizens and Israeli tourists.
“Now this is obviously part of a broader story here, that, according to the FBI, the Iranian regime has been trying to figure out ways to not only target Donald Trump, but also people in this current administration that they believe and perceived to be enemies, as well as carrying out other assassinations in the United States,” Perez explained.
Shakeri had a network of criminal associates from his time in prison living in New York that made him attractive to the Iranian government according to the indictment.
Perez brought up the case of Merchant from this summer as the first exposed plot on Trump’s life by the Iranians.
“Very scary stuff!” CNN host Dana Bash said.
The plots coming from Iran are motivated by Trump ordering a 2020 drone strike that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qasem Soleimani.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that Trump was a target for assassination by Iran.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Garland said. “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 Trump.”
Donald Trump faces unprecedented threats against himself on his return to the White House.
