Politics

Justice Department brings criminal charges in thwarted Iranian plot to kill Trump

By ERIC TUCKER and LARRY NEUMEISTER Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Friday disclosed an Iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill Donald Trump , charging a man who said he had been tasked by a government official before this week’s election with planning the assassination of the

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

Blue Light Newsroom

Justice Department brings criminal charges in thwarted Iranian plot to kill Trump

By ERIC TUCKER and LARRY NEUMEISTER

The Justice Department on Friday disclosed an Iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill Donald Trumpcharging a man who said he had been tasked by a government official before this week’s election with planning the assassination of the Republican president-elect.

Investigators were told of the plan to kill Trump by Farhad Shakeri, an accused Iranian government asset who spent time in American prisons for robbery and who authorities say maintains a network of criminal associates enlisted by Tehran for surveillance and murder-for-hire plots.

Shakeri told the FBI that a contact in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed him this past September to set aside other work he was doing and assemble a plan within seven days to surveil and ultimately kill Trump, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Manhattan.

The official was quoted by Shakeri as saying that “We have already spent a lot of money” and that “money’s not an issue.” Shakeri told investigators the official told him that if he could not put together a plan within the seven-day timeframe, then the plot would be paused until after the election because the official assumed Trump would lose and that it would be easier to kill him then, the complaint said.

Shakeri is at large and remains in Iran. Two other men were arrested on charges that Shakeri recruited them to follow and kill prominent Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejadwho has endured multiple Iranian murder-for-hire plots foiled by law enforcement.

“I’m very shocked,” said Alinejad, speaking by telephone to The Associated Press from Berlin, where she was about to attend a ceremony to mark the anniversary of the tearing down of the wall. “This is the third attempt against me and that’s shocking.”

In a post on the social media platform X, she said: “I came to America to practice my First Amendment right to freedom of speech — I don’t want to die. I want to fight against tyranny, and I deserve to be safe. Thank you to law enforcement for protecting me, but I urge the U.S. government to protect the national security of America.”

Lawyers for the two other defendants, identified as Jonathan Loadholt and Carlisle Rivera, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

In Tehran, Esmail Baghaei, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, rejected the report and called it a plot by Israel-linked circles to make Iran-U.S. relation more complicated, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Similar accusations in the past were rejected by Iran as their “erroneousness” were proved, he said.

“Repeat of the accusation in the current time span is a disgusting plot by the Zionist and anti-Iran circles that has aimed at making US-Iran problems more complicated,” Baghaei said.

Shakeri, an Afghan national who immigrated to the U.S. as a child but later was deported after spending 14 years in prison for robbery, also told investigators that he was tasked by his Revolutionary Guard contact with plotting the killings of two Jewish-Americans living in New York and Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka. Officials say he overlapped with Rivera while in prison as well as an unidentified co-conspirator.

The criminal complaint says Shakeri disclosed some of the details of the alleged plots in a series of recorded telephone interviews with FBI agents while in Iran. The stated reason for his cooperation, he told investigators, was to try to get a reduced prison sentence for an associate behind bars in the U.S.

According to the complaint, though officials determined that some of the information he provided was false, his statements regarding a plot to kill Trump and Iran’s willingness to pay large sums of money were determined to be accurate.

The plot, announced by the Justice Department just days after Trump’s defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris, is part of what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target U.S. government officials, including Trump, on U.S. soil. Last summer, for instance, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran in a murder-for-hire plot targeting American officials.

“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Friday. FBI Director Christopher Wray said the case shows Iran’s “continued brazen attempts to target U.S. citizens,” including Trump, “other government leaders and dissidents who criticize the regime in Tehran.”

Iranian operatives also conducted a hack-and-leak operation of emails belonging to Trump campaign associates in what officials have assessed was an effort to interfere in the presidential election and harm Trump’s campaign.

Intelligence officials have said Iran opposed Trump’s reelection, seeing him as more likely to increase tension between Washington and Tehran. Trump’s administration ended a nuclear deal with Iranreimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimanian act that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said the president-elect was aware of the assassination plot and nothing will deter him “from returning to the White House and restoring peace around the world.”

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Neumeister reported from New York. Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report.

Politics

World Cup fuels ticketing reform demands

Published

13 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup — and beyond.

The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers flog tickets they don’t actually have.

The letter — addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — includes nearly two dozen accounts of fans who say they were scammed out of thousands of dollars trying to get tickets to the World Cup, which began last week. The groups are also asking fans to share their own stories with elected officials via the Fix the Tix Fan Action Center that launched last week.

“Every one of these stories erodes the public’s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud,” NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance founder Donald Cohen wrote. “We urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.”

The letter flagged fans like Dacy Gillespie, who bought World Cup tickets for her sons on Christmas, only to learn on match day — months later — that the seller couldn’t deliver them. And Skylie Shore, who Parker and Cohen said spent well over $6,000 on tickets to the Scotland-Haiti match on June 13, but was forced to wait outside the stadium because she couldn’t access them as fans marched in on gameday.

“These examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub,” Parker and Cohen wrote.

In a statement, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said that the platform does not allow speculative ticket sales, and blamed FIFA for users’ difficulty in accessing their tickets.

“We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,” Sterne said in a statement. “Many of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer’s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago.”

In response, FIFA said in a statement that the organization “can guarantee the validity and delivery of tickets purchased through its official platforms” and that FIFA.com/tickets “is the official ticket sales channel” for the tournament.

NIVA and Fan Alliance are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.

The groups are not the only ones monitoring for evidence of shady ticket practices. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issued a consumer guidance in advance of the tournament, urging match-goers to beware of fraud and promising to hold offenders accountable. And the FBI in May put out a public service announcement, warning fans against purchasing tickets on copycat websites modeled on FIFA’s.

“With the World Cup coming to Kansas City, excitement is high and, unfortunately, so is the potential for fraud,” Hanaway said in her statement. “Missourians should be able to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event without fear of being deceived. My office will hold accountable anyone who seeks to exploit our families, and we stand ready to assist anyone who encounters suspicious activity.”