‘Baseless’: Iran denies involvement in Trump assassination plot

Donald Trump (Image credit score: AP)

Iran’s overseas ministry on Friday refuted a report by the US division of justice (DOJ) alleging that an Iranian official directed a plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, calling the claims “utterly baseless and rejected.”
Esmail Baghaei, a spokesperson for the Iranian overseas ministry, stated in an announcement carried by Iranian media that the DOJ’s accusations are a part of a “malicious conspiracy orchestrated by Zionist and anti-Iranian circles, aimed toward additional complicating points between the US and Iran,” in keeping with a Fox Information report.
Additionally learn: Who’s Farhad Shakeri, mastermind behind Iran’s plot to kill President-elect Trump
“Iran has been accused of comparable situations previously, which have been firmly denied and confirmed false,” Baghaei added, as quoted by Fox Information.
The DOJ filed a legal criticism on Friday in a New York Metropolis federal court docket, revealing an alleged plot orchestrated by an unnamed official inside Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The criticism accuses the official of directing Farhad Shakeri, 51, to “deal with surveilling, and, in the end, assassinating, former President of america, Donald J. Trump.”
Shakeri, believed to reside in Iran, stays at massive. The DOJ alleges Shakeri, who immigrated to the US as a baby and was deported in 2008 after a theft conviction, was tasked with planning the assassination on October 7, 2024.
The criticism additionally accuses Shakeri of hiring two New York males, Carlisle Rivera, 49, and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, to surveil and homicide an American of Iranian origin for $100,000. The DOJ identifies this particular person as journalist Masih Alinejad, a vocal critic of the Iranian regime.
Additionally learn: US justice division information prices over alleged Iranian plot
All three males—Shakeri, Rivera, and Loadholt—face prices of murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and cash laundering conspiracy, carrying potential jail sentences of 10 to twenty years. Shakeri additionally faces extra prices of conspiring to supply materials help to a overseas terrorist group, which may result in a 20-year jail sentence.