An Iranian murder-for-hire conspiracy targeting President Donald Trump has quietly wound its way through federal court, with a pre-trial discovery conference scheduled for next week.
The proceedings, postponed to this point because of a lengthy discovery process, will take place on Tuesday. While the discovery materials will not be made public, the government is expected to set trial dates during the conference, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
The case centers on Farhad Shakeri, an “Iranian asset” who openly told the feds in a phone call from Tehran that he was seeking ways to off Trump on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to a criminal complaint filed in November 2024.
“According to Shakeri, in approximately mid-to-late September 2024, IRGC Official-I asked Shakeri to put aside his other efforts on behalf of the IRGC and focus on surveilling, and, ultimately, assassinating, former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump,” the complaint reads.
Shakeri said his IRGC contacts informed him that the country had already spent “a significant sum of money on efforts to murder [Trump] and was willing to continue spending a lot of money in its attempt to procure [Trump’s] assassination.”
Shakeri, 51, is an Afghan national who immigrated to the United States as a child before being deported in 2008 after serving a 14-year sentence for robbery, according to the complaint.
Prosecutors charged Shakeri—in connection with the Trump assasination plot—with murder-for-hire, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison; conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, which would net him another maximum of 10 years; and money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.
The government also charged him with conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison; providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison; and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and sanctions against the government of Iran, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Shakeri remains at large in Iran and will not be represented at the pre-trial hearing next week. It is unlikely that the Islamic Republic will extradite Shakeri to the United States at any point.
Though Shakeri will not be able to stand trial, there is still a benefit to naming him in the proceedings, said Aida F. Leisenring, a partner at Barket Epstein Kearon Aldea & LoTurco, LLP: If he leaves Iran, the United States “would have the authority to extradite him.”
The Trump assassination plot is not the only alleged scheme on which prosecutors have focused. Shakeri allegedly enlisted two men—Jonathan Loadholt and Carlisle Rivera—to kill Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad in New York in another operation on behalf of Tehran.
Loadholt and Rivera will appear in court after pleading not guilty to charges related to the latter assassination conspiracy. Their attorneys did not respond to a Washington Free Beacon request for comment.
Prosecutors said in April that they have gathered a “voluminous” amount of discovery, a significant amount of which will consist of communications from Apple, Google, and Whatsapp accounts from the defendants. The government will also present information gained through geolocation, cell phone warrants, and recorded calls, prosecutors said in their January arraignment.
The proceedings come as Trump weighs U.S. involvement in the Israeli operation to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, a prospect that has sparked debate among some of the president’s high-profile supporters.
Tucker Carlson, for instance, said during an interview with Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) on Wednesday that he is unaware of an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump but believes that the United States should take military action against the Islamic Republic if it has indeed attempted to do so.
“If it’s true that Iran is trying to murder Trump, we need to move militarily against Iran immediately,” Carlson said. “That’s not isolationism. That’s a call to violence, which I am calling for. If we believe that Iran is trying to murder our president, we need to strike Iran.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) told the Free Beacon that the trial underscores the importance of destroying Iran’s nuclear program.
“Iran is a terrorist regime,” he said. “They’ve killed more than 1,000 Americans. The Ayatollah’s attempt to assassinate President Trump is a reminder of why they must never have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump, for his part, has reportedly approved plans for a strike on the Iranian nuclear program but has yet to give a final green light.
“I may do it,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “I may not do it. No one knows what I’m going to do.”
For some GOP officials, like Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R., N.J.), U.S. involvement in the effort to destroy Iran’s nuclear program is a necessary step to ensure a much deadlier conflict does not occur.
“Supporting Israel in the here and now will prevent a much longer, more dangerous, and possibly nuclear confrontation down the road,” he told the Free Beacon. “We cannot and must not allow Iran to ever develop nuclear capability. The future of American and Israeli security depends on it.”
