'Act of war': Biden administration under pressure to respond to Iran's plot to kill Trump

On Friday, U.S. Department of Justice unsealed new charges detailing a thwarted murder-for-hire plot that the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ordered against Donald Trump in the weeks leading up to the election, adding new pressure for the Biden administration to act.

According to a newly unsealed criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York, the IRGC ordered an Iranian asset in September to focus on "surveilling" and putting together a plan to assassinate Trump before the Nov. 5 elections. 

Trump was briefed by U.S intelligence officials in September about threats from Iran to assassinate him, campaign officials confirmed.

Both President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Fox News in October that they considered any Iranian threats against Trump to be a "top-tier" national security issue, and said any attempt by the IRGC to actually harm Trump would be met with kinetic military action equal to "an act of war."

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Late Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani attends Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's meeting with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps in Tehran in 2016. Trump has been a target of the IRGC since 2020, when he ordered a strike to take out Soleimani. (Press Office of Iranian Supreme Leader/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Neither the White House nor the State Department immediately responded to Fox News’s request for comment on the nature of the threat from the IRGC, or how they planned to respond.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps., or IRGC, is a military and counterintelligence agency that was designated as a terrorist organization during Trump’s first term. 

Trump has been a target of the IRGC since January 2020, when as president he ordered the drone strike that killed the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani.

News of the thwarted attack on Trump comes after he survived two earlier and unrelated assassination attempts earlier this year while campaigning for a second term as president: The first, in July at a Pennsylvania campaign rally, and then in September, while golfing at one of his properties in Florida. 

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is shown here at center in black turban. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/West Asia News Agency/Reuters)

The threats from Iran, detailed in the now-public criminal filings, prompted the Secret Service to beef up their security presence around the Trump campaign in recent months.

It is unclear whether, or how, Trump plans to further clamp down on security at his residences in the months before his inauguration.

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U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks at the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. The DOJ is preparing charges against Iran over its efforts to influence the 2024 election cycle.  (Photographer: Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Friday that there "are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran."

"We will not stand for the Iranian regime’s attempts to endanger the American people and America’s national security," he added.

In the criminal complaint, U.S. prosecutors said an unnamed official in the IRGC had asked the asset, Farhad Shakeri, to "focus on surveilling, and, ultimately, assassinating, former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump."

The Department of Justice said that Shakeri, who remains at large and is believed to be living in Iran, "immigrated to the United States as a child and was deported in or about 2008 after serving 14 years in prison for a robbery conviction." Trump is referred to the filings as "Victim-4."

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"According to Shakeri, during his meeting with IRGC Official-I on or about October 7, 2024, IRGC Official-I directed Shakeri to provide a plan within seven days to kill Victim-4. If Shakeri was unable to put forth a plan within that timeframe, IRGC Official-I continued, the IRGC would pause its plan to kill Victim-4 until after the U.S. Presidential elections, because IRGC Official-I assessed that Victim-4 would lose the election and, afterward, it would be easier to assassinate Victim-4," the documents said.

Federal prosecutors have also charged and arrested Carlisle Rivera, 49, of Brooklyn, New York, and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island, New York, "in connection with their alleged involvement" in a plot to murder a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin in New York. 

The Department of Justice declined to respond to comment on the threats or the investigation.