Donald Trump 'assassination plot' thwarted after Iran 'tries to hire hitmen'

The FBI has thwarted an Iranian plot to assassinate .

The US Justice Department announced the plan to kill the President-elect Trump, charging a man who said he had been tasked by a government official to carry out the killing. Investigators learned of the plot while interviewing Farhad Shakeri, an national identified by officials as an Iranian government asset who was deported from the US after being imprisoned on robbery charges.

He told investigators that a contact in Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed him in September to put together a plan within seven days to surveil and ultimately kill Trump, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Manhattan. Two other men who the authorities say were recruited to participate in other assassinations, including a prominent Iranian American journalist, were also arrested today. Shakeri remains in .

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"There are few actors in the 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 announcing the charges. "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 J Trump."

The plot, with the charges unsealed just days after Trump's defeat of Kamala Harris, reflects what officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target US government officials. Last summer, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran in a murder-for-hire plot.

Shakeri emigrated to the States but was deported in 2008 after serving prison time for robbery, according to the Justice Department. While in prison, he met Rivera and Loadholt and hired them to target an Iranian American activist living in Brooklyn, according to the complaint.

During the campaign ahead of this week's election, Trump was saved from two assassination attempts - and possibly a third one. In July, shots were fired during a rally for Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, where one spectator and the gunman were killed.

In September, a man was arrested after he allegedly planned to kill the Republican politician while he was at his course in Florida. And in October, he was also saved from a by quick-thinking officials.

Trump was campaigning at a rally in Coachella, , when a man reportedly in possession of multiple firearms was arrested near the site. The man, a 49-year-old from Las Vegas who was driving a black SUV, was identified at a checkpoint near an intersection in the city.