By ERIC TUCKER and LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Friday revealed an Iranian plot to assassinate people donald trumpcharging a man who said a government official had tasked him before this week’s election with planning the assassination of the Republican president-elect.

Investigators learned of the plot to kill Trump from Farhad Shakeri, an accused Iranian government asset who spent time in U.S. prisons for theft and who authorities say maintains a network of criminal associates recruited by Tehran for surveillance and murder-for-hire plots.

Shakeri told investigators that a contact in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard ordered him last September to put aside other jobs he was doing and come up with a plan in seven days to surveil and ultimately kill Trump, according to a report. criminal complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court.

Shakeri quoted the official as saying that “we have already spent a lot of money” and that “money is not a problem.” Shakeri told investigators that the official told him that if he couldn’t come up with a plan within the seven-day deadline, then the plot would be put on hold until after the election because the official assumed Trump would lose and then it would be easier to kill him. , the complaint said.

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

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