NEW YORK—The three men charged in an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate President Donald Trump and an Iranian dissident on U.S. soil now have a trial date: March 9, 2026, federal judge Lewis J. Liman ruled from his courtroom in New York City on Tuesday.
The judge set the date at a pre-trial hearing between the Department of Justice and lawyers for two of the accused, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt. Both defendants appeared shackled in the courtroom. A third accused man, the Afghan-born Farhad Shakeri, did not appear in court and is currently hiding out in Tehran.
Shakeri, an Afghan national, is accused of having plotted the assassination of President Donald Trump on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He immigrated to the United States as a child before being deported in 2008 after serving a 14-year sentence for robbery and is—according to prosecutors—an "asset of the Iranian regime."
"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," a November 2024 criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York 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."
The "other efforts on behalf of the IRGC" mentioned in the complaint refer to a separate plot to assassinate Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad. Shakeri allegedly enlisted Rivera and Loadholt to help him carry out the murder.
The Tuesday hearing, which had been delayed several times owing to a "voluminous" amount of discovery, was largely procedural. The court scheduled additional pre-trial hearings for August 18 and September 18.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob H. Gutwillig told the court he expected the trial to last two weeks.
"The government has made significant discovery production," said Gutwillig, adding that they had been in talks with the defense. Gutwillig said the government would likely file a Classified Information Procedures Act motion, indicating that prosecutors will likely present classified material at the forthcoming trial.
The government's discovery includes Google, Apple, and WhatsApp accounts, cell phone records, and recorded phone calls, the government said during the arraignment earlier this year.
"The targeting of former and current American officials, including President Trump, by brazen foreign actors will never be tolerated," a Department of Justice spokeswoman told the Washington Free Beacon. "The Department of Justice will use every tool at its disposal to disrupt this egregious activity and levy the full force of America’s justice system on those who conspire to harm U.S. citizens."
In addition to Trump, Iran has allegedly targeted former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, former national security adviser John Bolton, and former State Department official Brian Hook.
Recent reporting from National Review details the extent of the Iranian threat against Trump. The Islamic Republic "gave a green light to try to kill the president" and successfully hacked Trump campaign officials’ email accounts.
A different man with ties to Tehran, Asif Merchant, was arrested and charged in July 2024 with a plot to kill U.S. officials. He allegedly paid $5,000 to an undercover officer he believed was a hit man. The U.S. government opened its investigation into Merchant after learning that Iran sought to assassinate Trump.