CNN reports that US authorities obtained intelligence from a human source in recent weeks on a plot by Iran to try to assassinate Donald Trump, a development that led to the Secret Service increasing security around the former president.
There’s no indication that Thomas Matthew Crooks, the would-be assassin who attempted to kill the former president on Saturday, was connected to the plot, the sources said.
The existence of the intelligence threat from a hostile foreign intelligence agency — and the enhanced security for Trump — raises new questions about the security lapses at the Saturday rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and how a 20-year-old man managed to access a nearby rooftop to fire shots that injured the former president.
A US national security official said the Secret Service and Trump campaign were made aware of the threat before Saturday’s rally.
The Trump campaign would not disclose whether it was made aware of the Iran threat. “We do not comment on President Trump’s security detail. All questions should be directed to The United States Secret Service,” the campaign said in a statement.
The FBI, which is conducting the investigation into Saturday’s shooting, declined to comment.
NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson said there’s no known link between shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks and anyone else at the moment.
The Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations denied there is an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump.
“These accusations are unsubstantiated and malicious. From the perspective of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Trump is a criminal who must be prosecuted and punished in a court of law for ordering the assassination of General Soleimani. Iran has chosen the legal path to bring him to justice,” a spokesperson for the mission told CNN, referencing Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian military’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who was killed by a US airstrike at Baghdad International Airport in January 2020.
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria pressed Iran’s acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani on the alleged Iranian assassination plot, asking in an interview if the plot was in retaliation for Soleimani’s killing, which took place during the Trump administration.
“I told you explicitly that we would resort to legal and judicial procedures and frameworks at the domestic level and international level in order to bring the perpetrators and military advisers of General Soleimani’s assassination to justice,” Kani told Zakaria in an interview, according to CNN.
Pressed further if that meant not using violent measures, Mr. Kani reportedly said, “We will only resort to Iranian and international legal and judicial procedures.”
