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CNN reports that US authorities have received information from a human source in recent weeks about an Iranian plot to try to assassinate Donald Trump, prompting the Secret Service to increase security around the former president.
There is no indication that Thomas Matthew Crooks, the would-be bomber who tried to kill the former president on Saturday, was connected to the plot, sources said.
The existence of an intelligence threat from a hostile foreign intelligence agency — and heightened security for Trump — is raising new questions about security lapses at Saturday’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and how a 20-year-old man managed to get to a nearby rooftop to fire the shots that wounded the former president.
A U.S. national security official said the Secret Service and the Trump campaign were informed of the threat before Saturday’s rally.
The Trump campaign has not disclosed whether it has been made aware of the Iranian threat. “We do not comment on President Trump’s security details. All questions should be directed to the United States Secret Service,” the campaign said in a statement.
The FBI, which is leading the investigation into Saturday’s shooting, declined to comment.
NSC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said there is no known connection between the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, and anyone else at this time.
The Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations denied that there was an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump.
“These allegations are baseless and malicious. From the perspective of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Trump is a criminal who must be prosecuted and punished in court for ordering the assassination of General Soleimani. Iran has chosen the legal route to bring him to justice,” the mission’s spokesman said CNNreferring to Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who was killed in a January 2020 US airstrike at Baghdad International Airport.
CNN Fareed Zakaria pressed Iran’s acting foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, on the alleged Iranian assassination plot, asking in the interview whether the plot was in retaliation for Soleimani’s killing, which took place during the Trump administration.
“I have explicitly told you that we will resort to legal and judicial procedures and frameworks at the domestic and international levels to bring the perpetrators and military advisers of the assassination of General Soleimani to justice,” Kani told Zakaria in an interview. CNN.
They urged further, if it meant not using violent measures, sir. Kani reportedly said: “We will only resort to Iranian and international legal and judicial procedures.”
