The plan to murder the then presidential candidate was revealed when the US federal police, in a phone call, interrogated an Afghan man who had been deported from the US. This emerges from documents submitted to a court in Manhattan, New York.
The man told the interrogators that Iran's Revolutionary Guard contacted him in September and gave instructions on how to plan a murder of Trump within seven days.
"Few actors in the world pose as great a threat to the US national security as Iran," says Justice Minister Merrick Garland in a statement.
When the murder plans were never carried out, the clients allegedly postponed the plans until after the election. The Revolutionary Guard reportedly did not believe that Trump would win, and that it would therefore be easier to murder him then.
Two men, who were arrested, were recruited by the man to carry out attacks on individuals in the US who are critical of Iran. However, they are not charged with the plans against Trump.
The man who revealed the plans lives, according to the FBI, in Tehran. He was sentenced to a longer prison term in 1994 for robbery and was deported in 2008.
"Iran's Revolutionary Guard is a foreign terrorist organization, has conspired with criminals and professional killers to shoot Americans on American soil, and we will not tolerate it," says FBI Chief Christopher Wray in a statement.
