A Pakistani man with ties to Iran has been charged over an alleged plot to assassinate Donald Trump and other US politicians.
FBI director Christopher Wray called the scheme a "dangerous murder-for-hire plot... straight out of the Iranian playbook".
Asif Merchant, 46, is accused of attempting to hire a hitman in New York to kill prominent American officials. CBS, the BBC's news partner, quoted sources as saying that Trump was among the targets.
Security for the Republican presidential nominee was increased in June after authorities learned of an Iranian plot to kill him.
Mr Merchant allegedly told the contact he planned to leave the US before targets were killed, and that he would stay in contact using code words.
The suspect asked the contact to arrange a meeting with would-be assassins, the indictment says. The contact then connected him in June to undercover FBI agents posing as hitmen.
Mr Merchant allegedly told the agents they were to steal documents from the home of a target, arrange protests at political rallies, and kill a "political person".
According to the indictment, Mr Merchant said the targets would be communicated in the last week of August or the first week of September.
While the indictment does not mention Trump by name, sources cited by CBS said that the former president was one of the intended targets.
The plot is unrelated to the assassination attempt on the former president at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on 13 July, by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper on site.
Trump and officials including his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, have faced threats from Tehran since ordering the drone strike assassination of Qassim Soleimani, the commander of Iran's Quds force, in Iraq in 2020.
BBC
