Assault on Capitol Hill, judge suspends case against Trump

Tanya Chutkan, the judge overseeing the case against Donald Trump for the storming of the Capitol, granted special prosecutor Jack Smith's request to suspend the ongoing proceedings and cancelled all pending pre-trial deadlines. A step related to the established Justice Department practice that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.

On Friday, meanwhile, the US Justice Department released criminal charges related to an Iranian plot foiled by the FBI. The plot was aimed at assassinating Donald Trump before the presidential election held this week. A criminal complaint, filed in Manhattan federal court, alleges that an unnamed Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer instructed a contact last September to devise a plan to surveil and ultimately kill Trump.

If the man, identified as Farjad Shakeri, had not been able to come up with a plan by that date, the complaint reads, the official would have told him that Iran would suspend its plan until after the presidential election because the official believed that Trump would lose and it would be easier to assassinate him then, the complaint reads.

Shakeri told the FBI that he had no intention of coming up with a plan to assassinate Trump within the seven days required by the official, according to the complaint.

Investigators learned of the plot to kill Trump during the interrogation of Farhad Shakeri, an Afghan national identified by officials as an Iranian government asset who was deported from the US after being detained on robbery charges. Two other men were also arrested today who authorities say were recruited to participate in other murders, including a prominent Iranian-American journalist. Shakeri is now in Iran. "There are few actors in the world who pose such a serious threat to the national security of the United States as Iran," said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in a statement.