WASHINGTON – Three former Trump administration officials who said they were warned that Iran was targeting them wrote to the Justice Department 18 months ago asking for help protecting them, but have received no response, according to officials.
“It is clear that there are specific, credible threats against us and our families by Iran and those motivated to act on behalf of Iran,” the officials wrote in a letter provided to NBC News. “This calls for immediate action to improve our physical and cyber security.”
The officers are former deputy national security advisers Matthew Pottingerand two senior officials at the National Security Council who focus on the Middle East, Victoria Coates and Robert Greenway.
In January 2020, then-President Donald Trump authorized a drone strike in Iraq that killed General Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The US government has long said that Iran plans to take revenge on the US for the Soleimani strike. Senior Iranian officials have also made open threats against current and former US officials whom Iran blames for his death. For example, at the beginning of 2023, the IRGC commander said on live television that “I hope we can kill” Trump, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the US general.
Some former Trump administration officials, including Pompeo and former national security adviser John Bolton, receive private security cover funded by the US government. Iran. The Biden the administration also recently received intelligence indicating a possible Iranian assassination plot against former President Donald Trump. This was reported by NBC News.
In an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, Pottinger, Greenway and Coates said they each had a “duty to warn” the US government of an active threat from Iran in the past. When the US government discovers evidence that someone’s life may be at risk, they can inform the target in this type of briefing.
The three officials said they did not specifically ask for personal security details in sending the letter, but wanted to discuss possible options for government assistance to make them safer from cyber and physical attacks.
“What we wanted was not a specific tool,” Pottinger said. “We wanted to talk.”
Pottinger said he did not become an Iranian target until nearly two years after Soleimani’s killing, when Iran listed him. 51 Americans were sanctioned for their participation in the operation.
Greenway said his email was hacked by Iranian actors in December 2022, and the FBI worked with him to clean it up. Part of the attack, he said, was aimed at providing Iran with digital information that could track his location.
“There’s a lot of other things the government could be doing,” Greenway said, besides providing personal security details, “and they’re not.”
Separately, the Biden administration stopped providing personal security for former national security adviser Robert O’Brien about a year ago because U.S. officials believed he was under threat from Iran, according to a person familiar with the decision. This decision was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Pottinger, Coates and Greenway said part of their concern is that Iran is going after former officials it believes were involved in the Soleimani assassination but who lacked government security protection.
They wrote in the letter that “Iran may prioritize targeting those who lack the protections afforded to others on the hit list.”
All three said they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to beef up their personal security.
Their letter, dated January 19, 2023, was addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland and copies were sent to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Pottinger said that shortly after sending the letter, he reached out to a Biden White House official to let him know the letter had been sent. He told her his drawing would be recorded internally, and when he still hadn’t heard from the Justice Department or another government agency a few months later, he said he contacted a White House official again. The official told him they would look into the matter, but Pottinger said he has yet to hear from anyone from the administration.
Greenway said he also reached out to the Justice Department to acknowledge receipt of the letter, but has not heard back.
Three former Trump officials acknowledge in their letter that “it is not clear who the appropriate agency in the US government is responsible for providing protection for us.”
They said they understood Garland’s letter to mean that the Justice Department ultimately decides whether individual agencies provide security protection to former government officials.
“They knew about it,” Coates said, adding that even if the three officers said no, they would have waited for an answer.”
Justice Department officials told NBC News that they forwarded the three former officials’ letters to another agency, but did not explain why they never notified the three former officials or responded to their letters personally.
In a June 2023 letter to Senator Marco Rubio obtained by NBC News, a Justice Department official cited the letter from three former Trump officials and said: “The Department sent the January 19 letter to the United States. relevant government agencies responsible for making decisions about protective services for individuals.”
After receiving the letter from the three former officials, the National Security Council referred the matter to the intelligence community and the FBI for a response, according to the US official.
Iran’s plans inside the United States
Federal authorities have uncovered earlier plans by Iran to kill or harm its adversaries inside the United States.
The most glaring example came in late July 2022, when a hired assassin approached the front porch of Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad in Brooklyn. He knocked on the door, but she was busy with a Zoom call and didn’t answer, according to court records. As the suspect drove away, he ran a stop sign and was spotted by a police officer, which led to the discovery of an AK-47 rifle in the backseat of his vehicle. The arrest prompted the FBI to uncover what prosecutors say was an Iranian-directed murder-for-hire plot that involved two other men to kill Alinejad.
He was also the target of an earlier kidnapping plot in 2021 that led to the indictment of four people with ties to Iranian intelligence, authorities said.
After Thomas Crooks shot at Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday, US officials said the attempt had no foreign connection, but they said they had identified a possible Iranian threat against Trump in recent weeks and warned the Trump campaign of the increased risk. .
Iranian state media said Tuesday that Iranian officials denied reports of an Iranian conspiracy against Trump for his role in Soleimani’s death, calling the charge “baseless and biased” and saying Trump should instead face justice in a “court.”