Month: August 2022

The FBI wants to know why a man was near the New York City home of a well-known Iranian journalist and author while allegedly in possession of an illegal military-style rifle loaded with 30 rounds.

The agency is probing whether the suspect, federally charged with possession of a firearm that lacked a visible serial number, was there as part of a possible plot to neutralize or assassinate Masih Alinejad, two law enforcement sources said.

Iranian intelligence plotted unsuccessfully to kidnap the Voice of America Persian Service host last year, the FBI said.

Alinejad said at the time that she believed the government wanted to shut down her social media voice.

Iran’s Islamist rulers “not only wanted to make sure that I physically didn’t exist anymore, they also wanted to destroy my Instagram, Facebook, Telegram and WhatsApp channels,” she said in a video message distributed by VOA.

Iran has denied the 2021 allegation, calling it “baseless.”

Sunday afternoon the journalist tweeted security video that shows a large man on her porch trying to open a door. Alinejad said that this is the suspect arrested and charged with the gun violation, and that he had come to her Brooklyn home to kill her.

“My crime is giving voice to voiceless people,” she tweeted.

Khalid Mehdiyev of Yonkers, New York, was arrested Thursday near the woman’s residence by New York City police for allegedly driving on a suspended license, according to the affidavit filed Friday along with a criminal complaint.

Police initially stopped him for allegedly driving past a stop sign without fully stopping, the document states. He was being held without bond.

FBI agents had been surveilling the man since at least the previous day and appeared to corroborate Alinejad’s claim that he had been on her porch and “attempted to open the front door,” FBI Special Agent Derek Kasse wrote in the affidavit.

The court document also claims that the vehicle Mehdiyev was using was issued a parking ticket near the journalist’s home July 23.

On Thursday, following that traffic stop, police said they found a Chinese-made AK 47 clone in a suitcase in the back of the vehicle, where they also discovered 66 rounds of ammunition, most inside two magazines, one of which was attached to the rifle, the FBI alleged.

The affidavit adds that $1,100 in cash was in the suitcase with the gun. The Subaru Forrester driven by Mehdiyev had Illinois plates and, inside, plates from two other states, the FBI alleges.

In an interview with agents after his arrest Mehdiyev said that he had borrowed the vehicle and that the case, gun and ammunition were not his, according to the affidavit.

But he reversed course in subsequent interview, said the gun was his, then asked for a lawyer, Kasse wrote.

It’s not clear if Mehdiyev retained counsel. The federal public defender’s office for the Brooklyn area did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Alinejad has been critical of Iran’s leadership, particularly regarding its record on women’s rights and human rights.

“Last year, the Islamic Republic, tried to kidnap me, now they want to kill me,” Alinejad tweeted Sunday.

An FBI spokeswoman confirmed Mehdiyev’s arrest, but the agency declined to comment further.

Dennis Romero contributed.

He speaks in sober and serious tones and presents himself as a common-sense family man. When asked about his family life by one interviewer, he said his “kids are all grown and gone” and added that nowadays, “I’m thinking about my grandkids” in battles he takes on.

But his family life has been rocky. He has been married four times and estranged for more than two decades from two adult children, and he does not know their children, family members said. (He also has two stepchildren.)

He talks frequently about his experience as a police officer and firefighter in Kalamazoo, Mich. But personnel records obtained from that city’s Department of Public Safety, which he left in 1999, include this note in his file from him: “Retired, poor rating, would not rehire.” A department spokesman declined to comment.

Mr. Finchem has raised more than $1.2 million, a considerable amount for a campaign for secretary of state. (Mr. Lane has raised about $1.1 million, while the other two candidates trail significantly behind.) Much of the money has come from out of state — seven of the eight donors who were listed as having donated the $5,300 maximum in his last two campaign filings were from elsewhere. Major donors include Brian T. Kennedy, a past president of the right-wing Claremont Institute, and Michael Marsicano, a former mayor of Hazleton, Pa., who recently lost a Republican congressional primary.

For all that, he has few visible signs of a staff or campaign office. About three-quarters of his expenditures, more than $750,000, have flowed to a Florida political consulting firm run by Spence Rogers, the nephew of Wendy Rogers, an Arizona lawmaker with ties to white nationalists, campaign filings show. A further $53,000, or nearly 5 percent of his total expenditures, have gone to payments to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. (Many other Trump-backed candidates have done likewise, including Kari Lake, Mr. Trump’s favored candidate for Arizona governor, whose campaign has spent more than $100,000 at Mar-a-Lago.)