WASHINGTON — Three former Trump administration officials who say they were warned that Iran had targeted them wrote a letter to the Justice Department 18 months ago asking for help protecting them, but never received a response, according to the officials.
“It is clear there are specific, credible threats against us and our families by Iran and those inspired to act on Iran’s behalf,” the officials wrote in the letter, a copy of which they provided to NBC News. “This necessitates urgent steps to improve our physical and cyber security.”
The officials are former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, and two top officials who focused on the Middle East at the National Security Council, Victoria Coates and Robert Greenway.
In January 2020, then-President Donald Trump authorized a drone strike in Iraq that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The U.S. government has long said Iran has plotted retaliation against the U.S. for the Soleimani strike. Top Iranian officials have also issued explicit threats against current and former U.S. officials whom Iran blames for his death. For example, in early 2023 an IRGC commander said on live television that “God willing we will be able to kill” Trump, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a U.S. general.
Some former Trump administration officials, including Pompeo and former national security adviser John Bolton, receive personal security protection funded by the U.S. government because of the potential threat to them from Iran. The Biden administration also recently received intelligence showing a possible Iranian assassination plot against former President Donald Trump, NBC News has reported.
In an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, Pottinger, Greenway and Coates said each of them have in the past received “duty to warn” briefings from the U.S. government about an active threat against them from Iran. When the U.S. government uncovers evidence that someone’s life could be at risk, they may inform the target in such a briefing.
The three officials said they were not specifically requesting personal security details by sending the letter but were looking to discuss possible options for government help in making them safer from cyber and physical attacks.
“What we were asking for was not a specific remedy,” Pottinger said. “We wanted a conversation.”
Pottinger said he did not become a target for Iran until about two years after Soleimani’s assassination, when Iran listed him among 51 Americans it was sanctioning for their alleged involvement in the operation.
Greenway said his email was hacked by Iranian actors in December 2022, which the FBI worked with him to clean up. Part of the hack was aimed at obtaining digital information that could allow Iran to be able to track his location, he said.
“There are a lot of other things the government could do,” besides provide personal security details, Greenway said, “and they’re not.”
Separately, the Biden administration nearly a year ago stopped providing personal security for former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, who had been receiving it because U.S. officials believed he was under threat from Iran, according to a person familiar with the decision. That decision was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Pottinger, Coates and Greenway said part of their concern is that Iran will go after former officials that it believes were involved in the Soleimani assassination but who don’t have government security protection.
“Iran may choose to prioritize as targets those of us who lack the protection afforded to others on its hitlist,” they wrote in their letter.
All three of them said they have personally paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to harden their own security.
Their letter, dated Jan. 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 it he reached out to a Biden White House official to advise that the letter had been sent. He said the official told him it would be flagged internally, and a couple of months later when he still hadn’t heard back from the Justice Department or any other government agency he reached out to the White House official again. The official told him they would check on the matter, but Pottinger said he still has not heard from anyone in the administration.
Separately, Greenway said he reached out to the Justice Department requesting acknowledgement that the letter had been received but did not hear back from anyone.
The three former Trump officials acknowledge in their letter that “It is unclear who the appropriate authority within the U.S. government should be responsible for providing protection for us.”
They said they sent the letter to Garland with the understanding that the Justice Department ultimately adjudicates whether individual agencies provide security protections to former government officials.
“They’ve known about this,” Coates said, adding that the three officials would have expected a response “even if just to say ‘no.’”
Justice Department officials told NBC News they referred the letter from the three former officials to another agency, but they did not explain why they never notified the three former officials or responded personally to their letter.
In a June 2023 letter to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., obtained by NBC News, a Justice Department official refers to the letter from the three former Trump officials, and says, “The Department has referred the January 19 letter to the appropriate government agencies responsible for making determinations about protective services regarding particular individuals.”
After receiving the letter from the three former officials, the National Security Council referred the matter to the intelligence community and the FBI and requested they respond, according to a U.S. official.
Iranian plots inside the U.S.
Federal authorities have uncovered what they say are previous Iranian plots to kill or harm opponents inside the U.S.
The most striking example came in late July 2022, when a hired assassin approached the Brooklyn front porch of Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad. According to court records, he knocked, but she was busy on a Zoom call and didn’t answer. When the suspect drove away, he ran a stop sign and a police officer happened to see it — leading to the discovery of an AK-47-style rifle in the back seat of his car. That arrest led the FBI to unravel what prosecutors say was an Iranian-directed murder-for-hire scheme involving two other men to assassinate Alinejad.
She had also been the target of an earlier kidnapping plot, which led to the indictment in 2021 of four people who have ties to Iranian intelligence, authorities said.
After Thomas Crooks shot at Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday, U.S. officials said the attempt seemed to have no foreign ties, but they also said that in recent weeks they had detected a possible Iranian threat against Trump and had warned the Trump campaign of an increased risk.
On Tuesday, Iranian state media reported that Iranian officials had dismissed reports of an Iranian plot against Trump for his role in Soleimani’s death, calling the accusation “unsubstantiated and malicious” and saying Trump should instead face justice in “a court of law.”