On Dec. 11, 2022, while receiving full-time protection from the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service in regard to threats from Iran, a former Trump administration official had two personal vehicles stolen from the driveway of his northern Virginia home.
Brian Hook, formerly the State Department's special representative for Iran, was in his residence while the thefts occurred. Three weeks later, one of those vehicles was used in a Jan. 3 rush-hour shooting in the Brightwood area of northern Washington, D.C. Two adults and an 8-year-old child were wounded in the shooting. One adult male was killed. The association between the car theft and the shooting has not previously been reported.
The Diplomatic Security Service is a federal law enforcement agency that investigates certain crimes such as visa and passport fraud. It also supervises the security of U.S. embassies abroad and provides personal protection for the U.S. secretary of state, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, visiting foreign dignitaries other than heads of state, and certain U.S. diplomats. In response to multiple Iranian assassination plots, however, the Diplomatic Security Service and the Secret Service have provided and continue to provide protective details for a number of former Trump administration officials. The Diplomatic Security Service retains protective details for Hook and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
These threats derive from Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's desire for revenge over the January 2020 assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. As the Washington Examiner was first to report in March 2022, former national security adviser John Bolton was provided with a Secret Service detail in response to a significant IRGC assassination plot. In August of last year, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against an IRGC officer over that plot.
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