A Pakistani national with ties to Iran was charged in a foiled plot to assassinate U.S. government officials on American soil, the Department of Justice said Tuesday.
Former President Donald Trump was one of the potential targets of the plot by Asif Merchant, who was arrested on July 12 in Texas before any attacks could be carried out, a senior law enforcement source told NBC News.
Trump was nearly killed at a presidential campaign rally one day after Merchant’s arrest, when a would-be assassin on a nearby rooftop fired at the Republican nominee while he was speaking onstage.
Law enforcement officials do not believe the alleged plot by Merchant is related to the assassination attempt against Trump at the rally in Pennsylvania, NBC reported.
Trump’s Secret Service protection was recently increased after U.S. officials learned of an Iranian plot to kill Trump, NBC News reported in mid-July. The former president’s security was heightened prior to the rally shooting.
“This dangerous murder-for-hire plot exposed in today’s charges allegedly was orchestrated by a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran and is straight out of the Iranian playbook,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.
Merchant, 46, had orchestrated a plot to kill government officials since at least April, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit for a criminal complaint that was unsealed Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Brooklyn, New York.
He spent time in Iran, then flew to the U.S., where he contacted an unnamed person who he thought could help him carry out the scheme.
But that person reported Merchant to law enforcement, becoming a confidential source.
Merchant had initially contacted the source under the guise of offering business opportunities. He called the source in May and said he had an opportunity to earn $100,000 “in the ‘yarn-dyed’ clothing business,” the complaint says.
Merchant allegedly met the source in a New York hotel room in early June and told him the opportunity would be ongoing, not a one-off event.
He then made a “finger gun” motion with his hand, indicating that the opportunity was related to murder, according to the complaint.
Merchant said he needed the source to arrange a rendezvous with hitmen in New York.
In a subsequent meeting, Merchant allegedly told the source that his three-pronged plot involved stealing documents from a target’s home, planning a protest, and killing a politician or government official.
The “people who will be targeted are the ones who are hurting Pakistan and the world, [the] Muslim world,” Merchant allegedly said. “These are not normal people.”
Merchant then gamed out a potential assassination plot by moving objects around a napkin on a table.
The source later put Merchant in touch with two “hitmen,” who were actually undercover officers, the court filing says.
Merchant paid the men $5,000 in cash in New York as an advance payment for murdering the officials, the criminal complaint alleges.
Merchant made plans to leave the U.S. on July 12, but he was intercepted by law enforcement officers, who arrested him and searched his residence.
“For years, the Justice Department has been working aggressively to counter Iran’s brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the killing of Iranian General [Qassem] Soleimani,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press release announcing the murder-for-hire case.
Soleimani, who was then Iran’s most powerful general, was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, in January 2020. Trump was president at that time.
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