The Justice Department announced Tuesday that a Pakistani man with ties to Iran has been charged in an assassination scheme of U.S. politicians and government officials.
“FBI investigators believe that [former President Donald] Trump and other current and former U.S. government officials were the intended targets of the plot, a U.S. official briefed on the matter said,” according to CNN.
Court documents filed in a federal district court in New York showed Asif Merchant, 46, traveled to the United States in April, with plans to hire hitmen, who would receive their first target in late August or early September.
The Department of Justice said a confidential source informed the FBI of Merchant’s efforts.
Undercover law enforcement agents then met with the Pakistani man, who paid them $5,000 as an advance payment to kill government officials.
Merchant allegedly told the confidential source that he traveled to Iran two weeks before coming to the U.S. and offered multiple times to pay the source to travel to Iran himself.
In early June, Merchant met with the source in New York and explained “his plot involved three different criminal schemes: (1) stealing documents or USB drives from a target’s home; (2) planning a protest; and (3) killing a politician or government official,” the indictment said.
He also stated that the “people who will be targeted are the ones who are hurting Pakistan and the world, [the] Muslim world. These are not normal people.”
Merchant wanted to recruit men who would do the killing, approximately 25 people for the protest “as a distraction after the murder occurred, and a woman to do ‘reconnaissance.’”
Is Trump under attack?
He noted that there were would be security around their intended target.
On June 10, the confidential source arranged a meeting with Merchant and two men he was told were hitmen, but were actually undercover agents.
Merchant later paid the undercover agents the $5,000 in cash and then made travel arrangement to leave the U.S. on July 12.
🚨Here is the indictment of Asif Raza Merchant today for an #Iran regime plot to assassinate Trump and other officials on American soil. One thing stands out: very little detail about which Iranian government entities tasked the plot: #IRGCterrorists or MOIS? 1/… pic.twitter.com/iKRi7I3P5C
— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) August 6, 2024
On that day law enforcement arrested him outside the front of the place he was staying.
In a Tuesday news release, Attorney General Merrick Garland linked the Merchant plot directly with Iran. He explained it was part of Tehran’s efforts to retaliate against the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani during the Trump administration in January 2020.
“The Justice Department will spare no resource to disrupt and hold accountable those who would seek to carry out Iran’s lethal plotting against American citizens and will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to target American public officials and endanger America’s national security,” he said.
FBI Director Christopher Wray contended, “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.”
“A foreign-directed plot to kill a public official, or any U.S. citizen, is a threat to our national security and will be met with the full might and resources of the FBI,” he further stated.
CNN reported, “The FBI investigated the alleged international murder-for-hire plot in the weeks before a 20-year-old from Pennsylvania nearly assassinated the former president at one of his rallies. A law enforcement official told CNN that investigators have not found evidence that Merchant had any connection to the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania.”
