Per CNN, the United States Justice Department said on Tuesday that a Pakistani national with ties to Iran was charged in a foiled plot to assassinate U.S. government officials on American soil, including former President Trump. The FBI investigated the alleged international murder-for-hire plot in the weeks before a 20-year-old from Pennsylvania nearly assassinated Trump at one of his campaign rallies.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a press release announcing the murder-for-hire case: “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.”
According to court documents unsealed Tuesday, the DOJ said that the Pakistani man, with alleged ties to the Iranian government, was seeking to carry out political assassinations, a case that prompted the US government to increase security for former President Donald Trump and other officials. FBI investigators believe that Trump and other current and former US government officials were the intended targets of the plot.
The suspect, identified as Asif Merchant, 46, is accused of traveling to New York City and working with a hit man to carry out the assassinations in late August or early September, according to charges filed by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York. Merchant was arrested on July 12 — one day before a gunman narrowly missed killing Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania — while preparing to leave the United States, shortly after he met with purported hitmen who he believed would carry the murders but were actually undercover law enforcement officers. Merchant is currently in federal custody.
Court documents state that Merchant said that he wanted to target individuals in the United States who are “hurting Pakistan and the world, [the] Muslim world,” adding that “these are not just normal people.” As part of the plot, Merchant was seeking men to commit the actual assassinations, a woman to do “reconnaissance,” and around 25 people “who could perform a protest as a distraction after the murder occurred.” Merchant allegedly 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.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in Tuesday’s press release: “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.” [Soleimani was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, in January 2020].
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