A Pakistani man with ties to Iran has been charged with plotting to assassinate US politicians and officials. FBI Director Christopher Wray described the scheme as a “dangerous murder-for-hire plot… straight out of the Iranian playbook.”
Asif Merchant, 46, is accused of attempting to hire a hitman in New York to kill prominent American officials. Sources cited by CBS, the BBC’s news partner, reported that Donald Trump was among the targets. Security for the Republican presidential nominee was heightened in June after authorities learned of an Iranian plot to kill him.
“A foreign-directed plot to kill a public official, or any US citizen, is a threat to our national security and will be met with the full might and resources of the FBI,” Mr. Wray said on Tuesday.
Mr. Merchant was arrested in July and is being held in New York. According to the Justice Department’s indictment, he arrived in the US from Pakistan in April after spending time in Iran. After arriving, he allegedly contacted a person he believed could assist with the assassination plot. This unnamed contact later reported Mr. Merchant to the police.
Mr. Merchant is said to have made a “finger gun” motion when discussing his intentions. The indictment noted that the job would not be a “one-time opportunity” and that the contact’s services would be needed on an ongoing basis. Mr. Merchant allegedly told the contact he planned to leave the US before the targets were killed and that he would stay in contact using code words.
The suspect asked the contact to arrange a meeting with potential assassins, and in June, the contact connected him with undercover FBI agents posing as hitmen. Mr. Merchant allegedly instructed the agents to steal documents from a target’s home, arrange protests at political rallies, and kill a “political person.” According to the indictment, Mr. Merchant said the targets would be revealed in the last week of August or the first week of September.
While the indictment does not mention Trump by name, sources cited by CBS indicated that the former president was one of the intended targets.
The plot is unrelated to the assassination attempt on the former president at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper on site. Trump and officials, including his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have faced threats from Tehran since the drone strike assassination of Qassim Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, in Iraq in 2020.
