Pakistani man with ties to Iran charged in plot to carry out assassinations in US

The US Justice Department has charged a Pakistani man who has alleged ties to the Iranian government with seeking to carry out political assassinations, a case that prompted the US government to increase security for former President Donald Trump and other officials, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday, Report informs via CNN.

FBI investigators believe that Trump and other current and former US government officials were the intended targets of the plot, a US official briefed on the matter said.

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 while preparing to leave the United States, prosecutors said, shortly after he met with purported hitmen who he believed would carry the murders but were actually undercover law enforcement officers. He is in federal custody.

Merchant said that he wanted to target individuals in the United States who are “hurting Pakistan and the world, [the] Muslim world,” according to court documents, adding that “these are not just normal people.”

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.

The FBI believes it foiled Merchant’s plot before any attack, and in the weeks since his arrest he has cooperated with investigators, according to US officials. But the Iranian government’s known threats against Trump, prompted the FBI to pass on the intelligence to the US Secret Service, which increased security protection for the former president, officials have said.

As part of the plot, prosecutors say, 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.”

A lawyer for Merchant denied that he was cooperating with authorities, saying the claim was “inaccurate” and “irresponsible.”

The plot revealed by US prosecutors on Tuesday adds to a growing list of detailed Iranian plans to allegedly kill Trump, according to national security officials.

The US government has repeatedly raised concerns that Iran may try to retaliate for a 2020 US drone strike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a top general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) by trying to kill Trump or his former advisers.

“We have not received any reports on this matter from the US Government,” a spokesperson for Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations told CNN when asked about the Justice Department charges. “However, it is evident that the modus operandi in question contradicts the Iranian Government’s policy of legally prosecuting the murderer of General Soleimani.”

US prosecutors have charged other individuals for similar assassination attempts in the past, including charges brought in 2022 against a 45-year-old Iranian national and IRGC member who allegedly tried to pay $300,000 to an individual in the US to kill former national security adviser John Bolton. In that case, prosecutors allege that the plot was “likely in retaliation” for Soleimani’s death.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Tuesday that the US “will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to target American public officials and endanger America’s national security.”