A Pakistani man allegedly tied to Iran has been charged with an elaborate plot to assassinate current and former government officials, potentially including former President Donald Trump.
Asif Merchant, 46, faces a single count of murder for hire after prosecutors say he paid $5,000 to an undercover FBI agent he believed was a hit man, with whom he discussed a complex plot directed at a political figure who Merchant said would be surrounded by security.
The complaint does not name an alleged target or targets, but a senior law enforcement official said Trump was one of the potential targets of this plot.
“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 was arrested as he tried to leave the country a day before Trump was shot in Pennsylvania on July 13, and officials do not believe there is any connection between the plot and the attempted assassination, in which the shooter and one member of the crowd were killed.
NBC News previously reported that the U.S. had received information Iran was plotting to kill Trump as part of its campaign of revenge against officials involved in the targeted killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
A law enforcement official told NBC News that Merchant's plot, first detected in April, was one of the factors that led the Secret Service to bolster security around Trump.
Asked Tuesday about the enhanced security around Trump in the weeks prior to the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting, a Secret Service spokesperson said, “The Secret Service and other agencies are constantly receiving and evaluating new potential threat information, including with regard to Iranian lethal plotting, and we take action to adjust resources, as needed. We cannot comment on any specific threat stream, other than to say that the Secret Service takes threats seriously and responds accordingly.”
According to court documents, Merchant traveled to Texas in April after spending time in Iran. The documents say he contacted a person he believed could help him with a criminal scheme, but that person reported him to law enforcement.
The FBI then began a sting operation.
In June, court documents say, Merchant traveled from Texas to New York to meet with a confidential FBI source and told him he had three separate goals: stealing documents or USB drives from a target’s home; planning a protest; and killing a politician or government official.
Merchant allegedly told the confidential source that the “people who will be targeted are the ones who are hurting Pakistan and the world, [the] Muslim world. These are not just normal people” and apparently made a motion with his finger as if he was using a gun.
Merchant said he worked for “people overseas,” according to court documents, and he said they told him to finalize his plans to hire a hit man. On June 10, Merchant allegedly met in New York with undercover law enforcement officers posing as assassins for hire.
He also, according to court documents, created a code for the group to talk and paid the undercover law enforcement officers $5,000 so they knew they were going forward.
Merchant allegedly made plans to leave the U.S. on July 12, and the FBI arrested him that day at his home in Texas and conducted a search.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Iranians have been brazen and persistent about plotting to kill former Trump administration officials.
“I don’t think that we have seen the end of this,” he said. “I expect we will hear more.”
