A Pakistani national with ties to Iran was charged in a botched plot to kill US government officials on US soil, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Former President Donald Trump was one of the possible targets of the plot by Asif Merchant, who was arrested July 12 in Texas before any attack could be carried out, a senior law enforcement source told NBC News.
Trump was nearly killed at a presidential campaign rally the day after Merchant’s arrest, when a would-be assassin on a nearby rooftop shot at the Republican nominee while he was speaking on stage.
Law enforcement officials do not believe Merchant’s alleged plot is connected to the assassination attempt against Trump at the Pennsylvania rally, NBC reported.
Secret Service protection for Trump was recently stepped up after US officials learned of an Iranian plot to kill Trump, NBC News reported in mid-July. The former president’s security was increased before the shooting at the rally.
“This dangerous murder-for-hire plot exposed in today’s indictments is alleged to have been orchestrated by a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran and is off the Iranian playbook,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement. .
Merchant, 46, had been orchestrating a plot to kill government officials since at least April, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit in a criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Brooklyn. New York.
He spent time in Iran, then flew to the US, where he contacted an unidentified person who he thought could help him carry out the scheme.
But that person reported the Trader to law enforcement, becoming a confidential source.
The merchant had initially contacted the source under the guise of offering business opportunities. He called the source in May and said he had an opportunity to make $100,000 “in the ‘yarn-dyed’ clothing business,” the complaint states.
The trader allegedly met the source in a New York hotel room in early June and told him the opportunity would be ongoing, not a one-off event.
Then he made a movement with his hand with a finger gun, indicating that according to the complaint, the case was related to the murder.
Merchant said he needed the source to arrange a meeting with assassins in New York.
In a subsequent meeting, Merchant allegedly told the source that his three-pronged plot involved stealing documents from a target’s home, planning a protest and killing a politician or government official.
“The people who will be targeted are those who are harming Pakistan and the world, [the] Muslim world,” Merchant allegedly said. “These are not normal people.”
Merchant then developed a possible assassination plot by moving objects around a napkin on a table.
The source later put Merchant in touch with two “killers,” who were actually undercover officers, the court filing said.
The dealer paid the men $5,000 in cash in New York as a down payment for killing the officials, the criminal complaint alleges.
Merchant made plans to leave the US on July 12, but he was intercepted by law enforcement officers, who arrested him and searched his residence.
“For years, the Department of Justice has worked aggressively to counter Iran’s brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the assassination of the Iranian general. [Qassem] Soleimani,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press release announcing the murder-for-hire case.
Soleimani, who at the time was Iran’s most powerful general, was killed by a US airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, in January 2020. Trump was president at the time.
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