A Pakistani man was arrested and charged with plotting to kill President Trump on behalf of Iran.
Asif Merchant, also known as Asif Raza Merchant, 46, was charged in New York with a murder-for-hire scheme targeting a U.S. politician. Trump was not directly mentioned in the indictment, but sources told the media that he was a target.
The complaint was unsealed Tuesday, but Merchant was arrested in July - just a day before Trump was nearly assassinated at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. There does not appear to be any connection between the two plots.
Merchant was apparently on the radar of law enforcement for some time. He came to the U.S. in April from Pakistan, after spending time in Iran.
On arrival in the U.S., he contacted someone to carry out his murder plot, and the person became a confidential source for law enforcement.
At a June meeting in New York, Merchant told the informant that he had multiple jobs for him, and the victims would be "targeted here,” in the U.S. He told the source to gather people who could execute the plans.
Later, Merchant met with the so-called assassins, who were actually undercover FBI agents. He explained his plot, which involved stealing documents, arranging protests at political rallies, and killing a “political person.”
He said the hitmen would receive instructions on who to kill either the last week of August or the first week of September, after Merchant had left the country. Merchant would communicate from overseas using code words.
Merchant paid a $5,000 advance to the undercover agents.
Police arrested Merchant as he planned to leave the country on July 12. The next day, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks tried to kill Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The FBI is investigating the July assassination attempt in Butler. They have yet to release a motive for the shooter, who was killed at the scene.
Iran has long wanted revenge for the assassination of its top general, Qassem Soleimani. Trump ordered the hit on Soleimani in 2020.
Regional tensions in the Middle East have escalated after the leader of Hamas was killed on Iranian soil, allegedly by Israel, raising fears of a wider war. Five U.S. soldiers were injured at a base in Iraq this week in an Iran-backed rocket attack.
