A Pakistani national with ties to Iran was charged in a foiled plot to assassinate U.S. government officials on American soil, the Department of Justice said Tuesday.
Former President Donald Trump was one of the potential targets of the plot by Asif Merchant, who was arrested on July 12 in Texas before any attacks could be carried out, a senior law enforcement source told NBC News.
Trump was nearly killed at a presidential campaign rally one day after Merchant’s arrest, when a would-be assassin on a nearby rooftop fired at the Republican nominee while he was speaking onstage.
Law enforcement officials do not believe the alleged plot by Merchant is related to the assassination attempt against Trump at the rally in Pennsylvania, NBC reported.
Trump’s Secret Service protection was recently increased after U.S. officials learned of an Iranian plot to kill Trump, NBC News reported in mid-July. The former president’s security was heightened prior to the rally shooting.
Merchant, 46, had orchestrated a plot to kill government officials since at least April, the DOJ said in a criminal complaint that was unsealed Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Brooklyn, New York.
He spent time in Iran, then flew to the U.S., where he contacted an unnamed person who he thought could help him carry out the scheme.
But that person reported Merchant to law enforcement, becoming a confidential source.
The source put Merchant in touch with two “hitmen,” who were actually undercover officers, the court filing says.
Merchant paid the men $5,000 in cash in New York as an advance payment for murdering the officials, the criminal complaint alleges.
“For years, the Justice Department has been working aggressively to counter Iran’s brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the killing of Iranian General [Qassem] Soleimani,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press release announcing the murder-for-hire case.
Soleimani, who was then Iran’s most powerful general, was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, in January 2020. Trump was president at that time.
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