US charges man with ties to Iran with plot to assassinate Trump, other politicians

Asif Merchant, who has ties to Iran, travelled to New York in April to recruit hit men, US federal prosecutors said.

Former President Donald Trump at a recent campaign rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Picture: Spencer Platt/Getty Images/AFP

A Pakistani man with ties to Iran has been charged with plotting assassinations of former president Donald Trump and other politicians, law-enforcement officials said.

Asif Merchant travelled to New York in April to recruit hit men to carry out his scheme but was foiled when one of the people approached reported him to the FBI and became an informant, federal prosecutors said in Brooklyn on Tuesday.

The indictment doesn’t mention Trump by name, but it was unsealed weeks after US officials said a threat against Trump from Iran prompted them to bolster security for the former president.

The stepped-up security came ahead of a rally in western Pennsylvania where a 20-year-old gunman tried to kill Trump, an attack that officials said was unrelated to the threat from Iran. The sequential threats highlight the disparate nature of the security challenges facing officials ahead of November’s presidential election.

Officials for years have warned about ongoing attempts by Iran to retaliate for the January 2020 US drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, leader of Iran’s Quds Force, the group responsible for Iran’s covert military operations abroad.

Trump ordered the strike, which occurred in Baghdad, Iraq, while he was in the White House.

Attorney-General Merrick Garland said Merchant’s arrest underscored the Justice Department’s aggressive efforts to counter “Iran’s brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials” for Soleimani’s killing.

Merchant spent time in Iran before flying to New York, where he explained to the informant his plot, which included stealing documents and hard drives from a target’s house, planning a protest, and killing a politician, the indictment said. The “party back home told him to ‘finalise’ the plan,” Merchant told the informant, according to prosecutors.

At Merchant’s request, the informant introduced him to several undercover agents posing as hit men. Merchant told the agents he would give them instructions on who to kill in late August or early September, after he had left the US, and agreed to pay them thousands of dollars for their work.

He told the informant to communicate only in coded language: the word “T-shirt” would mean protest; “flannel shirt” would mean stealing; “denim jacket” would mean sending money; and “fleece jacket” would mean committing murder, the indictment said.

Merchant was arrested before he could fly out of the US on July 12, when agents saw him loading his luggage into the trunk of his car. They searched his wallet and found a handwritten note with the code words he had invented to talk about the assassination plot, according to the indictment, which contains a colour photo of the note.

– Corinne Ramey contributed to this article.

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