A Pakistani national with alleged ties to Iran has been arrested and charged with plotting a murder-for-hire scheme targeting US government officials and politicians, according to charging documents unsealed Tuesday.
Asif Merchant, the man, 46-year-old, is accused of planning to assassinate current and former government officials across the political spectrum, including former President and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, according to multiple sources familiar investigation.
“Law enforcement foiled the charged plot before any attack could be carried out.,” a law information official was quoted by CBS News as saying in a statement.
US intelligence and law enforcement officials have been investigating numerous threat streams from Iran that date back to the killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani during the Trump administration.
Merchant’s alleged planning began in April, according to court documents, when he flew to the US to “recruit individuals to carry out his plot to assassinate US government officials.”
FBI investigators believe that Trump and other current and former US government officials were the intended targets of the plot, a US official briefed on the matter said.
CNN reported Merchant is accused working with a hit man to carry out the assassinations in late August or early September, according to charges filed by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York.
Merchant was arrested on July 12 while preparing to leave the United States, prosecutors said, shortly after he met with purported hitmen who he believed would carry the murders but were actually undercover law enforcement officers. He is in federal custody.
Merchant said that he wanted to target individuals in the United States who are “hurting Pakistan and the world, [the] Muslim world,” according to court documents, adding that “these are not just normal people.”
The FBI investigated the alleged international murder-for-hire plot in the weeks before a 20-year-old from Pennsylvania nearly assassinated the former president at one of his rallies.
A law enforcement official told CNN that investigators have not found evidence that Merchant had any connection to the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania.
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