A Pakistani man, recruited by Iranian intelligence, was sentenced on Friday for devising an ill-conceived scheme to assassinate U.S. political figures, including former President Donald Trump. In a baffling move, he offered only $5,000 as an initial payment to two men to carry out the assassination.
Asif Merchant, aged 47, was convicted on charges of murder-for-hire and terrorism by a Brooklyn jury. The jury dismissed his defense that he was coerced into the flawed plot due to threats against his family from Iranian operatives, reaching their verdict in under two hours.
Merchant testified that his Iranian contact dispatched him to the United States in April 2024 with several assignments, one of which included potentially orchestrating a murder. He was given a list of potential targets, which included the top three presidential candidates of that time.
“He didn’t specify the exact target but mentioned three names: Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Nikki Haley,” Merchant revealed to the jury.
Previously a banker, Merchant had seen his ventures in banana and clothing exports fail. He claimed that he was promised up to $1 million contingent upon the success of his mission.
However, his poorly thought-out assassination plan ultimately did not progress beyond the initial stages.
FBI secret cameras caught Merchant sketching out the plot to kill Trump at a June 4, 2024 meeting inside a seedy Queens motel with a would-be recruit who’d snitched to the feds.
“This is the target. How will it die?” he said during the meeting, placing a vape on an unfolded piece of notebook to denote the politician he had in his crosshairs.
He later handed $5,000 each to two undercover FBI agents that were posing as hitmen, and was arrested in August 2024 as he attempted to leave the country before the purported hit would unfold.
Merchant claimed on the stand that he knew he would be arrested ahead of the hitmen meeting, and that “I didn’t think I would be able to be successful.”
But he admitted during cross-examination that he knew his handler was part of a group classified by US officials as terrorists, and that he had believed the FBI agents were real hitmen.
The trial unfolded in the backdrop of the US and Israeli militaries launching an unprecedented military offensive that has killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of other top Iranian officials and led to an escalating war in the Middle East.
Merchant faces up to life in prison at his sentencing.
