Asif Merchant, suspected of espionage under the guise of an international clothing salesman, navigated Brooklyn in early June, visiting nightclubs to find accomplices for a purported assassination plot linked to Iran.
FBI Captures Pakistani Asif Merchant Linked to Iran After Plotting with ‘Hitmen’ to Cause Chaos, Assassinate U.S. Official
Merchant then began arranging means to obtain $5,000 in cash to pay the supposed hitmen as an advance payment for the assassination.https://t.co/VHeMQY1IHK— TheCrimesScene (@webtrendnigeria) August 8, 2024
Hailing from Pakistan with family ties in Iran, his alleged target was a U.S. politician, possibly former President Trump.
The scheme reportedly involved two hitmen, 25 actors to stage a fake protest to cause additional chaos during the murder, and a woman assigned to perform reconnaissance.
Prosecutors claim he unknowingly hired two undercover FBI agents instead of actual assassins. The extent of his success in recruiting other conspirators remains unclear.
The 46-year-old Merchant allegedly planned to steal documents and USB drives. The person he believed to be his main accomplice alerted authorities and connected him with two undercover agents posing as hitmen.
Merchant travelled from Iran to the U.S., where he approached the confidential source, identified in court documents as “CS.”
He discussed his plans with CS and secured a $5,000 advance payment for the assassins, as stated in the court documents.
“Fortunately, the assassins Merchant tried to hire were undercover FBI agents,” Christie Curtis, acting Assistant Director of the FBI New York Field Office, stated.
While waiting to meet the assassins, he sought to recruit additional conspirators.
“He instructed the CS to drive him around New York City to find clubs where he could recruit help,” according to an FBI affidavit. “On or about 6 June 2024, Merchant had the CS drive him around Brooklyn to scout clubs.”
Merchant, who pushed CS to set up a yarn-dyed clothing business as a cover for their communications, used clothing items as code words, according to the Justice Department.
In yarn-dyed fabrics, threads are coloured before weaving. Merchant allegedly used fabric weights as code for different crime aspects.
T-shirts referred to the “lightest work”—the fake protest. Flannel shirts symbolised stealing documents, and a fleece jacket represented murder—the “heaviest work.”
Documents reveal Merchant has at least two wives—one in Pakistan and one in Iran—with children from both marriages.
The FBI arrested Merchant in Texas on 12 July, a day before 20-year-old Thomas Crooks from Pennsylvania attacked a Trump rally in Butler, injuring the former president and two spectators, and killing a third man before counter-snipers intervened.
A federal source indicated no ties between Crooks and Merchant.
Investigators mentioned Merchant’s potential targets spanned “both sides” of the political spectrum.
Actors were meant to stage protests at political rallies, and Merchant allegedly asked CS to describe various scenarios of the targets’ deaths, according to court documents. The hitmen were to learn of their target by late August or early September.
Merchant reportedly told CS, “people who will be targeted are those harming Pakistan and the Muslim world. These are not normal people.”
A spokesperson for Iran’s mission to the United Nations said American officials had not briefed them on the matter.
“However, it is evident that the modus operandi in question contradicts the Iranian Government’s policy of legally prosecuting the murderer of General Soleimani,” they stated.
Authorities have been vigilant for retaliation against the former president and other officials related to the 2020 airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and allied troops and injuries to thousands more, according to the Defense Department.
Days before Trump ordered the drone strike that killed him, Soleimani orchestrated a deadly attack on a U.S. base in Iraq.
“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 Soleimani,” Attorney General Merrick Garland stated. “The Justice Department will spare no resource to disrupt and hold accountable those who would seek to carry out Iran’s lethal plotting against American citizens, and will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to target American public officials and endanger America’s national security.”
In 2022, federal prosecutors charged another Iranian agent with attempting to kill former White House national security adviser John Bolton for $300,000.
Merchant faces a federal murder-for-hire charge and is being transferred from Texas to New York. Federal prosecutors requested he be held without bail.