A Pakistani national with alleged ties to Iran was arrested and charged with a murder-for-hire scheme targeting U.S. government officials and politicians, such as former President Trump, according to charging documents from the Justice Department on Tuesday.
Asif Raza Merchant, 46, met with two would-be assassins who were undercover law enforcement officers, believing he was recruiting them to carry out the killings and allegedly arranging to pay them $5,000 as an advance, the department said.
According to CNN, citing court documents, Merchant said that he wanted to target individuals in the United States who are “hurting Pakistan and the world, [the] Muslim world,” adding that “these are not just normal people.”
U.S. officials revealed in July that an Iranian threat to Trump’s life prompted increased security measures. But the shooting that occurred on July 13, in which Trump was injured by a bullet fired by a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man, was not related to this threat, officials said.
The U.S. government has expressed ongoing concerns about potential Iranian retaliation for the 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a high-ranking official in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), by killing former president Trump or his former advisors.
“We have not received any reports from the U.S. Government on this matter,” a spokesperson for Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations told CNN. “However, it is clear that the actions described do not align with the Iranian Government’s policy of legally prosecuting those responsible for the murder of General Soleimani.”
In the past, U.S prosecutors have charged individuals for similar assassination attempts, including an Iranian national and IRGC member who was accused in 2022 of paying a U.S individual $300,000 to kill former national security adviser John Bolton. Prosecutors allege that the plot was “likely in retaliation” for Soleimani’s death.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Tuesday that the U.S. “will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to target American public officials and endanger America’s national security.”
Merchant was arrested on July 12 as he prepared to leave the U.S. from New York that day. Investigators say a search of his wallet turned up a handwritten note containing code words he had used to communicate with the persons he believed to be hitmen.
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