Posing as an international clothing salesman, suspected spy Asif Merchant made his way through Brooklyn in early June, stopping off at nightclubs looking for associates in a supposed Iran-linked assassination plot.
The suspect is from Pakistan and has family living in Iran. The thwarted plot was allegedly aimed at US politicians and government officials, possibly former President Donald Trump.
The plan included two hit men, 25 actors to cause further unrest by staging fake protests before and after the murder, and a woman to act as “scout”.
Prosecutors allege that he hired two undercover FBI agents rather than assassins, but it is unclear how far he went in recruiting other plotters.
A Pakistani man with ties to Iran has been charged with thwarting a possible assassination plot against President Trump, the Justice Department announced.
Asif Merchant, 46, is pictured here during a meeting with a confidential government source. (Ministry of Justice)
Merchant, 46, also allegedly planned to steal documents and USB drives, but a man he believed to be his main accomplice contacted authorities, who introduced him to two undercover officers posing as hitmen.
Merchant traveled first to Iran and then to the United States, where he contacted a confidential source referred to in the criminal complaint as “CS.”
According to court documents, he told CS of his plan and raised a $5,000 advance to deliver to the assassin.
“By some stroke of luck, the assassin Marchant sought to hire was an undercover FBI agent,” Christy Curtis, acting assistant director of the FBI’s New York field office, said in a statement.
While he was waiting to meet them, he was hoping to recruit other conspirators.
Trump assassination attempt: FBI contracts with Israeli firm to help perpetrator decipher codes, sources say
Asif Merchant, 46, is accused of trying to assassinate a US politician. (Ministry of Justice)
According to the FBI affidavit, “Merchant instructed CS to drive around New York City to look for clubs where he could recruit individuals to assist in his scheme. On or about June 6, 2024, Merchant had CS drive around Brooklyn to scout clubs.”
According to the Justice Department, Merchant, who pressured CS to set up a yarn-dyed clothing business as a front for contacting him, also used the clothing as a code word.
In yarn-dyed fabrics, individual threads are colored before the fabric is woven together, and merchants would use the weights of the fabric as codes for different parts of their crimes.
According to court documents, the T-shirt represented the “lightest job” – a fake protest; the slightly thicker flannel shirt represented the theft of documents; and the fleece jacket represented the “heaviest job” – murder.
Iran threat raises questions about Trump shooter’s undecoded code
The money shown is $5,000 that Merchant allegedly gave to two undercover FBI agents he thought were hit men, according to prosecutors. (Ministry of Justice)
The documents also revealed that Merchant had at least two wives, one in Pakistan and one in Iran, and children with both of them.
The FBI arrested Marchant in Texas on July 12, one day before a counter-shooter shot and killed 20-year-old Pennsylvania man, Thomas Crooks, at a Trump rally in Butler, wounding the former president and two spectators and killing a third man.
A federal source told Fox News Digital that investigators have not found any links between Crooks and Merchant.
Investigators said Tuesday that Marchant’s potential targets included people “on both sides of the political spectrum.”
Putin urges Iran to avoid civilian casualties in Israeli retaliation while supplying weapons to Iran
Inside Marchant’s wallet was a handwritten note containing a code he had devised to communicate his plans to kill the man, along with a T-shirt, a flannel shirt, a fleece jacket, and a pair of jeans, the bottom of which also contained the payment code. (Ministry of Justice)
According to court documents, the actors were supposed to stage a protest at a political rally, but Merchant allegedly asked CS to walk him through various scenarios in which the target would die. The hitmen were to be informed of their official targets in late August or the first week of September.
“The targets are those who are harming Pakistan and the world,” Merchant reportedly told the CS. [the] “The Islamic world. They’re not normal people.”
A spokesman for Iran’s UN mission said diplomats had not been briefed on the matter by US authorities.
Former President Trump was shot during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024, and was quickly carried off the stage. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“However, the methods at issue are clearly inconsistent with the Iranian government’s policy to legally prosecute those responsible for the murder of General Soleimani,” they said.
Officials are wary of retaliation against the former president and other officials in connection with the 2020 Iranian airstrike that killed General Soleimani, a terrorist responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and allied troops and the wounding of thousands more, according to the Pentagon.
Days before Trump ordered the drone strike that killed him, Soleimani was planning a deadly attack on a U.S. military base in Iraq.
Qassem Soleimani attends a rally in Tehran, Iran, on February 11, 2016. The terrorist leader was killed in a U.S. drone strike in January 2020. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noorooj, File)
“The Department of Justice has worked aggressively for years to counter Iran’s brazen and relentless attempts to retaliate against U.S. officials for the killing of Iranian General Soleimani,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “The Department of Justice will take every step to disrupt and hold accountable those who seek to carry out Iran’s deadly plot against American citizens, and we will not tolerate attempts by authoritarian regimes to target U.S. officials and endanger our national security.”
Click here to get the FOX News app
In 2022, federal prosecutors charged another Iranian operative with trying to assassinate former White House national security adviser John Bolton for $300,000.
Marchant was charged with soliciting murder and was due to be extradited from Texas to New York, where federal prosecutors had asked that he be held without bail.
Fox News’ Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
