Four days after former President Donald Trump nearly died during a campaign rally, federal investigators have interviewed a man suspected of being involved in an Iran-backed plot to assassinate the 45th president or two of his political opponents — President Biden or former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley — according to FBI documents released Thursday.
Asif Merchant, 46, a Pakistani man charged in the scheme, described his interactions with the administrator, Mehrdad Yousef. Pursuant to the offer agreement The documents were made public by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who obtained them from a law enforcement whistleblower.
In a criminal complaint unsealed last month, Merchant was charged with murder for hire after he allegedly sent $5,000 to an undercover FBI agent to hire a hit man. He was arrested on July 12.
The proposal describes a meeting at a safe house in Iran where Mr. Yousef and Mr. Merchant discussed the merits of attempting to assassinate a U.S. politician indoors or outdoors.
According to the documents, Yousef “drawn a diagram on a whiteboard to show Marchant how to carry out the assassination” and “drew a rectangle to represent where a crowd would gather, with a small box at the top of the rectangle representing the podium where the target could be found.”
Specifically, according to Marchant's explanation, the documents suggested that indoor assassinations would be carried out with a pistol, while distant or outdoor shootings would be carried out with a long-range rifle.
Merchant also provided Yousef with details about Trump's rallies, including the number of cameras, details of security personnel and the size of the motorcade.
“Merchant believed that for security reasons, neither the near nor the far option would be successful, but assessed that each tactic had a 50% chance of success,” the document reads.
While the Pakistani man repeatedly denied receiving specific target information from Yousef, his representatives did drop some hints about who the targets might be.
“Mr. Merchant asked Yousef what he should say if the mafia asked him who he wanted to kill,” the document states. “Yousef responded that it might be Donald Trump, then after a short pause stated that it might be Joe Biden or Nikki Haley, or any politician, military officer or bureaucrat.”
Merchant added that his “understanding” is that the killing was in retaliation for the airstrike ordered by President Trump in January 2020 that killed top Iranian commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
The documents also reveal that Merchant traveled to New York City to spy on clubs in Mexico and to “search for and evaluate individuals capable of conducting reconnaissance and facilitating communications on behalf of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).”
“The dangerous murder-for-hire plot uncovered in today's indictment was allegedly orchestrated by a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran and is standard Iranian tactics,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement after the indictment was unsealed.
“Bad actors are determined to wreak havoc on our country, and America's political leaders in both parties are being targeted in their efforts,” Rep. Grassley said in a statement Thursday.
“In this extremely heightened threat environment, federal agencies must focus their efforts on building public trust and reassuring the American people about their efforts to accomplish their defense mission.”
Grassley said he has contacted the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service and the Transportation Security Administration to ask them what steps they have taken to investigate the Iranian plot.
“If they 'assassinate President Trump', which is always a possibility, I want the US to destroy Iran and wipe it off the face of the earth. If that doesn't happen, US leaders will be seen as 'cowardly' cowards!” Trump wrote in Truth Social July 25th.
The FBI, Secret Service, several congressional committees, and other agencies are currently investigating the attempted assassination of President Trump by Thomas Matthew Crooks in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. Crooks' gunfire killed firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, and severely injured two rally attendees, David Duch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 74.
Investigators have not revealed a motive for the attack, but Crooks is not believed to have ties to Iran.
In addition to the assassination plot, Iran is also said to have backed the hacking of the Trump campaign, which resulted in insider leaks to Politico and The Washington Post, both of which appear to have refused to make the information public.
Intelligence officials have warned that Iran has “long demonstrated an interest in exploiting societal tensions through a variety of means.”
