Five thousand dollars in rolled-up, rubber-banded $100 bills changed hands in a parked car near a Manhattan rooftop restaurant in June 2024. The men taking the cash were not hitmen. They were undercover law enforcement officers, and the man handing it over, Asif Merchant, thought he had just paid an advance on a political killing.
A federal jury has since convicted Merchant, a Pakistani national, of murder for hire and of attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries. The Justice Department says he is a trained operative of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He faces up to life in prison.
How the plot came apart
Merchant flew into the United States in April 2024. Prosecutors say he reached out to an acquaintance in New York, Nadeem Ali, hoping Ali could help him find people to carry out his plan. Ali went to law enforcement instead and became a confidential source.
In early June, Merchant met Ali and made a “finger gun” motion with his hand to show what the job involved. He wanted documents or USB drives stolen from a target’s home, a protest staged, and a politician or government official killed. According to the court record, he drew the plan on a napkin in a hotel room and warned Ali that there would be “security all around” the target.
Ali then put him in touch with two men Merchant took for hired killers. In a recording played at trial, Merchant told them his associates in Pakistan wanted documents stolen, protests staged at political events, “and the last thing is: Maybe you can, say, kill someone.” One of the agents asked if he meant somebody’s wife. “No, no…. maybe it’s some political person, maybe some other person,” Merchant answered.
On June 21 he paid the $5,000. “Now we know we’re going forward,” one of the agents said. “Yes, absolutely,” Merchant replied. Prosecutors say he planned to name the target only after he had left the country, and that the two sides agreed on code words, with “fleece jacket” standing in for the assassination. Agents arrested him on July 12, 2024, as he prepared to fly out. A handwritten note in his wallet listed the code words.
What the jury heard
Merchant took the stand himself. He testified that the Guard recruited him in Pakistan in late 2022 or early 2023, trained him in tradecraft including countersurveillance, and that he made repeated trips to Iran to see his handler. He admitted the Guard sent him to the United States to arrange political assassinations and steal documents, and he said he knew it was a designated terrorist organization.
The defense pushed back on parts of the government’s account. FBI agent Jacqueline Smith testified that Merchant had told her about a Revolutionary Guard handler in Iran, introduced by a cousin. Defense lawyer Avraham Moskowitz noted that the interview was never recorded and called the agents’ report “someone’s impression of what was said.” Smith said she disagreed with that description but conceded the sealed document was not a word-for-word account. Merchant’s lawyers also said his trips to Iran, where he has children, were religious pilgrimages and family visits.
Attorney General Pamela Bondi said Merchant “landed on American soil hoping to kill President Trump.” FBI Director Kash Patel said the FBI and its partners stopped the plot and described it as one of several failed Iranian efforts against Americans on U.S. soil. When charges were unsealed in August 2024, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said investigators had found no link between Merchant and the shooting at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Iran has long denied plotting to kill Trump.
Sources
- Iranian Intelligence Agent Convicted of Terrorism and Murder for Hire in Connection with Foiled Plot to Assassinate U.S. Politicians and Government Officials
- U.S. charges Pakistani with alleged Iran ties in murder-for-hire plot against Trump, U.S. officials
- Inside alleged plot to kill Trump 'backed by Iran' and hatched in a strip club
