Alleged Iran-backed terrorist who plotted to kill Trump posted photo of president with severed head, was offered up to $1M

A Pakistani man charged with a half-baked plot to kill US politicians posted a photo of President Trump with a severed head — and believed he’d get up to $1 million if the hit was successful, a court heard Thursday.

Asif Merchant, 47, testified that he posted the gruesome image on his Facebook page after the US military’s killing of prominent Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani in 2020, during Trump’s first term.

“Whichever items were popping up, I was sharing them,” the accused terrorist matter-of-factly explained during his second and final day on the stand — after he opted to testify in his own defense.

Asif Merchant testified that he thought that he could get up to $1 million if he pulled off the possible hits. AP

Merchant said his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps handler offered him up to $1 million depending on the outcome of his mission — which he has told the jury involved possible assassinations of Trump, President Joe Biden and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley.

“I was interested in intelligence work and I wanted money,” he said in Brooklyn federal court.

Merchant claimed on Wednesday that he was forced into the 2024 murder plot — which the FBI foiled before it was even close to fruition — because Iranian spies had “threatened” his family.

But an FBI agent who questioned the bumbling accused plotter after his arrest in August of that year told jurors Thursday that Merchant never mentioned any purported threats to relatives back then.

“He told us about how he was recruited, assessed, trained in a variety of sessions on tactics … was given a task to complete, came to the US and carried out the task,” agent Jacqueline Smith testified.

Merchant told the FBI that he’d “assessed that the target was Donald Trump,” who was being targeted as revenge for the killing of Soleimani, Smith added.

The accused plotter, here sketched at an earlier appearance, claimed that he was forced into the plot by Iranian spies. REUTERS

The FBI quickly smoked out the former banker’s plans after a man he believed he was recruiting to help carry out the assassination tipped off the feds, who set up a sting operation, trial evidence revealed.

Merchant was busted after he gave two FBI agents posing as hitmen just $5,000 each as an advance payment for the hit — though he testified that he knew at the time the plot was unlikely to succeed, and that “nobody does anybody’s murder” for that measly sum.

The trial has unfolded in the backdrop of the US and Israeli militaries launching an unprecedented military offensive that has killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of other top Iranian officials and led to an escalating war in the Middle East.

Merchant has pleaded not guilty and faces up to life in prison if convicted of murder-for-hire and terrorism charges.

The jury is set to hear closing statements in the case Friday morning.