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A Pakistani man recruited by Iranian spies was convicted Friday of cooking up a half-baked plot to kill US politicians, including President Trump, and bizarrely paying two men just $5,000 upfront to carry out the hit.
Asif Merchant, 47, was found guilty of murder-for-hire and terrorism charges after a Brooklyn jury — who deliberated for less than two hours — rejected his claim that he was forced into the bungling murder scheme because Iran had “threatened” his family.
The convicted plotter testified that his Iranian handler sent him to the US in April 2024 with a series of tasks, including “maybe to have somebody murdered” — and named the top three candidates at the time for the US presidency as possible targets.
Asif Merchant was found guilty of murder-for-hire and terrorism charges. AP“He did not tell me exactly who it is, but he named three people to me: Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Nikki Haley,” Merchant told the jury.
The former banker, who had failed banana and clothing export businesses, testified that he expected to receive up to $1 million depending on the outcome of his mission.
But his harebrained assassination plan went nowhere.
FBI secret cameras caught Merchant sketching out the plot to kill Trump at a June 4, 2024 meeting inside a seedy Queens motel with a would-be recruit who’d snitched to the feds.
“This is the target. How will it die?” he said during the meeting, placing a vape on an unfolded piece of notebook to denote the politician he had in his crosshairs.
Merchant’s assassination plot was foiled after a would-be recruit snitched to the feds. REUTERSHe later handed $5,000 each to two undercover FBI agents that were posing as hitmen, and was arrested in August 2024 as he attempted to leave the country before the purported hit would unfold.
Merchant claimed on the stand that he knew he would be arrested ahead of the hitmen meeting, and that “I didn’t think I would be able to be successful.”
But he admitted during cross-examination that he knew his handler was part of a group classified by US officials as terrorists, and that he had believed the FBI agents were real hitmen.
The trial 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 faces up to life in prison at his sentencing.
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