The Justice Department has identified and reportedly charged a Pakistani national with ties to Iran who was involved in political assassination plots on U.S. government officials, per CNN.
Asif Merchant, 46, was found to have constructed a detailed plot to kill U.S. government officials, with help from people he’d recruited. He revealed his motivation to a confidential source: The ”people who will be targeted are the ones who are hurting Pakistan and the world, (the) Muslim world. These are not normal people,” per unsealed court documents.
The FBI believes the intended targets of the plot were current and former officials, as well as former President Donald Trump, CNN reported.
Merchant is now in federal custody.
How did Asif Merchant plan political assassinations?
The unsealed court documents reveal that Merchant has been working since at least April on assassination plots of U.S. government officials and spent time recruiting help in the U.S. One such potential recruit informed law enforcement and became a confidential source to authorities, ultimately setting him up in a hit man hiring trap.
He disguised the assassination plot as a “yarn-dying” business out of fear of being recorded or overheard. He frequently spoke in code with the source and would hide the source’s phone during meetings. He used words like “T-shirt” to mean protest and “flannel shirt” to mean stealing, according to CNN.
Traveling between Houston, Texas and New York, Merchant met the source in person in addition to digital contact.
In May, Merchant offered to pay the source up to $100,000 for his services.
The next month, he revealed his plan to the source, which consisted of three parts: “(1) stealing documents or USB drives from a target’s home; (2) planning a protest; and (3) killing a politician or government official,” per the documents.
He tasked the source with recruiting people for each of the plan’s stages. He needed 25 people for the protest, which would act as a distraction after the assassination, a reconnaissance woman and “men who could do the killing.”
From April to July, Merchant communicated in detail with the source regarding his plan, and took action to set it up. Working with the FBI, this culminated in the source connecting Merchant to undercover officers posing as hit men in late June.
On July 12, weeks after paying the “hit men” an advanced payment and confirming their bond, Merchant attempted to leave the country for Pakistan, where he’d wait while the plan was to be carried out in August or September, CNN reported.
Merchant was arrested at his place of residence in New York and officers carried out a search, during which they found a note, written in code he invented to discuss the plot, in his wallet.