Guilty: Man charged in Trump assassination plot convicted in NYC after admitting to Iranian handler

The Pakistani national charged with attempting to organize an assassination plot against now-President Donald Trump on behalf of Iranian intelligence has been found guilty of murder-for-hire and terrorism charges following a jury trial in Brooklyn.The federal jury took just two hours to convict Asif Merchant, 47, after testimony from a confidential informant, two undercover FBI agents who posed as Mafia contract killers, and the defendant himself, according to the New York Daily News.
Federal prosecutors have alleged that two Iranian-linked plots to assassinate then-candidate Donald Trump — both allegedly linked to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — were launched in 2024 as Iran sought to meddle in the election to stop Trump’s return to the White House, with one of the trials kicking off in late February just days before U.S. and Israeli strikes commenced against the Iranian regime last Saturday.
The Justice Department filed charges against Pakistani national Asif Merchant and against Afghan national Farhad Shakeri for their alleged roles in Iranian-backed assassination plots. The former defendant’s somewhat convoluted plot targeted Trump, while the latter defendant’s apparently more sophisticated plot was also aimed at the president.
Shaker I remains at large in Iran. Merchant pleaded not guilty, and the trial against him began last week shortly before the initiation of Operation Epic Fury last Saturday. A jury found him guilty following a roughly week-long trial in New York City.
The Iranian assassination plots are detailed in press releases and court filings by the Justice Department and the FBI and, while prosecutors have not linked the Iranian efforts to the other assassination efforts against Trump at a Butler, Pennsylvania campaign rally in July 2024 and at his Florida golf course in September 2024, the Iran-origin murder-for-hire allegations show the multitude of threats against Trump’s life during the 2024 presidential campaign.
The cases also highlight the lengths to which the Iranian government was seemingly willing to go to attempt to keep Trump out of the Oval Office for a second term.
The IRGC leader who was allegedly behind the assassination plots aimed at Trump in 2024 has been killed amidst U.S.-Israeli strikes in Iran, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday.
Trump assassination plotter admitted to working for the IRGC
Merchant admitted to working for the IRGC when he took the stand during the trial this week.
The New York Times reported that Merchant “testified on Wednesday that he had worked with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to devise his scheme, which included hiring hit men.”
The outlet recounted that the Pakistani national “said that he had been forced to go along with the plot to protect his family in Tehran from the Revolutionary Guards Corps.” Merchant has two wives — one in Pakistan and one in Iran.
“I was not wanting to do this so willingly,” Merchant reportedly said on the stand.
The outlet reported that Merchant testified that his cousin Husnain linked him up with the IRGC, and that he began working with IRGC official Mehrdad Yousef in late 2022.
“He asked me if I was interested in doing some work with the Iranian government, and I said yes,” Merchant reportedly testified.
The outlet said that “over the course of many conversations” in Tehran, Merchant testified that “his Iranian handler did name three people” for assassination.
“He did not tell me exactly who it is, but he told me — he named three people: Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Nikki Haley,” Merchant said, according to Fox News.
“I was interested in intelligence work and I wanted money,” Merchant testified, according to the New York Post.
CBS News said that “Merchant testified that his periodic visits to the U.S. for his garment business piqued the interest of his Revolutionary Guard contact, who trained him on countersurveillance techniques.”
Merchant reportedly said he traveled to Iran to meet with this IRGC handler in March 2024.
The Guardian reported that Yousef “directed him to travel to the U.S. in 2024 and recruit criminals to carry out a four-part operation: staging protests, stealing documents, laundering money, and arranging a murder.”
The Associated Press said that Merchant testified that, while in the U.S., “he even reported back to his Revolutionary Guard contact, sending observations — fake, Merchant said — tucked into a book that he shipped to Iran through a series of intermediaries.”
FBI agent Jacqueline Smith reportedly testified that Merchant “told us about how he was recruited, assessed, trained in a variety of sessions on tactics” and that he “was given a task to complete, came to the U.S. and carried out the task.” The New York Post reported that Smith added that Merchant told the bureau that he had “assessed that the target was Donald Trump” and that Trump was being targeted over the Soleimani strike.
Merchant reportedly claimed in court that he was “mentally ready” to be arrested and claimed that he had wanted to tell U.S. police about the plan beforehand.
“I was going to tell the government,” the Pakistani national told the court. “I wanted to apply for a green card.”
Prosecutors told the court on Tuesday that “there is absolutely no evidence that the defendant traveled to the United States to hire hitmen to kill politicians out of duress or fear for relatives, as defense counsel claimed at sidebar today.” The U.S. attorney added that Merchant “was in the United States for a prolonged period and did not once avail himself of the opportunity to seek the intervention of the appropriate authorities.”
Smith also said that Merchant had told the FBI that he initially thought the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania in July 2024 had been carried out by the Iranians.
“He said that he thought that Iran was responsible for that because that’s the same thing he was sent here to do,” Smith testified, according to Courthouse News.
Prosecutors also shared evidence that Merchant had extreme animosity for Trump for years prior to the plot.
The New York Times also reported that “prosecutors showed jurors images they said they had retrieved from Mr. Merchant’s Facebook account showing Mr. Trump’s decapitated head and Mr. Trump next to a pig.”
The New York Post said Merchant “testified that he posted the gruesome image on his Facebook page after the U.S. 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,” Merchant reportedly said on the stand.
IRGC leader behind the Trump assassination plot killed in Iran
“The leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed. Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh,” Hegseth said in a Wednesday press briefing.
Israeli media outlets reported on Wednesday that Rahman Mokadam, described as the head of the IRGC’s special operations division, was the Iranian official who had been killed. The exact name of the IRGC official has not been formally confirmed by the U.S. military.
The U.S. and the Israelis launched a joint attack early last Saturday morning against Tehran, killing Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei and degrading the Iranian military.
Trump said last Sunday night that “I got him before he got me” in reference to the Ayatollah, according to ABC News. “They tried twice. Well, I got him first.”
Israeli journalist Amit Segal first tweeted on Wednesday morning that “Israel has eliminated Rahman Mokadam, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps special operations division, and the man behind the assassination attempt on Trump on the eve of the 2024 presidential election. Trump was informed of this in the past few hours by Israel.”
Hegseth said during his Wednesday press conference alongside Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the IRGC official who had allegedly played a role in the Trump assassination plot had been placed on a target list during Operation Epic Fury, but that killing the IRGC leader had not been a top priority and had not been raised by Trump at all.
“We’ve known for a long time that Iran had intentions of trying to kill President Trump and/or other U.S. officials,” Hegseth said. “And while that was not the focus of the effort by any stretch of the imagination — in fact never was raised by the president or anybody else — I ensured, and others ensured, that those who were responsible for that were eventually part of the target list.”
The war secretary added: “It wasn’t the beginning of the effort — we were focused on missiles and launchers, and that’s the focus — but ultimately, if we had the opportunity to get at those who were trying to get at Americans specifically, we would. And so, we eventually had the opportunity to do that from the air.”
Plots against Trump part of “Notable Attack Planning” by the IRGC
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has categorized both Iranian-backed assassination plots against Trump from 2024 as examples of “Notable Attack Planning” by the Iranian regime’s IRGC.
Mike Waltz, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, had brought up the IRGC assassination ploy during a Saturday emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
“For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted, quote, ‘Death to America.’ At every turn, at every opening of its Parliament, it has sought to eradicate the State of Israel,” Waltz said. “It has waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder. It is responsible for a series of unprovoked armed attacks targeting the United States and Israel, violations of the UN Charter, and threats to international peace and security across the Middle East.”
The Iranian government also repeatedly sought to meddle in the 2020 election as they attempted to stop Trump’s reelection, and in 2024 they carried out hack-and-leak operations against his campaign and, according to prosecutors, assassination attempts against him personally.
Just the News reported recently that Marc Elias, the Clinton campaign lawyer who helped fund British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier pushing baseless claims of Trump-Russia collusion in 2016 joined other Democrats in denying confirmed Iranian election influence efforts in 2020 and 2024 aimed at denigrating Trump, calling it a “Big Lie.”
Asif Merchant and the “murder-for-hire” plot targeting TrumpThe September 2024 charges brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern District of New York alleged Merchant attempted  murder for hire and for attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries connected to the alleged plot against Trump. Trump’s name did not appear in the criminal court filings against Merchant, but multiple law enforcement officials told news outlets that Trump was a target of Merchant’s murder plot.
Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray said in August 2024 that “this dangerous murder-for-hire plot exposed in today’s charges allegedly was orchestrated by a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran and is straight out of the Iranian playbook.”
“For years, the Justice Department has been working aggressively to counter Iran’s brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the killing of Iranian General Soleimani,” then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
Prosecutors said Merchant allegedly traveled from Pakistan to Turkey and then to Texas to enlist Americans to help him carry out his assassination scheme. Prosecutors said that Merchant was born in the Pakistani city of Karachi and that “in his travel records to enter the United States, Merchant indicated frequent travel to Iran, Syria, and Iraq.”
Merchant was arrested on July 12, 2024, when he was ready to board a flight out of the United States and was charged on July 14, 2024. The day in between — July 13, 2024 — was the same day that Thomas Crooks attempted to assassinate Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Crooks shot Trump in the ear and shot and killed Trump rally-goer and firefighter Corey Comperatore before Crooks was himself killed by Secret Service snipers.
The ODNI wrote a November 2024 report with a subsection on “Iranian Plots Against Former U.S. Officials” which were being carried out by the Iranians in an effort to avenge the killing of Soleimani.
“Iranian security services have generally directed plots from Iran using surrogate networks, often including third-country individuals with access to the United States, to try to maintain some level of deniability for their operations,” the ODNI said. “On 6 August [2024], the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint against Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran, for attempting to orchestrate a plot to assassinate U.S. politicians and government officials on U.S. soil.”
The FBI special agent who wrote the criminal complaint against Merchant compared his plot against Trump to the charges brought in August 2022 against an IRGC member who had allegedly plotted to assassinate former Trump national security adviser John Bolton “likely in retaliation for the death of Soleimani.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released an FBI proffer document in September 2024 containing statements from Merchant which were potentially made in exchange for some sort of leniency from federal prosecutors. 
The FBI proffer document recounted Merchant’s description of an alleged meeting he had at a safe house in Iran with his handler — Yousef. The FBI document described “Merchant’s work for the IRGC” and “Merchant’s IRGC affiliation” and said that “Merchant cooperated with the IRGC because he was interested in intelligence work and wanted money.”
Merchant also said he thought the IRGC would pay $1 million to everyone who participated in the assassination effort, but that he believed he would only receive $50,000 for his role.
The Pakistani national was arrested, the plot failed, Trump won, and the survival of the Iranian regime now seems to be at stake.
“There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” Trump said on Truth Social on Friday. “After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.”
 

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