A Pakistani man accused of orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot against President Donald Trump and other politicians said he had done so under threat from the Iranian Government.
Asif Merchant, 47, who is on trial in a Federal District Court in Brooklyn, New York, said he had planned to get busted by law enforcement all along, but couldn’t go to them directly for fear that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would harm his family if they knew he was compromised.
“My family was under threat, and I had to do this,” Merchant testified through an Urdu interpreter, per Fox News. “I was not wanting to do this so willingly.”
Merchant has two families, one in Pakistan and one in Iran. He’s had a range of jobs, from banking to banana exporting to importing insulation. It was in 2022 in Iran, Merchant testified, when he was introduced to a Revolutionary Guard intelligence operative who got him involved in the scheme.
He told prosecutors on Wednesday that he traveled to the United States with the purpose of hiring “mafia members” who would sympathize with Iranian causes.
The 2024 assassination scheme Merchant was involved in had Trump, then-President Joe Biden and former UN-Ambassador Nikki Haley as targets, he said.
Iran has rejected any claims that it’s been involved in assassination plots against U.S. politicians.
Despite being stopped for questioning by U.S. immigration agents at the Houston, TX airport in April 2024, Merchant continued researching Trump’s rally schedule and remained involved in the apparent plot.
He was indicted on July 12, 2024, a day before the unrelated assassination attempt on Trump’s life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Merchant had apparently been caught scheming out a murder plot against a U.S. leader on a napkin in a New York hotel with a confidant he didn’t know was an informant. He also had allegedly tried to hire two hit men to carry out the crimes and offered them each $5,000. The men were undercover FBI agents.
“I did not think I was going to be successful,” he testified.
Prosecutors said Merchant “neglected to mention any facts that could have supported” his story of being under threat, per CBS News, but Merchant said he didn’t think law enforcement would believe his story, “they think that I’m some type of super-spy,” he told the jurors.
“And are you a super-spy?” defense lawyer Avraham Moskowitz asked.
“No,” Merchant said. “Absolutely not.”