NY jury convicts Iranian agent of foiled plot from IRGC to assassinate Trump

A federal court in New York City convicted an Iranian agent of attempting to assassinate US officials, including US President Donald Trump, in a trial that showcased allegations of Iran-backed plotting on American soil.

The verdict on Friday came during the US-Israeli airstrike campaign against the Iranian regime.

Asif Merchant, a business owner who has family in Pakistan and Iran, acknowledged during the trial that he sought to put an assassination plot in motion during the 2024 presidential campaign, which was quickly disrupted by American investigators before it had a chance to proceed.

Trump faced two assassination attempts during the campaign, including one in which a bullet grazed his ear during a Pennsylvania campaign rally and another at a golf course in Florida.

He admitted at trial that he attempted the plot on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful paramilitary of the regime.

Merchant started working for the IRGC around late 2022 and was trained in intelligence and counter-surveillance, the Department of Justice said.

His plot was exposed after he contacted an acquaintance in New York to help him. The acquaintance reported Merchant to law enforcement and became a confidential source in the investigation.

A jury in Brooklyn convicted Merchant of terrorism and murder for hire charges. He faces up to life in prison.

The verdict after only a couple of hours of deliberations followed a weeklong trial that included remarkable testimony from Merchant himself.

Merchant told the jury he was carrying out instructions from a contact in the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guard. According to Merchant, the handler never specified a target but broached names including Trump, then a former president and candidate, then-president Joe Biden and Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador who was also in the race for the Republican nomination for a time.

The Iranian government has denied trying to kill US officials.

The nascent plot fell apart after Merchant showed an acquaintance what he had in mind by using objects on a napkin to depict a shooting at a rally. He asked the man to help him hire assassins. Instead, he was introduced to undercover FBI agents who were secretly recording him, as had the acquaintance.

Merchant told the supposed hitmen he needed services that could include killing “some political person” and paid them $5,000 in cash in a parked car in Manhattan.

“This man landed on American soil hoping to kill President Trump — instead, he was met with the might of American law enforcement,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement released after the conviction.

Merchant’s attorney, Avraham Moskowitz, didn’t immediately reply to a message seeking comment.

Merchant, 47, worked for Pakistani banks for decades before going into clothing and other businesses. He sometimes visited the US for his garment business.

Merchant testified that he met a Revolutionary Guard intelligence operative about three years ago. The contact gave him countersurveillance training and assignments, including the assassination scheme, Merchant said.

He maintained that he had to do his handler’s bidding to protect loved ones in Iran. The defendant said he reluctantly went through the motions but thought he’d be arrested and explained his situation to the authorities before anyone was killed.

“I was going along with it,” he said, speaking in Urdu through a court interpreter.

Prosecutors emphasized that Merchant admitted to taking steps to enact the plan on behalf of the Revolutionary Guard, which the US considers a foreign terrorist organization, and didn’t proactively go to authorities.

Instead, he was packing for a flight to Pakistan when he was arrested on July 12, 2024, a day before the unrelated attempt on Trump’s life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Officials said it appeared the Butler gunman acted alone but that they had been tracking a threat on Trump’s life from Iran, a claim that the Islamic Republic had called “unsubstantiated and malicious.”

When Merchant subsequently spoke to FBI agents to explore the possibility of a cooperation agreement, he didn’t say he had acted out of fear for his family.

Prosecutors argued that he didn’t back up a defense of acting under duress. Merchant sought to persuade jurors he simply didn’t think the agents would believe him because they seemed to “think that I am some type of super-spy,” which he said he was “absolutely not.”