NEW YORK (AP) — A Pakistani man went on trial this week on charges of trying to orchestrate the killing of a U.S. politician, potentially President Donald Trump as he campaigned in 2024.
Asif Merchant, 47, has pleaded not guilty to attempted terrorism and other federal charges. As his trial opened Wednesday in New York, prosecutors said he met with and paid $5,000 to supposed hit men who actually were undercover FBI agents.
Using objects on a hotel napkin to illustrate, Merchant roughed out in June 2024 a scenario for shooting a political figure at a rally, then staging a protest as a distraction for the killer to get away, according to an intermediary’s testimony and a video played in court Wednesday.
“I was shocked,” the intermediary, Nadeem Ali, told the anonymous jury in a Brooklyn federal court. In conversations over two days, Merchant asked him to line up hit men, Ali testified as prosecutors played recordings that he surreptitiously made for the FBI.
Merchant, who eventually met the supposed hit men and gave them $5,000 as an initial payment, was arrested before he gave them a name to target, but he told Ali it would be “someone who was hurting Pakistan and the Muslim world,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nina Gupta said in an opening statement.
Prosecutors said in a court filing last month that there were searches for Trump rally locations on Merchant’s laptop. The government hasn’t said how many other potential targets he allegedly considered.
The purported plot was hatched weeks before an unrelated July 13, 2024, attempt to assassinate Trump on the campaign trail in Butler, Pennsylvania. Officials later said they had been tracking a threat on Trump’s life from Iran, but there was no link to the Butler shooter, a Pennsylvania man who was killed by a Secret Service sniper. Tehran called the threat allegation “unsubstantiated and malicious.”
Merchant, a former banker turned entrepreneur, was in the United States as a visitor, defense lawyer Christopher Neff said in an opening statement. He portrayed Merchant as a deeply religious man and dedicated father who openly has two families, one in Pakistan and one in Iran.
“He counts on you not to simply accept the narrative the government is trying to shoehorn the evidence into, but also to think about the rest of the story told by that evidence,” Neff told jurors.
Merchant met Ali through a mutual friend, according to Ali’s testimony. A Pakistani native who is now a U.S. citizen, Ali immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager and went on to work as an Army translator in Afghanistan for a time.
Merchant approached Ali about getting involved in a T-shirt business. But Ali testified that he found the shifting terms “shady” and noticed cars following him after he spent time with Merchant. Concerned, Ali contacted the FBI in May 2024 and went on to record his interactions with Merchant.
The FBI has foiled several alleged attacks through sting operations in which agents posed as terror supporters, supplying advice or equipment. Critics say the strategy can amount to entrapment.
