Pakistani man on trial in Brooklyn for Trump assassination plot says he was recruited by Iran | New York
A Pakistani businessman accused of plotting to kill Donald Trump told a federal grand jury on Wednesday that he was forced to take part in the plot by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, which he said threatened his family to ensure his participation.
Asif Merchant, 47, took the unusual step of testifying in his own defense in Brooklyn federal court where he faces terrorism and murder-for-hire charges. Speaking through an Urdu translator, he told jurors that he only participated in the plot because he feared for his wife and adopted daughter in Tehran.
“I didn’t mean to do it so deliberately,” he said.
Merchant testified that his Iranian handler, a Revolutionary Guard official named Mehrdad Yousef, instructed him to travel to the United States in 2024 and recruit criminals to carry out a four-part operation: organizing protests, stealing documents, laundering money, and organizing murder.
During the talks in Tehran, Yousef allegedly did not order the killing of a specific person, but named three potential targets: Trump, then-President Joe Biden and former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley.
The alleged hitman, Merchant, eventually paid $5,000 in rubber band cash to undercover FBI agents. A. recording played in court caught him saying he needed someone to say “maybe you could kill someone”; a political figure who he said has not yet been identified.
Merchant told jurors he knew the game would be over as soon as he landed in the United States. He said he already knew he was being watched when immigration officers pulled him aside in Houston, searched his bags and scanned his devices. He claimed that he insisted anyway because he believed that Iranian intelligence was watching his every move and that if he hesitated, he would harm his wife and adopted daughter in Tehran.
Federal prosecutors flatly rejected Merchant’s testimony and said in a filing to the judge on Wednesday that there was no evidence supporting an actual duress defense. They noted that Merchant admitted to knowing he was working with a designated terrorist organization and was recorded mapping out the plan on a napkin in a hotel room in Queens, apparently unaware of the cameras. The prosecution’s case relied heavily on the intelligence of Nadeem Ali, a trusted acquaintance of Merchant’s who had been secretly working as an FBI informant all along.
Merchant was arrested in Texas on July 12, 2024, as he was preparing to return to Pakistan.
The case was filed last week, just before U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran that killed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and reportedly more than 1,000 others, human rights observers said. On Wednesday, Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth said the US strike also killed the Iranian official who the Trump administration said was carrying out a plot to assassinate the president in 2024. It is not yet known whether this person is connected to the executives with whom Merchant allegedly spoke.
Commenting on Khamenei’s death, Trump addressed an allegation of conspiracy against him, telling ABC News: “I caught him before he caught me.”
Iran has denied targeting Trump or other American officials.
