Donald Trump Security Threats

A Brooklyn federal jury convicted 47‑year‑old Pakistani national Asif Merchant on terrorism and murder‑for‑hire charges in an alleged Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps‑backed plot to assassinate former President Donald Trump and other U.S. politicians. Prosecutors say Merchant showed an acquaintance a rally‑shooting scenario drawn on a napkin, solicited help to hire assassins, paid $5,000 in cash to undercover FBI agents posing as hit men, and was arrested on July 12, 2024. Merchant testified that an IRGC handler gave him countersurveillance training and assignments and that he acted under threats to his family and hoped to be arrested before anyone was killed; he also told the FBI the separate Butler, Pennsylvania shooting the next day was "the same thing he was sent here to do," though the FBI maintains that attack was not foreign‑directed.