Federal Terrorism Prosecutions

At trial, Pakistani national Asif Merchant testified that an IRGC intelligence contact explicitly named Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Nikki Haley as possible 2024 assassination targets and that he traveled to the United States to hire Mafia hit men, paying $5,000 to undercover FBI agents he believed were killers. Merchant said he was trained in countersurveillance, tasked to recruit U.S. residents for protests, theft, money‑laundering and possibly murder, and claimed Iranian pressure and threats to family in Iran compelled him to act and that he expected to be arrested and hoped to trade cooperation for a green card; prosecutors say he was arrested July 12, 2024, investigators found handwritten codewords, and he failed to report the plot or disclose supporting details to the FBI.