Back in September, the Department of Justice said it charged a Pakistani national with ties to Iran in connection to a plot to assassinate a politician or U.S. government official on U.S. soil. According to reports, he targeted Trump.
Asif Merchant entered the country in April and was arrested on July 12 as he prepared to leave the country. It appears that Merchant was the Iranian threat the Secret Service was briefed on before Trump's July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
According to an X post of Fox's Bill Melugin, Merchant "was admitted into the U.S. via parole for 'significant public benefit' when [Customs and Border Patrol] encountered him at the airport in [Texas] in April after he flew in from overseas." The sponsor of his parole "was the FBI Dallas office, for 'security interests.'"
According to Melugin and the FBI, the Bureau allowed the Pakistani into the country so they could monitor him and build a case.
NEW: Per multiple federal law enforcement sources to me and @davidspunt, the Pakistani national w/ Iranian ties who was arrested by the FBI for plotting an assassination on US soil was admitted into the US via parole for "significant public benefit" when CBP encountered him at… pic.twitter.com/skWKXxlySa
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) August 7, 2024
"Merchant was arrested on July 12th, nearly three months after he was admitted into the US. The FBI had eyes on him during this time, and utilized numerous undercover agents, who Merchant thought were hitmen he was hiring," Melugin wrote.
According to reports, Merchant was trying to hire assassins to kill Trump on behalf of the Iranian government. He allegedly explained his plot involved multiple criminal schemes: stealing documents or USB drives from a target's home; planning a protest; and killing a politician or government official.
He met with purported hitmen, who were actually undercover U.S. law enforcement officers, in New York. He allegedly told them they would receive instructions on who to kill either the last week of August or the first week of September after Merchant had departed America. He paid them $5,000.
Analysts are now wondering if Thomas Crooks, the attempted assassination suspect who was immediately taken down by Security Service, had been in communication with Merchant or any other people hiring to kill the Republican presidential nominee. News reports indicated that Crooks had multiple cell phones and encrypted accounts communicating with people in other countries.
Meanwhile, former FBI agent Steve Friend also told bestselling author and journalist Lee Smith that it's unusual that Merchant "was in the country for several months before they executed the arrest." He also suggested the feds did not have any proof Merchant had connections to the Iranian government or that he had intentions of targeting Trump before he came to America.
"Why would the FBI invent a plot to kill Trump?" Smith stated. "By claiming the Iranians are responsible for this effort deflects attention from the fact that the real two would-be assassins, Crooks and Ryan Routh, are Democratic Party supporters. Further, says Friend, it boosts FBI statistics. 'If they had just been aware of some plot and brought it to light then it would have been a disruption of a domestic terrorist plot. But because they arrested him, it's dismantlement, which is a very rare and very valuable statistic.'" (Related: STAGED: FBI "stopped" an alleged assassination plot orchestrated by a suspected terrorist who entered the U.S. via a special permission given by the bureau itself.)
Merchant pleads not guilty in alleged murder-for-hire plot against Trump
Back in September, Merchant pleaded not guilty to the federal charges alleging he attempted to commit an act of terrorism and murder-for-hire to assassinate Trump.
He was indicted on federal charges in August, after being previously arrested and charged by complaint the month prior. If convicted of the charges contained in the indictment, he faces up to life in prison. He was ordered detained pending trial during the hearing in Brooklyn federal court.
"The Justice Department will not tolerate Iran's efforts to target our country's public officials and endanger our national security," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement following the indictment. "As this terrorism and murder for hire charges against Asif Merchant demonstrate, we will continue to hold accountable those who would seek to carry out Iran's lethal plotting against Americans."
The defendant named Trump as a potential target but had not conceived the scheme as a plan to assassinate the former president, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
There are no suggestions that Merchant was tied to an apparent assassination attempt on Trump at his Florida golf course, or a separate shooting of the Republican presidential candidate at a rally in Pennsylvania in July.
Iran's mission to the United Nations said in August that the "modus operandi" described in Merchant's court papers ran contrary to Tehran's policy of "legally prosecuting the murder of General Qasem Soleimani," an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander.
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