Inside bungled alleged plot to kill Donald Trump ‘backed by Iran’ and hatched in a strip membership
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claims the US killed the leader of a unit behind a plot to kill Trump. He did not name them – but it has echoes of a bizarre case currently before a New York federal court
Hegseth claims the US killed the leaders of a unit that plotted to kill Trump(Image: AP)
A bumbling and allegedly Iran-backed plot to kill Donald Trump was planned out on the back of a napkin, before being revealed to undercover FBI agents in a New York strip club, a court has heard.
Details of the bizarre plot, which was foiled at an early stage, resurfaced today after Trump’s Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claimed the US had killed the leader of an Iranian unit that backed an attempt on the President’s life. At a press conference today, Hegseth said he had placed the unit behind an Iran-backed plot to kill the US President on a target list, and that its leaders were killed in a strike on Tuesday. He did not name the target, the unit, or give any details about the plot.
But it has echoes of the case of Asif Merchant, a Pakistani man currently before a Federal court in Brooklyn on terror charges, accused of plotting to kill US officials in June 2024, months before Trump returned to office. Merchant, 47, has pleaded not guilty to attempted terrorism and other charges.
The alleged plot unfolded in a cheap hotel in Queens, New York, where Merchant explained it to Nadeem Ali, a man he believed to be an accomplice, but was actually an FBI informant, on the back of a napkin. Merchant is said to have told Ali he wanted the killing to take place at “a rally or Republican rally”, and be carried out by people who could shoot people at long distance. A week later, the court heard, Ali connected Merchant with two hitmen – who were really undercover FBI agents.
The Brooklyn court last week heard agents took Merchant to a New York strip club, where they paid for “exotic dances” for him. He’s then alleged to have explained elements of his plan to the agents and told them he would give them the names of the targets in person in Pakistan. In one June 2024 recording that was played in court this week, Merchant told the undercover agents that he and associates in Pakistan were looking for people to steal documents, create protests at political events, “and the last thing is: Maybe you can, say, kill someone.” “The third thing you wanted, like, that could be a big deal,” one of the agents observed. He dangled the possibility that “you want somebody’s wife killed?”
“No, no…. maybe it’s some political person, maybe some other person,” said Merchant, who later explained that he didn’t yet know exactly whom. “Wow,” the agent said, adding: “That’s gonna cost.”
About a week later, Merchant was recorded meeting the agents at a Manhattan rooftop restaurant and then, in a nearby car, handing them $5,000 in rolled-up, rubber-banded $100 bills. Merchant was arrested a month later as he tried to leave the US.
On Tuesday, an FBI agent testified that Merchant had told her he had a “handler” in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, whom he believed would bankroll the plot – although Merchant’s lawyers suggested the claims might have been untrue. According to agent Jacqueline Smith, Merchant said in an interview in 2024 that one of his cousins introduced him to a Revolutionary Guard handler at some point in Iran.
Formally called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the force has been prominent in Iran under the country’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the US-Israeli attack this weekend. The US deems the Revolutionary Guard a “foreign terrorist organisation.” Merchant said he expected his handler would reimburse $5,000 that Merchant had gotten from his cousin and had given to the supposed hit men, who actually were undercover FBI agents, Smith told jurors. She said Merchant also relayed some advice from the handler: “If he noticed he was being surveilled, he should act normal.”
Defense lawyer Avraham Moskowitz underscored that the interview wasn’t recorded, and he described the agents’ report as “someone’s impression of what was said.” “I disagree with that characterization,” Smith said, but acknowledged the sealed document wasn’t a verbatim account.
Merchant has children in Iran, but his lawyers claimed his trips there were religious pilgrimages and family time. But when he was indicted in 2024, then-FBI director Christopher Wray said the plot was “straight out of the Iranian regime’s playbook.”
Merchant was arrested the day before the attempt on Trump’s life at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Officials said at the time that the gunman acted alone, but that they had been tracking a threat to Trump’s life from Iran. The Iranian regime has long denied plotting to kill Trump.
The trial continues.
