HOUSTON – A Pakistani man is in federal custody after being arrested in Houston last month, accused of an elaborate murder-for-hire plot targeting government officials, according to a federal criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday.
46-year-old Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national who federal authorities say has ties to Iran, is charged with murder-for-hire, accused of traveling to Houston in April when he started recruiting help for his assassination plot of U.S. government officials, according to court records.
A senior law enforcement official told NBC News former President Donald Trump was one of the potential targets.
“The FBI definitely thought he was a very serious threat because a lot of resources were expended,” said Edward Shaw, a retired FBI agent who lives in Houston and did national security work. “I don’t think he was making it up.”
Shaw went through the 16-page criminal complaint with KPRC 2, which details the plot.
Merchant is accused of traveling from Pakistan to Istanbul to Houston, where he arrived on April 13, and began “to recruit individuals to carry out his plot to assassinate U.S. government officials,” the complaint states.
On April 22, Merchant traveled to New York to meet with a confidential source, someone who prosecutors say Merchant believed could help in his criminal scheme, but ultimately reported his conduct to law enforcement.
Merchant traveled to New York and Boston for several more meetings, according to records, and asked the confidential source for help with his plot to steal documents, plan a protest, and kill a politician or government official.
During the meetings, Merchant would make the confidential source put a cell phone in the drawer of a New York hotel room for “security reasons” in order to discuss the plan.
In one meeting, Merchant allegedly outlined the assassination plan on a napkin in the hotel room.
He indicated he was working for people overseas who told him to “finalize” the plan, which is when he asked the confidential source to set up meetings with potential hitmen, prosecutors said.
The hitmen met with Merchant in Manhattan but turned out to be undercover officers, according to records. Merchant paid them $5,000 in cash as an advanced payment and told them “he would return to Pakistan before giving (them) additional details about the murder plot.
According to prosecutors, Merchant planned to share more details about the assassination plan with the undercover officers during the last week of August or first week of September.
“He’s clearly working for someone overseas,” Shaw said. “They’re bold enough and determined enough to hire him to check out and see about committing an assassination on U.S. soil.”
When FBI agents moved in to arrest Merchant in the Houston area on July 12, they found a handwritten note in his wallet with the code words he came up with to discuss the plot.
Merchant “refused to exit his residence for approximately 20 minutes” when the FBI showed up with an arrest and search warrant, prosecutors said.
He appeared before a magistrate judge in the Southern District of Texas on July 15 but waived his preliminary hearing and agreed to be transferred to the Eastern District of New York, which is where the murder for hire charge originated.
Merchant’s arrest came just one day before an assassination attempt of former President Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, which Attorney General Merrick Garland says has no link to Merchant’s alleged plot.
“The Justice Department will spare no resource to disrupt and hold accountable those who would carry out Iran’s lethal plotting against Americans,” Garland said. “Threats against public officials are threats against our democracy itself.”
Federal prosecutors called Merchant a flight risk and a danger to the community, especially politicians, in a letter to the New York magistrate judge.
Merchant is in federal custody in New York, and retired FBI agent Shaw says anyone he may have been in touch with overseas is likely being investigated as well.