Suspected terrorist describes smoking plot to assassinate Trump by putting vape on napkin: ‘How will it die?’
This murder plot with a rabbit went up in smoke.
A suspected Iran-backed terrorist who surprisingly thought he could make more money for Donald Trump by paying two men just $5,000 up front hatched the plot by putting a vape in a diaper to show his “intention,” a new video released Thursday revealed.
“This is the target. How will it die?” Asif Merchant said that when he showed off the creamsicle-colored cigarettes inside a hotel room full of secret FBI cameras, the video was played for Brooklyn jurors.
Merchant, a 47-year-old native of Pakistan, outlined his plan to enter the GOP nomination during a June 4, 2024, taped meeting with a former feds official.
“Look, killing this one from here is very easy,” the seller said in the video, pointing to the left side of the vape, which he placed on an open napkin inside a room at the Floral Park Motor Lodge in Queens.
Iran has repeatedly targeted Trump in retaliation for the US military strike that killed popular Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani in 2020, during Trump’s first term, US officials said.
The salesman believes he will win the song and targets more people who he said are “hurting Pakistan and the world, the Muslim world,” the video shows.
“This is not a one-time job. The job will continue,” he told his employer, who testified under the name “Nadeem Ali.”
But the FBI busted the scheme and arrested the trafficker as he tried to leave the country in July after paying two alleged contract killers — who were actually secret money Ali had linked him to — each “upped the ante” by $5,000 on the deal, court documents said.
The dealer wanted to stage a fake protest at a Trump rally – a half-baked trick he said would allow the killers to get away, footage was played in the trial. He also talked to Ali about various plans to steal government documents from buildings, the video reveals.
Merchant never named Trump himself, but court documents show that Trump was targeted and that he searched for Trump rally locations online.
Ali, a self-described “consigner” who came to the US from Pakistan at the age of 18 and served in Afghanistan as a US Army linguist, took the stand Wednesday in federal court in Brooklyn, where the defendant faces life in prison on murder-for-hire and terrorism charges.
The FBI informant said he was introduced to Merchant by a friend in Pakistan’s close-knit Big Apple community, and that Merchant asked to work with him in the clothing business.
But Ali became angry and contacted law enforcement after seeing unmarked vehicles — which he feared might be Taliban terrorists targeting him on his military mission in the Middle East — tailgating during several of his meetings with Merchant, he said.
FBI agents revealed that they were investigating Seller, and asked him if he would agree to tape their conversations. Ali revealed that he agreed to work for the garbage and was later paid $20,000 for his efforts.
The trafficker came to the US from Pakistan in April 2024, court documents show. His attorney said he received a temporary visa and called him a “visitor… here with the permission of the federal government.”
US officials have called the seller an agent of the Iranian regime. He did not disclose who Ali works for, but said his boss has political connections in Iran and has helped his Iran-based wife with an immigration case, according to records played in the case Thursday.
The suspected terrorist has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers tried to paint him as a family man by pointing out that he has two separate families, with wives and children, in Pakistan and Iran, an unusual arrangement they called “absolutely legal.”
