Iran sent a man to America to kill Donald Trump.
Now that man is sitting in a Brooklyn federal courtroom – and the testimony coming out of that trial is more damning than anything the mainstream media will tell you.
The FBI just played video of Asif Merchant placing a vape pen on a napkin and asking how his target would die – and the man he was targeting was the President of the United States.
Biden FBI Let Asif Merchant Enter the US on Parole Despite Terror Watchlist Flag
Here is what you need to understand about how this man got into America.
Asif Merchant – a Pakistani national, 47, with documented ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – landed at Houston's George Bush International Airport in April 2024.
He was on the terrorism watchlist.
The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force fingerprinted him, searched his devices, noted his recent trip to Iran, and then let him walk out of the airport.
They handed him a special immigration parole and sent him to a family member's home in Texas.
Their own memo described him as "polite and cooperative" – as if that is the standard for whether a terror suspect gets to roam free in the United States of America.
This happened while Joe Biden was president and his DHS was waving hundreds of thousands of unvetted migrants across the southern border and calling anyone who objected a racist.
The parole expired on May 11.
Merchant stayed in the country anyway, and Biden's government did nothing.
He was finally arrested on July 12 – only because a confidential informant had already exposed him and the two "hitmen" he hired turned out to be undercover FBI agents.
The Biden FBI didn't stop this plot through vigilance.
They ran a sting operation that worked – but only after putting a known terror suspect on the street for three months with an expired visa and the full knowledge of federal law enforcement.
Iran IRGC Assassination Plot Against Trump Was Funded by Revolutionary Guard Handler
The trial now unfolding in Brooklyn is revealing exactly how deep this goes.
FBI Special Agent Jacqueline Smith testified Tuesday that Merchant told federal investigators his cousin, Hasnain Hyderi, worked for the IRGC and lived in Tanzania.
That cousin provided the $5,000 Merchant used to pay the supposed assassins.
When asked how he'd repay his cousin, Merchant said he would get the cash through his IRGC handler – a man named Mehradad Yousef, based in Qom, Iran.
The handler gave Merchant operational security advice too: lay low if you think you're being watched.
This was not a lone wolf plot.
This was a state-sponsored assassination attempt against the sitting president of the United States, funded and directed by the same Iranian terror organization that has been killing Americans for 45 years.
Former FBI Director Christopher Wray called the original indictment in 2024 "straight out of the Iranian regime's playbook."
He was right – and the trial is now proving it in open court, as U.S. forces bomb Iranian military targets in Operation Epic Fury halfway around the world.
Iran Has Been Trying to Kill Trump Since Soleimani
Trump killed IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 – the most wanted terrorist on earth, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers.
Iran vowed revenge immediately and has never stopped plotting.
In November 2024, the Justice Department unsealed charges against Afghan national Farhad Shakeri – another IRGC asset given seven days by Iranian officials to formulate a Trump assassination plan before the election.
Shakeri is still at large in Iran.
Meanwhile, Masih Alinejad – a journalist and Fox News contributor who has publicly criticized the Iranian regime – has survived multiple separate IRGC-directed assassination attempts on American soil.
The George Washington University's Program on Extremism documented that Iran has been running lethal operations inside the United States since the regime's founding in 1979.
Biden spent four years pretending this wasn't a war.
Trump called it what it is – and now the man who funded the hit on the President is explaining himself to a jury in Brooklyn while the regime that sent him no longer has a Supreme Leader.
The Merchant trial is expected to continue through the end of March.
If convicted, he faces life in prison.
The jury – which the court made anonymous because of the terrorism risk to jurors – will decide his fate.
Given that his own statements to investigators and his meetings with undercover agents are on the record, don't bet against a conviction.
Sources:
- Ashley Oliver, "Feds say Pakistani national backed by Iran plotted to assassinate Trump, others in murder-for-hire scheme," Fox News, March 4, 2026.
- Nina Pullano, "Murder-for-hire plot had ties to Iranian Revolutionary Guards, FBI witness says," amNewYork, March 4, 2026.
- John Solomon and Steve Richards, "FBI let suspect in plot to kill Trump into U.S. on parole despite terror ties, Iran trip, memos show," Just the News, August 8, 2024.
- "Iran's efforts to assassinate Trump highlighted in IRGC-linked terror trial started this week," Just the News, February 2026.
- "From hostage crisis to assassination plots: Iran's near half-century war on Americans," Fox News, March 2026.
