In stunning testimony by Merchant, a Pakistani national who said he was recruited by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in 2022 or 2023, earlier this week, the accused walked jurors through the same steps the government accused him of taking: traveling to the U.S. and seeking out hit men kill a politician at a rally.
He did not tell me exactly who it is, said Merchant, testifying via an Urdu interpreter. He named three people to me: Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Nikki Haley. Yousef instructed Merchant to find someone in the U.S. who could help with four tasks: the murder of the unspecified politician at a rally; hiring protesters to create a diversion and help the killer escape from said rally; stealing documents or a USB drive from a home; and laundering money.
Merchant, 47, is on trial in Brooklyn Federal Court for murder-for-hire and terrorism related charges, accused of trying to mastermind a political assassination but getting tricked by a confidential informant into hiring two undercover feds as hitmen.
A Russian assassination plot targeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was uncovered after intelligence sources revealed operatives rented apartments close to his office in Kyiv. The alleged Kremlin plan aimed to capture or kill the Ukrainian leader during the early stages of Russia's full-scale invasion, according to reporting by CNN. Sources claim Russian agents were instructed to eliminate Zelenskyy if he failed to escape the area.
Nikhil Gupta plotted to assassinate a US citizen in New York City, said US attorney Jay Clayton. He thought that from outside this country he could kill someone in it without consequence, simply for exercising their American right to free speech. But he was wrong, and he will face justice. Our message to all nefarious foreign actors should be clear: steer clear of the United States and our people.
In September 2024, a Secret Service agent saw a man he later identified as Routh holding a semi-automatic rifle hidden in the tree line at Trump International in West Palm Beach. The agent accosted and then fired on Routh, who fled in his car and was arrested a short time later. In a two-and-a-half-week-long trial last fall, prosecutors spent seven days detailing Routh's activities in the weeks before the planned sniper attack.
A federal judge gave a would-be assassin the maximum 15 years in prison Wednesday for plotting to kill an Iranian American writer on behalf of Tehran after hearing the woman who was targeted describe multiple attempts on her life as threats against all Americans. Judge Lewis J. Liman said Carlisle Rivera's written conversations as he plotted to kill journalist and human rights advocate Masih Alinejad in Brooklyn in 2024 were "chilling" and he inflicted "great harm" on her and her husband.
Three men go on trial in Germany on Tuesday, accused of tailing a former Ukrainian soldier on behalf of Russian intelligence services for a possible assassination plot. The alleged ringleader, an Armenian partially identified as Vardges I., recruited another Ukrainian, Robert A., and a Russian, Arman S., prosecutors charge. The trio allegedly tried to lure the former Ukrainian soldier to a Frankfurt café last year, but the alleged target became suspicious and contacted police.
The United States on Friday accused Iran of plotting to assassinate Israel's ambassador to Mexico, Einat Kranz Neiger. According to senior U.S. officials who spoke to several national media outlets, Iran's Revolutionary Guard allegedly began planning the attack late last year, but the plot was contained and does not pose a current threat. The operation that foiled the assassination attempt, described anonymously by those officials, took place before the summer.
Routh, 59, was arrested nearly one year ago, accused of an elaborate plot to stalk Trump for weeks at his Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach and assassinate him. The Secret Service reported spotting Routh pointing a rifle barrel through a chain link fence in the then-candidate's direction as he golfed, just a few hundred yards away. Secret Service agents approached and confronted Routh and leading to a shootout between Routh and law enforcement.
