Judiciary Republicans demand immigration records on alleged Iranian agent who plotted to potentially assassinate Trump
The House Judiciary Committee is demanding immigration records from the State Department and Department of Homeland Security on the alleged Iranian agent who plotted to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Chairman Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) fired off a pair of letters to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Friday asking for the documentation.
The missives show they have yet to receive information about the hitman’s alien file (A-file), consular file and case history, as well as how he was processed and screened or whether he was detained by US Customs and Border Protection when coming into the country.
As part of other investigative work, the Judiciary panel has already uncovered 99 suspected terrorists released into the US after crossing the southern border over the last two years.
“Potential terrorists and enemies of the United States exploit vulnerabilities in our nation’s immigration system to the detriment of those in the country,” Jordan and McClintock wrote to the Biden cabinet officials.
The Judiciary Republicans were briefed by the Department of Justice following its indictment Tuesday of Asif Merchant, 46, who federal prosecutors say “orchestrated a plot to assassinate U.S. government officials on U.S. soil” in New York City in August or early September.
Merchant, a Pakistani national who one law enforcement source told The Post was “an agent of the Iranian government,” paid $5,000 advances to undercover federal agents whom he believed to be contract killers, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace revealed in the indictment.
He flew from Pakistan to Istanbul, Turkey, to Houston, Texas, in April 2024, court records show. Once inside the US, Merchant “contacted a person he believed could assist him with the criminal scheme.”
The confidante later became a law enforcement source and helped to foil the assassination plot, with Merchant being arrested on July 12 — the day before Trump was nearly assassinated by Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
The suspected Iranian agent, who had planned to exit the US that same month, allegedly undertook the planning in retaliation for the killing of prominent Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, according to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Trump, 78, ordered the US airstrike that took out Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, in January 2020.
“As a general matter, we do not comment on Congressional correspondence,” a State Department spokesperson told The Post.
