A plot to assassinate political officials was mapped out on a napkin in a cheap hotel, with a vape representing a target that investigators believed to be Donald J. Trump.
The accused plotter, according to federal prosecutors, a Pakistani man named Asif Merchant, discussed the scheme in cryptic terms with another Pakistani man he believed was his accomplice, but was secretly recording their conversations for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Last week, on the first day of a trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, prosecutors showed jurors a video in which Mr. Merchant discussed the plan with an informant.
“This is the target,” Mr. Merchant said in Urdu, pointing to the orange e-cigarette. “How will it die?”
Mr. Merchant was arrested in July 2024 after investigators said he, backed by the Iranian government, plotted to kill American public officials, including, they believed, Mr. Trump. He faces life in prison if he is convicted of terrorism charges.
While the accusations and the geopolitical backdrop are quite serious, testimony and evidence has so far painted an image of Mr. Merchant as a zealous yet bumbling operative who never came close to executing a murder plot.
The trial is unfolding as a conflict grows in the Middle East, where the United States and Israel bombarded Iran over the weekend. So far, Iran’s top leaders have been killed, including those the U.S. government says are responsible for orchestrating terror attacks and assassinations.
Since the United States killed Qassim Suleimani, a high-ranking member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, U.S. officials say Iran has heightened its efforts to kill American politicians as revenge, accusing the Revolutionary Guard Corps of conspiring with criminal networks.
When Mr. Merchant was arrested, Christopher Wray, then the director of the F.B.I., said his plot was “straight out of the Iranian playbook.”
According to a November 2024 memo written by Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Merchant told investigators after his arrest that he was trained as a spy by the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Prosecutors have not yet shown at trial that Mr. Merchant posed a credible threat with the backing of a foreign government, but on Monday, they told the judge, Eric R. Komitee, that they planned to introduce evidence that Mr. Merchant’s cousin, an operative working with Iran, gave him the money to pay hit men for the assassinations.
Mr. Merchant aimed to steal sensitive files and stage a protest at a political rally in addition to hiring hit men to carry out his murder plot, according to prosecutors. He relied on a fellow countryman, consulting with him on how to pull off such a plot.
The would-be accomplice, Nadeem Ali, had a long history of working with the U.S. government. Mr. Ali, who was born in Pakistan and moved to Brooklyn as a young adult, had worked for the U.S. military as a translator in Afghanistan, using his fluency in Pashto, Balochi and more languages to assist on missions.
Testifying under a pseudonym, Mr. Ali said he first met Mr. Merchant in 2017. A friend introduced Mr. Merchant, who was visiting from Pakistan and needed someone to drive him around New York.
The two men were not friends. But, nevertheless, Mr. Ali said, he kept in touch with him over the years as a cultural gesture, and Mr. Merchant kept visiting and would pitch him on bringing his clothing business to the United States.
In 2023, Mr. Ali said he grew nervous when he noticed cars following him while driving with Mr. Merchant. He got in touch with the F.B.I., and when Mr. Merchant returned in 2024, he agreed to work with them as an informant and monitor him.
When Mr. Merchant arrived in June 2024, Mr. Ali drove him to a lodge off a busy highway in the Floral Park neighborhood of Queens. In a hotel room, as a noisy TV blared, the two men chatted in Urdu about the plot. Mr. Merchant mused that he wanted to hire people with the skills to shoot people at a long distance.
Mr. Ali, playing along, said he knew the right men for the job, and Mr. Merchant told him at the hotel he wanted the killing to be at a “a rally or Republican rally,” Mr. Ali said.
He connected him with the hit men, who were really undercover F.B.I. agents and met Mr. Merchant a week later at a strip club in Manhattan. The agents bought “exotic dances” for a nervous Mr. Merchant, who cryptically explained the three elements of his plan, one of the agents testified.
Mr. Merchant said the names of the targets would be given to him “in person” in Pakistan, the agent testified. A month later, Mr. Merchant was arrested as he tried to leave the country.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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