A jury on Wednesday found Hadi Matar guilty of all the charges against him, including engaging in an act of transnational terrorism.
A message seeking comment was sent to Matar's lawyers.
Matar, 28, is already serving a 25-year New York state prison sentence on an attempted murder conviction in the August 2022 attack on an amphitheatre stage. The federal conviction carries a potential life sentence.
Rushdie, who was about to speak on writers' safety, was slashed 15 times in front of a stunned audience. He was gravely wounded and lost the sight in his right eye.
Prosecutors asserted Matar was motivated by the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini 's 1989 call for Rushdie's death because of The Satanic Verses. Defence lawyer Nathaniel Barone countered that the government had no proof of what was in Matar's head.
Matar himself declined to testify. Rushdie did, telling jurors: "I can't say what his ambitions or his aim was, but the wounds were dispersed across my body."
Born in the United States, Matar also holds citizenship in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based. Prosecutors said that photos in Matar's New Jersey bedroom and on his computer indicated his support for Hezbollah, which the US has designated a terrorist organisation.
Matar aimed to fulfil the fatwa issued against Rushdie and "wanted everyone to know he was doing this for Hezbollah," Assistant US Attorney Timothy Lynch said in an opening statement on July 22.
Messages showed Matar initially talked about wanting to "expose" Rushdie, then about taking his life. In a private note to himself, he wrote: "We need to kill him ASAP," according to Lynch. The prosecutor said Matar framed the planned killing as part of what he considered a jihad, or holy war.
By spring 2022, the electronic chats showed, Matar wrote that he had discerned where Rushdie lived and was tracking his public appearances, eventually pointing out his scheduled August 2022 talk at the Chautauqua Institution, a western New York arts and intellectual centre.
As Rushdie was being introduced, his attacker climbed on stage behind him, then stabbed him 15 times as the audience gasped. Spectators and another speaker, Henry Reese, scrambled to aid Rushdie. Law enforcement officers, assigned to the event, arrested the attacker — soon identified as Matar — after civilians restrained him.
Rushdie published a 2024 memoir about the attack, then returned to fiction with 2025's The Eleventh Hour.
The author, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, received a Dayton Literary Peace Prize lifetime achievement award in November.
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