Trump associate Tom Barrack not guilty on foreign lobbying charges

NEW YORK — Longtime Trump pal Tom Barrack was found not guilty of using his access to the former president to influence foreign policy on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.

A federal jury in Brooklyn also ruled that Barrack did not lie in an interview with the FBI. Barrack’s personal assistant, Michael Grimes, who got his start at the private equity bigwig’s company after DJing at Barrack’s son’s eighth-grade graduation, was also acquitted.

The jury came to a decision after a seven-week trial that included testimony by Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first Secretary of State, and by former Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin.

Barrack himself took the stand for five days, maintaining that he served as no one’s agent but his own, and his goal had always been to further his lifelong passion for building a bridge between Middle East nations and the U.S.

Trump and Barrack first met in the 1980s, when Trump bought the Plaza Hotel, and the two became friends.

Federal prosecutors accused Barrack of leveraging his access to Trump for power and money, including $374 in investments from UAE sovereign wealth funds to his company, Colony Capital.

Prosecutors alleged that Barrack tried to slip a reference to the UAE’s crown prince into a national campaign speech at the nation’s request. During the United Arab Emirates’ blockade of the Persian Gulf nation in 2017, Barrack tried to reach out to Trump on behalf of the UAE, which didn’t want the presidentto host a Camp David summit over the crisis.

Barrack’s defense team pointed out, though, that he opposed the blockade and sided with Qatar, the UAE’s “sworn enemy” during that conflict.

The feds also accused Barrack of lying about downloading a messaging app to his phone, and about setting up meetings between UAE and Trump officials, though his defense team said the FBI didn’t take accurate notes of the meeting and never recorded it.