By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. jury began deliberations on Wednesday in the trial of Tom Barrack, the onetime private equity executive and fundraiser for Donald Trump, on charges he acted as a foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn last year charged Barrack, 75, with using his influence with the Trump campaign and administration to push the UAE’s policy interests without notifying the U.S. Attorney General he was acting as an agent for the Middle Eastern country, as required by law.
The OPEC nation paid him back in 2017 and 2018 by investing $374 million from its sovereign wealth with his company, then known as Colony Capital, prosecutors said.
Barrack has pleaded not guilty and has described his interactions with Middle Eastern officials as part of his role running Colony, now known as DigitalBridge Group Inc. He argues that even when his interests aligned with the UAE’s, he was acting on his own accord and not subject to Abu Dhabi’s direction.
Over the six-week trial, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn displayed hundreds of text messages and emails they said showed Emirati officials gave Barrack input on what he should say in television interviews and an op-ed about the Middle East, and that Barrack passed along sensitive information about U.S. foreign policy.
“Mr. Barrack was willing to be their man on the inside,” Ryan Harris, a prosecutor, said in his closing argument on Tuesday.
Barrack’s lawyers did not dispute that he had been in touch with Emirati officials and occasionally sought their feedback, but they said any impact on U.S. policy or public opinion was insignificant.
“Where was the influence of U.S. policy?” Randall Jackson, a lawyer for Barrack, said in his closing argument on Tuesday. “Try, just try to figure out where in this case you heard anybody who talked about real policy that was affected.”
Jackson also said Emirati investments represented less than 1% of Colony’s balance sheet. He said that while Barrack – who is of Lebanese descent – wanted better relations between the United States and the Middle East, he never agreed to act subject to the UAE’s “direction or control,” as U.S. law defines agents for foreign governments.
Sam Nitze, a prosecutor, countered in a rebuttal that Emirati officials were “thrilled” at Barrack’s comments about the country and its leaders during television interviews. He said the law was designed to make sure the U.S. government knew when someone was acting as a “mouthpiece” for a foreign government.
“Some of these moves are subtle and incremental but they are real,” Nitze said. “Product placement – getting a name out, subtly burnishing a reputation – matters.”
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York, Editing by William Maclean)
