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“US prosecutors in California asked that Barrack be held without bail, calling him “an extremely wealthy and powerful individual with substantial ties to Lebanon, the UAE, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” who poses a serious flight risk, according to the Associated Press.”
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ALJAZERRA
US charges Trump ally with undisclosed lobbying for UAE
Thomas Barrack did not publicly disclose influence work for UAE during the Trump presidency, Justice Department says.
20 Jul 2021
As a young lawyer, Mr. Barrack once negotiated drilling rights with Ambassador Otaiba’s father, who was then the Emirati oil minister. The emails show that Ambassador Otaiba later worked with Mr. Barrack to help seal a 2009 deal in which his private equity firm sold the L’Ermitage Raffles hotel in Beverly Hills to a joint venture half owned by an Abu Dhabi investment fund for $41 million. Three years later, Ambassador Otaiba invested $1 million in a fund that Mr. Barrack had set up to buy homes on the cheap after the real estate crash, according to the emails."
In today's Washington Post:
"NEW YORK — A California judge on Friday set bail at $250 million for the billionaire investor and longtime friend of former president Donald Trump indicted on a charge of breaking foreign lobbying laws, ordering him to appear in federal court in New York next week.
Thomas J. Barrack, 74, who waived his court appearance for discussion of the prearranged release agreement, was freed from a jail in Los Angeles later Friday. His ex-wife Rachelle and son Thomas Barrack III were suretors on the bond.
Jonathan Grunzweig, an executive at Colony Capital, the investment firm Barrack founded, was the third person to endorse the major bond. Grunzweig is now chief investment officer for other equity and debt at DigitalBridge, which absorbed Colony Capital in 2015.
Barrack’s co-defendant, Matthew Grimes, 27, was freed on a $5 million bond. Both men must wear GPS monitoring devices and were ordered to travel to New York for an afternoon proceeding on Monday in federal court in Brooklyn...
A third defendant, 43-year-old Rashid al-Malik, had been living in California but fled the country days after the FBI interviewed him in 2018. He is a citizen of the UAE."
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Washington Post
6:26 p.m. EDT
It all seems airtight, right?
There’s a good chance corporate Washington DC & Washington DC corporate news will treat this as just another white collar crime. Too many people in DC have their fingers in foreign investments.
Paul Ryan with Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba in 2018:
Seems like as far as corporate news goes, Tom Barrack might become just another member of the Trump 11 (so far.)
Trump's "best friend" Tom Barrack wearing an ankle cuff in NYC is already winding up in corporate news archives.
I can’t find news about Barrack on the front web page of today’s (July 23rd) Washington Post or even The Guardian.
Today’s New York Times has an opinion article:
A Foreign Agent in Trump’s Inner Circle?
July 23, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
MICHELLE GOLDBERG
Who knows? If the DOJ keeps the public informed. If the press makes it clear that Barrack really could wind up dismembered in a suitcase if he gives up Trump. Maybe the story stays alive.
***
FROM VANITY FAIR:
“On Tuesday morning, billionaire Thomas Barrack, one of Trump’s closest friends, was arrested in the Los Angeles area and charged with violating foreign-lobbying laws, making false statements, and obstructing justice. According to the Post, the financier was indicted on charges related to his dealings in the United Arab Emirates. He and two other defendants have reportedly been accused of “acting and conspiring to act as agents of the UAE between April 2016 and April 2018.” Officials also claimed that Barrack lied to FBI agents in 2019 while being questioned about his dealings with the UAE
The 45-page indictment charges Matthew Grimes, an employee of Barrack’s investment firm, with helping in the lobbying effort. Grimes was also arrested, officials said. A third man charged in the scheme, Rashid Alshahhi, is a citizen of the UAE who lived for a time in California. Attorneys for Barrack and Grimes did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment. Officials said Alshahhi remains at large; an attorney for him could not immediately be identified.
Officials said that the lobbying effort began as Trump was sewing up the GOP primary nomination in the spring of 2016 and that Barrack “took steps to establish himself as the key communications channel for the United Arab Emirates to the Campaign.” A real estate titan who became wealthy buying out-of-favor assets, Barrack was one of Trump’s closest associates during the campaign and in office, regularly speaking to the former president, visiting him, and channeling him to others, including business officials and leaders in foreign countries.... Federal prosecutors say Barrack capitalized on his access to Trump and other high-ranking government officials, and his relationships with U.S. journalists, to “advance the policy goals of a foreign government without disclosing their true alliances.” On a number of occasions, the Justice Department alleged, Barrack pushed the interests of the UAE to the Trump administration without disclosing that he was working on the country’s behalf.
On a seemingly unrelated but crucial note, Barrack chaired Trump’s 2016 inaugural committee, which is currently under criminal investigation by D.C. attorney general Karl Racine. Racine sued the Trump Organization, the Trump International Hotel, and the inaugural committee in January 2020, alleging the groups funneled large amounts of inauguration cash into the first family’s pockets via the hotel. Both Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump have sat for depositions related to the probe, seeming to have misled investigators about their involvement in the planning of the inaugural events. After the lawsuit was filed, the Trump Organization said in a statement that it was “a clear P.R. stunt” and that ‘the rates charged by the hotel were completely in line with what anyone else would have been charged for an unprecedented event of this enormous magnitude and were reflective of the fact that [the] hotel had just recently opened, possessed superior facilities, and was centrally located on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
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BY BESS LEVIN
JULY 20, 2021
Most of Barrack’s alleged crimes were done in plain sight:
"During the Trump campaign, Mr. Barrack was a top fund-raiser and trusted gatekeeper who opened communications with the Emiratis and Saudis, recommended that the candidate bring on Paul Manafort as campaign manager — and then tried to arrange a secret meeting between Mr. Manafort and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Mr. Barrack was later named chairman of Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee…
Mr. Barrack’s company, known as Colony NorthStar since a merger last year, has raised more than $7 billion in investments since Mr. Trump won the nomination, and 24 percent of that money has come from the Persian Gulf — all from either the U.A.E. or Saudi Arabia, according to an executive familiar with the figures. Colony NorthStar has not disclosed the investors in its funds…
Mr. Barrack’s closeness to Mr. Trump extends to the president’s family. By 2010, he had Mr. Barrack’s closeness to Mr. Trump extends to the president’s family. By 2010, he had acquired $70 million of the debt owed by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, on his troubled $1.8 billion purchase of a skyscraper at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York. After a call from Mr. Trump, Mr. Barrack was among a group of lenders who agreed to reduce Mr. Kushner’s obligations to keep him out of bankruptcy…
Prince Mohammed was widely seen as an ambitious protégé of the Emirati rulers, and in an email to the Emirati ambassador, Mr. Barrack presented a Manafort meeting as a prelude to a meeting with Mr. Trump.
“I would like to align in Donald’s mind the connection between the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia which we have already started with Jared,” Mr. Barrack wrote to Ambassador Otaiba on June 21, 2016. “I think it is important that you be the center pin!!”
A few weeks later, on July 13, Mr. Barrack informed Ambassador Otaiba that the Trump team had also removed a proposed Republican platform provision inserted to “embarrass” Saudi Arabia. The provision had called for the release of redacted pages about the kingdom in a report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 200…
They celebrated again in May 2017, when Mr. Trump made his first foreign trip as president, to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia for an Arab summit meeting.
“It all started with you and JK and I so congratulations on a great beginning,” Mr. Barrack wrote to Ambassador Otaiba, referring to Mr. Kushner by his initials.
Two weeks after the Riyadh meeting, Mr. Trump began to align himself firmly with the Saudis and Emiratis against their rivals around the region. When those two states imposed an embargo on their neighbor Qatar — home to a major United States air base — Mr. Trump broke with his own administration to throw his weight squarely behind the Saudis and Emiratis.
He quickly congratulated Prince Mohammed when he assumed the title of crown prince — and commended him again when he summarily detained about 200 businessmen and rivals in a consolidation of his power. This spring, Mr. Trump handed the Saudis and Emiratis an even greater victory by pulling out of the nuclear deal with their nemesis, Iran. In turn, the gulf monarchs have made only pro forma protests against Mr. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel…
The linkages between Mr. Trump and the Saudis and Emiratis have come under new scrutiny. A few months after Mr. Barrack arranged the initial introductions, George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman and a top adviser to the de facto ruler of the U.A.E., met with the candidate’s son Donald Trump Jr. at the Trump headquarters in New York. In that Aug. 3, 2016, meeting, Mr. Nader reported that the rulers of both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates supported the Trump campaign and offered their assistance, according to people familiar with the discussion.
Such help would have violated campaign laws, and Mr. Nader is now cooperating with the special prosecutor, who is examining that meeting as well as a string of others that followed, according to people familiar the matter.
Mr. Manafort has pleaded not guilty to charges of financial fraud and lying to federal investigators in connection with his work for Russian-backed interests in Ukraine. Mr. Gates, whom Mr. Barrack hired to help run the inauguration and then as a Washington consultant, has pleaded guilty to making false statements to investigators and agreed to cooperate with the special prosecutor.
Mr. Kushner has also given testimony to the special prosecutor."
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New York Times
Who Is Behind Trump’s Links to Arab Princes? A Billionaire Friend
June 13, 2018
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