Jury finds Trump friend Thomas Barrack not guilty on all counts in foreign lobbying trial - CBS News

A New York assemblage Friday recovered Trump confidant and billionaire Thomas Barrack not blameworthy of each charges successful his proceedings connected national overseas lobbying allegations.

Barrack, a 75-year-old capitalist who was an advisor to erstwhile President Donald Trump and seat of his Inaugural Committee, was accused of utilizing his connections to Trump's medication to effort to sway U.S. overseas argumentation for a client, the United Arab Emirates.

Outside the Brooklyn national courthouse Barrack lauded the assemblage and invoked "Lady Justice."

"The strategy is amazing. People are amazing. I person nary hostility, I'm conscionable arrogant to beryllium an American," Barrack said, adding aboriginal that helium is "done with politics." 

"Let's halt warring with each other. Let halt each the politicalization of everything, whoever the president is," Barrack said to reporters earlier teens playing euphony connected handheld speakers walked by. Barrack stopped talking briefly, enactment his hands successful the air, and danced.

Some teens with handheld speakers walked by the courthouse. Barrack danced. pic.twitter.com/me5vWYxkXJ

— Graham Kates (@GrahamKates) November 4, 2022

Prosecutors portrayed Barrack arsenic a businessman "campaigning for cash," retired to usage his White House ties to adhd a lucrative lawsuit to his concern portfolio. Barrack's defence said helium was utilizing his ties to the Middle East and the statesmanlike medication to effort to mediate disputes successful a volatile but important region, an effort to headdress disconnected a storied planetary concern career.

The jurors, impaneled since Sept. 19, deliberated for 2 days earlier reaching their verdict.

Barrack pleaded not guilty to charges of acting arsenic an unregistered overseas cause for the UAE, obstruction of justness and making mendacious statements to the FBI.

Prosecutors showed the assemblage substance messages and emails sent during successful 2016 and 2017, during the statesmanlike run and the aboriginal days of the Trump administration, successful which Barrack and an worker of his firm, Colony Capital, appeared to relay talking points related to a "wish list" of UAE priorities. Barrack and the employee, Michael Grimes, communicated done a middleman with Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a sheik who is the UAE's nationalist information advisor, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said Barrack's and Grimes' efforts garnered $374 cardinal successful caller investments from a UAE sovereign wealthiness money for their firm. Their defence said determination was thing amerciable astir their efforts to pull caller investments, and noted that fig represented conscionable 1% of the concern portfolio managed by Barrack's erstwhile company, which is present known arsenic DigitalBridge.  

Grimes, 29, was besides charged successful the case. The assemblage recovered him not blameworthy of charges helium acted arsenic an unregistered overseas agent. 

The alleged middleman, an Emirati national who had been surviving successful California, Rashid al Malik, was besides charged with acting arsenic an unregistered overseas agent. Al Malik has not been located by authorities.

After the verdict, Grimes said helium felt "grateful" to the jurors and his parents, who attended the proceedings regular and "who stood by maine each azygous day."

"I'm grateful to unrecorded successful the United States to person the accidental to basal earlier a justice who's just and impartial and a assemblage of my peers who reached the decision of what it should be. And that is the truth," Grimes said.

Asked what's next, helium said, "offense," without elaborating.

Outside the courtroom, prosecutors walked by without comment.

Barrack spent the last six days of the proceedings connected the stand, testifying successful his ain defense. He described his communications with UAE officials astir the Trump medication arsenic "puffery" and attempts to mediate disputes.

The assemblage besides heard grounds from 2 Trump medication officials, erstwhile Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, called by Barrack's defense, and erstwhile Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, called by the government.

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