Thomas Barrack, Trump Ally, Pleads Not Guilty

Politics|Thomas Barrack, a Trump state and erstwhile fund-raiser, pleads not blameworthy to amerciable lobbying charges.

• July 26, 2021, 2:24 p.m. ET

Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a billionaire backstage equity capitalist and adjacent state to erstwhile President Donald J. Trump, pleaded not blameworthy connected Monday to charges of amerciable lobbying for the United Arab Emirates.

The not-guilty plea puts Mr. Barrack connected people for a high-profile proceedings that is apt to engulf Mr. Trump and the close-knit concern satellite that aided the erstwhile president’s emergence to power. Mr. Barrack served arsenic a cardinal fund-raiser to Mr. Trump passim his clip successful office, including a stint arsenic president of Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee.

Earlier this week, Mr. Barrack was released connected $250 cardinal enslaved and ordered to deterioration a GPS location-monitoring bracelet astatine each times, according to a Justice Department spokesman. Mr. Barrack, 74, entered the plea during a Monday quality successful Federal District Court successful Brooklyn, wherever helium was arraigned connected charges that helium acted arsenic an unregistered cause of a overseas power, obstructed justness and lied to the F.B.I.

Mr. Barrack is 1 of respective of Mr. Trump’s erstwhile aides, fund-raisers and associates to look transgression charges. He was charged alongside a concern associate, Matthew Grimes, 27, who was freed connected $5 cardinal bond. Mr. Grimes is besides required to deterioration a monitoring instrumentality and is taxable to a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

According to the seven-count indictment laid retired by national prosecutors, Mr. Barrack utilized his narration with Mr. Trump’s run to beforehand the Emirates’ docket astatine the behest of elder Emirati officials.

Once Mr. Trump was elected, the indictment states, Mr. Barrack invited elder Emirati officials to springiness him a “wish list” of overseas argumentation actions they wanted Washington to instrumentality wrong the archetypal 100 days, archetypal six months and archetypal twelvemonth of Mr. Trump’s term, and by the extremity of it, prosecutors said.

Glenn Thrush contributed to this story.