Who%20is%20Tom%20Barrack%3F

American real estate investor Thomas J. Barrack Jr., or more popularly known as Tom Barrack, is a close ally of former US president Donald Trump. He was arrested on Tuesday on charges of illegally lobbying on behalf of the United Arab Emirates. 

The federal prosecutors in Brooklyn described it as an effort to influence the foreign policy positions of both the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and the subsequent incoming administration.

Barrack is charged in a seven-count indictment with acting as an agent of the UAE between April 2016 and April 2018. He is also charged with obstruction of justice and making false statements to federal law enforcement agents.

Barrack, a private equity investor, was chairman of Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee and was one of Trump’s top fundraisers.

He is the founder and executive chairman of publicly traded REIT (CLNY) Colony Capital Inc. He was a senior adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign.

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According to the indictment, acquired by CNN, Barrack and two other men charged Tuesday — Matthew Grimes of Aspen, Colorado, and Rashid Sultan Rashid Al Malik Alshahhi, a UAE national %u2013 utilised Barrack’s status as a senior outside adviser to then-president Donald Trump to “advance the interests of and provide intelligence to the UAE while simultaneously failing to notify the Attorney General that their actions were taken at the direction of senior UAE officials.

According to the charges, the 74-year-old was directly and indirectly in contact with UAE senior leadership, and he referred to Alshahhi as its “secret weapon” to promote its foreign policy agenda in America.

Barrack and Grimes are scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles, according to the Justice Department, while Alshahhi departed the United States three days after being interrogated by federal investigators in April 2018 and hasn’t returned.

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Born on April 28 1947, Barrack was raised in Culver City, California, where his father was a grocer and his mother was a secretary. 

In 1969, Barrack graduated with a B.A. degree from the University of Southern California, Following which he then attended the USC Gould School of Law, before receiving his Juris Doctor degree from the University of San Diego School of Law in 1972.