‘Trump is the man’: trial paints a White House plagued by foreign influence

The legal woes of investor Tom Barrack, accused of secretly lobbying for the Emirati regime, add to the image of a Trump circle beset by influence-peddling and corruption

Trump is the man," Thomas Tom" Barrack, a wealthy investor friend of Donald Trump's, wrote to someone in a foreign government, in 2016, as Trump's likelihood of being named the Republican nominee for president began to become a certainty. Barrack added, cryptically, that someone called HH" should be ready to travel.

The meaning of those words, and the intent behind them, are at the center of the latest court case to roil Trump's circle. Prosecutors have said that the HH" in Barrack's email referred to His Highness Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the current leader of the United Arab Emirates, and that Barrack was trying to secretly and illegally trade his access to Trump's ear for the graces of the Emirati government and its vast pool of investment money.