tom barrack, which went back a few years in real estate, as the means to do it. and so what we reported was that the emerati had looked at the trump administration early on and decided that what they were gonna do is to use healthy emerati business people to try to get them into trump s inner circle and rashida who was also charged yesterday with tom barrack, you should note for the same thing, for acting as a foreign agent without registering with the government. this influence operation didn t seem that secretive in some ways in so far as the presence of saudi and emerati interests were swirling around the administration and they were constantly doing things that seem to be favorable to the saudis and emiratis, they famously went to saudi arabia first.
one of the reporters who broke that story and he joins me now. matthew, maybe you could just start with describing was your initial reporting uncovered about what you turned an influence operation by the emerati. thanks chris, for having me. what we found is that the u.s. government in the u.s. intelligence community had discovered that rashida was acting as an intelligence agent for the head of the emerati intelligence service. and that his job was to conduct, it s not espionage in the sense that he was a spy, he was trying to pull secrets out as much as you try to gain access to the trump white house and assert emerati influence into trump s, the trump administration s foreign policy in particular with the middle east. he used his relationship with
why he used rashida al malik as an intelligent front, he used his business and real estate background as a lawyer for others around trump. and the and said assumption there is, getting them invested and entwined financially but allow them to exert influence and on trump s inner circle. two, although there is no discussion of money exchanging hands, at the end of the indictment it makes a very clear that if mr. barrett is convicted, they will bring in asset forfeiture, and that raises the question of whether barrack was doing that by being this go-between between the white house and the emiratis and the saudis, that his business, his fund, would get money there was no question that he got. something well over a billion