Days into the ongoing criminal trial of Thomas J. Barrack, Jr., a prominent backer of former President Donald Trump, a federal judge in Colorado dismissed a lawsuit Barrack brought against the U.S. government seeking access to documents.

Barack is currently standing trial in the Eastern District of New York for allegedly failing to register as a foreign agent. This summer, as part of his defense, Barrack sued the U.S. Department of Justice for failing to provide records he requested through the Freedom of Information Act. Barrack sought information about entities that registered with the government under the same law he is accused of violating.

But last week, U.S. District Court Judge Raymond P. Moore dismissed the lawsuit from Barrack, who owns a home in Aspen. Moore cited a technical flaw in Barrack’s FOIA request: Barrack’s lawyer, and not Barrack himself, was the one who originally requested the Justice Department records.

“Accordingly, courts have concluded that a party who has not made a FOIA request does not have standing to bring a FOIA claim,” Moore wrote in an Oct. 6 order.

Barrack is a real estate investor and friend of Trump’s who chaired the 2017 inaugural committee. Federal prosecutors filed an indictment in July 2021 accusing Barrack of violating the federal law known as 18 U.S.C. Section 951, which imposes a fine and up to 10 years of imprisonment for people, other than diplomats, who act as the agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. attorney general.

In Barrack’s case, prosecutors allege Barrack’s company received approximately $1.5 billion from the United Arab Emirates at the same time he attempted to sway public opinion, the Trump campaign and later the Trump administration in favor of the UAE’s interests.

The accusations are “nothing short of ridiculous. Tom Barrack was never under anybody’s direction,” his lawyer, Michael Schachter, said during opening statements in the trial that began last month.

Barrack’s entry into Colorado’s federal trial court occurred in July, when he filed his lawsuit against the Justice Department. One of his attorneys, Sohil Khurana, had submitted a FOIA request with the department’s National Security Division, seeking the notifications of foreign agent registrations that Section 951 requires.

Although FOIA requires agencies to respond within 20 business days, Khurana requested a status update multiple times to no avail. Ultimately, on July 8, the National Security Division sent a “final response,” indicating an invasion of personal privacy and interference with law enforcement investigations would result from disclosure of the records. Consequently, “NSD neither confirms nor denies the existence of such records,” the letter read.

Barrack then sought a judge’s order for the Justice Department to search for and quickly disclose the Section 951 records.

“The information requested has a strong likelihood of constituting exculpatory evidence in connection with Mr. Barrack’s upcoming trial, and as such, is critical to the preservation of Mr. Barrack’s due process rights,” wrote Jason R. Dunn, a former U.S. attorney for Colorado under the Trump administration who represents Barrack.

The government sought to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing Barrack did not have standing to sue. Barrack was not the person who made the FOIA request and Khurana only raised Barrack’s connection to the documents in a June 30 email, nearly two months after filing the request.

Further, the National Security Division “has since decided to process the FOIA request. NSD has completed its search for responsive records, has initiated processing, and has already produced 16 of the 23 pages of responsive records,” Justice Department lawyer Vinita B. Andrapalliyal wrote to the court.

The lawsuit, Andrapalliyal added, may “well be moot” due to the government’s change of heart.

Although Moore, the district judge, acknowledged the existence of other court cases that took a slightly different view on the ability to bring FOIA lawsuits, he concluded those cases were unlike Barrack’s. Instead, courts require parties to make FOIA requests themselves or else have their lawyers indicate who their client is in the request.

Barrack’s trial continues this week in Brooklyn. On Monday, former U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson testified he was unaware of any backchannel diplomacy between the United Arab Emirates and the Trump administration or whether Barrack had passed information to a foreign government, The New York Times reported. However, Tillerson also admitted he was not privy to everything Trump heard from close influences like Barrack.