Trump pal Tom Barrack’s lawyer compares his prosecution to roundup of Japanese-Americans during WWII

In his closing pitch to a Brooklyn federal jury Tuesday, the lawyer for Trump pal Tom Barrack suggested that prosecuting him as a foreign agent was similar to the U.S. government rounding up Japanese-Americans and putting them in internment camps during World War II.

Defense lawyer Randall Jackson likened Barrack to Norman Mineta, the 10-term congressman and former U.S. secretary of transportation who along with his Japanese immigrant parents were forced to live in an internment camp.

“It was done under the theory that people would possibly, maybe, be engaged in something like espionage,” Jackson said, adding that when it came to Barrack, the government was using the same type of thinking in labeling him a foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates.

He also referenced the anti-Catholic bias that “made people question President [John] Kennedy.”

“It’s a type of perspective that can allow you to look at a senior business executive near the end of his career … who was just trying to find a way to execute his business duties and at the same let the Arab world know that America still loves you,” Jackson said. “It’s a perspective that can allow one to see in that some kind of coded, difficult-to-understand conspiracy.”

Barrack is accused of scheming to influence former President Donald Trump’s foreign policy as an unregistered agent of the UAE, and of lying about it to the FBI.

In an interview with the feds, Barrack lied about downloading a messaging app to his phone, and about setting up meetings between UAE and Trump officials, U.S. Attorney Ryan Harris said.

“Mr. Barrack’s value to the UAE rested on his unique ability to give them his access, to give them his influence,” Harris said. “He was going to give them that access, that influence that they needed.”

Barrack and his personal assistant, Michael Grimes, 29, are accused of working on behalf of UAE agent Rashid Al-Malik Alshahhi, to further the country’s interests during Trump’s campaign and the early years of his presidency.

Jackson said the government didn’t come close to proving his client was a foreign agent over the course of the seven-week trial, arguing that it made no sense the now 75-year-old private equity bigwig would cap off a lifetime of business success by betraying the U.S.

The defense scoffed at what he described as the government’s theory of the conspiracy — formed in a “supersecret spy meeting” in May 2016 with Sheihk Tahnoun, the UAE’s national security adviser, followed up a bike ride in Morocco that August.

“The theory is that Sheikh Tahnoun, as he’s pedaling up the mountain, he’s yelling back at Tom, down the mountain, who’s struggling to get up the mountain, ‘Tom, how do you feel about betraying your country?’ Jackson said, laughing. “And Tom is riding a bike and he’s yelling, ‘I’d love to betray my country!’ It makes no sense.”

The case will go to the jury on Wednesday.