(Bloomberg) -- The judge overseeing the trial of Tom Barrack and his assistant on charges they acted as unregistered foreign agents restricted the legal theories that prosecutors could argue to the jury.

“Many of the government’s theories are right on the line between impermissible inference and impermissible speculation,” US District Judge Brian Cogan in Brooklyn, New York, said Tuesday, just before closing arguments began at the end of the six-week trial.

Cogan had said Monday that he was considering dismissing some of the nine counts against Barrack altogether, but he didn’t toss any charges on Tuesday. The judge in the past has dropped counts following a guilty verdict.

Barrack, 75, the founder of Colony Capital LLC, is charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the UAE to influence policies of the presidential campaign and administration of Donald Trump, his longtime friend. He’s also charged with conspiring to act as an unregistered agent, obstruction of justice, and six counts of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Cogan said he was eliminating a legal instruction on one of the false-statements counts relating to allegations that Barrack acquired a dedicated telephone to communicate directly with top UAE officials. Cogan said an FBI agent’s testimony didn’t support that aspect of the count.            

The judge also said prosecutors couldn’t argue that the purpose of Barrack’s voluntary interview with the FBI in June 2019 was essentially to “throw a monkey wrench” into a US grand jury investigation.

“This is something that would expose everybody who gives a voluntary interview that the government disagrees with,” Cogan said.

Cogan further ruled that prosecutors couldn’t use an aiding and abetting theory of liability to argue Barrack’s 29-year-old assistant, Matthew Grimes, was guilty as acting as an unregistered agent. He permitted prosecutors to argue it under other legal theories.

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