(Bloomberg) -- New Yorkers who have “some dislike” of Donald Trump can be considered for the jury in the trial of a longtime friend of the former president, a federal judge ruled.

Colony Capital Inc. founder Tom Barrack, who served as Trump’s inaugural committee chair, and his assistant, Matt Grimes, had sought to exclude more than 30 prospective jurors from their trial later this month on charges that they acted as illegal foreign agents. Those people showed “a disqualifying level of bias” in juror questionnaires, defense lawyers said.

But US District Judge Brian Cogan in Brooklyn, New York, largely rejected Barrack and Grimes’s request in a Friday order, saying “merely some dislike” of Trump wasn’t enough reason to think jurors couldn’t be fair and impartial with regard to people associated with him.

Barrack and Grimes are accused of illegally acting as agents of the United Arab Emirates in trying to influence foreign policy of the Trump administration. According to prosecutors, that included trying to get a former Republican congressman named ambassador to the UAE.

‘Divisive, Ignorant’

Potential jurors said “Donald Trump is the one publicly known person who they least admire,” called him “a crook” and expressed the view that he is “divisive, ignorant, racist, misogynistic, and dislikable in every way,” Michael Schachter, a lawyer for Barrack, said in a letter to the court last week. 

Cogan did strike nine jurors from the pool that he said evidenced clear bias. It wasn’t immediately clear if that group included any of the people whose comments were cited in Schachter’s letter.

Schachter declined comment while Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Grimes, didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment.

The defense suggested in its letter last week that Trump or members of his administration could be witnesses in their case, saying the former president’s “not simply a background player” but “a key figure in nearly every aspect of this trial” depending on the nature of the government’s case.

More than 400 people were summoned to court in early August to fill out a lengthy questionnaire that included queries about Trump and the case. Cogan said earlier this week he will summon potential jurors to court on Sept. 19 to begin individually questioning them and select a panel.

The case is US v. Al Malik Alshahhi, 21-cr-00371, US District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).

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