Tom Barrack has spent four decades orbiting Donald Trump, and the billionaire's diplomatic star is climbing again even as his name surfaces hundreds of times across the Justice Department's Epstein files.
On 31 May 2026, Trump announced that Barrack, already serving as US ambassador to Türkiye, would take on a wider brief as special presidential envoy to Syria and Iraq. The financier has been a Trump confidant since the 1980s and chaired the 2017 Presidential Inaugural Committee.
