Ex-Obama lawyer charged in Mueller spin-off probe for lying about Ukraine work
WASHINGTON: Greg Craig, who served as former President Barack Obama’s top White House lawyer, was charged on Thursday with lying about work he performed in 2012 for Ukraine in a case that grew out of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Craig, 74, faces up to 10 years in prison for charges of making false statements and violating a lobbying law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara).
HeisaccusedoflyingtotheJustice Department about his work after he left the White House on a legal review that largely vindicated the prosecution of a political enemy of Viktor Yanukovych, the Russianaligned president of Ukraine at the time.
Craig said in a statement he headed a team of lawyers that worked on an independent report for Ukraine’s justice ministry. After researching Fara requirements, they found they did not need to register as foreign agents under the law.
“This prosecution is unprecedented and unjustified. I am confident that both the judge and the jury will agree with me,” Craig said.
Craig’s lawyers indicated he would plead not guilty. He is scheduled to appear in the US District Court in Washington yesterday.
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, the New York law firm that produced the report, agreed in January to turn over the US$ 4.6 million it was paid and retroactively register as a foreign agent, as part of a settlement with the Justice Department.
Skadden produced the 187page report at the behest of Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign who is currently serving a 7 1/2-year prison sentence for lobbying violations and financial crimes.
Manafort was apparently happy with Craig’s work.
“You are ‘ The Man,’” he wrote Craig in an email after the report received favorable media coverage, according to the indictment.
The report was meant to be an objective review of the Ukrainian government’s prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, the country’s former prime minister who was convicted in 2011 on corruption charges and sentenced to seven years in prison.
It criticised Tymoshenko’s behavior during the trial and concluded that her due- process rights had not been violated, but also said that she had been improperly imprisoned during the trial. — Reuters