Lawyer in lobbying case acquitted

The case arose from the special counsel’s Russia investigation and centered on lucrative foreign lobbying.

— Prominent Washington lawyer Greg Craig was found not guilty Wednesday of lying to the Justice Department about work he did for the government of Ukraine in a case that arose from the special counsel’s Russia investigation and that centered on the lucrative world of foreign lobby ing.

The jury deliberated for less than a day before clearing Craig, a White House counsel in the Obama administration, of a single count of making false statements to federal investigators.

The swift verdict was a setback to the Justice Department’s crackdown on lobbyists who do unregistered work for foreign governments and came as prosecutors have been ramping up enforcement of a decades-old law meant to police foreign influence and promote transparency. U.S. officials hoped a conviction would demonstrate an aggressive approach to lobbyists who fail to register their foreign work or who give false information to the Justice Department to avoid identifying themselves as a foreign agent, as Craig was alleged to have done.

But the jury rejected the theory of the case in a matter of hours. One juror told reporters that while some members found some of Craig’s actions unseemly, all agreed he hadn’t broken the law.

Craig hugged his attorneys after the verdict was read and, outside the courthouse, thanked the jury for “doing justice in this case.”

His attorney, William Taylor, said the jury reached the only possible verdict it could have reached and called the case a tragedy and a disgrace.

“The question that you need to ask isn’t why this jury acquitted Greg Craig, but why the Department of Justice brought this case against an innocent man in the first place,” Taylor said.

Craig, now retired, has represented many political figures in his decadeslong career. He worked on President Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense, and represented former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, and James Cartwright, a retired general and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Craig also served as an adviser to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.