Former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig indicted in lobbying probe that was spun off from Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
in the probe spun off from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
The scrutiny of Craig stems from an investigation of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his work on behalf of a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. The charges come about three months after Craig’s former law firm agreed to pay more than $4.6 million and publicly acknowledge that it failed to register with the government for its work for the Ukraine.
The work that drew the Justice Department’s attention occurred in 2012, when Craig and Skadden were hired by the Ukrainian government to write a report on the prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former Ukrainian prime minister. Tymoshenko was a political opponent of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was a longtime Manafort patron.
The indictment made public Thursday says Craig did not want to register under FARA because doing so could keep him or others at his law firm from getting government positions and because the filing would require him to disclose the millions paid from a “private, wealthy Ukrainian.” The disclosures also would have undermined the authority of the supposedly independent report.
When the Justice Department determined that Craig should register under the law, the indictment says, Craig resisted the idea. In an email titled “FARA,” Craig wrote that the firm did not proactively disseminate the report to the media and instead provided it upon request to three media outlets that asked for it.
Craig’s lawyers deny that he lied to the government or his firm. They acknowledged that Craig spoke to reporters about the report but denied it was part of a public relations campaign that would run afoul of the law.
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