The latest development in the Tony Podesta and Vin Weber case brings to a close a case that helped to bring down one of K Street’s most prominent lobbying firms. | Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images lobbying Weber, Podesta say they’re no longer under investigation over foreign lobbying

Tony Podesta and Vin Weber said on Tuesday the Justice Department has told them they’re no longer under investigation for potentially violating foreign lobbying laws for work they did years ago on behalf of Ukrainian interests.

The development brings to a close a case that helped to bring down one of K Street’s most prominent lobbying firms, and that led Weber, a former Republican congressman, to resign from his lobbying firm last month, even though neither Weber nor Podesta was ever charged with wrongdoing.


“We are obviously pleased by this development,” Bob Trout, a lawyer for Weber, said in a statement.

He added that “at all times Mr. Weber acted in good faith and in keeping with the legal advice his company received from its outside counsel.”

A spokesman for the Southern District of New York, which had been handling the investigation, declined to comment. The Washington Post first reported the development.

The decision to close the investigation comes weeks after a jury acquitted Greg Craig, a former Obama White House counsel who was charged with lying to the Justice Department about his own work with Manafort on behalf of the Ukrainian government in 2012.

Weber and Podesta’s lobbying for an obscure think tank called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine first attracted scrutiny after the 2016 election, as prosecutors started looking into Paul Manafort’s work in Ukraine.

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Manafort had hired the Podesta Group and Weber’s firm, Mercury, in 2012 to work for the think tank, which was ostensibly independent. But Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, later admitted the think tank was really controlled by Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president at the time, and his political party.

Lobbyists for foreign governments and political parties are required by law to register as foreign agents, and Manafort was charged with breaking foreign lobbying law, among other crimes.

The scrutiny of the Podesta Group’s Ukraine work helped bring down the firm, which collapsed under pressure in 2017 shortly after Manafort’s arrest. (Mercury, in contrast, emerged relatively unscathed, although Weber resigned from the firm last month, saying he needed to spend his “time and energy on protecting” his reputation.)

But Robert Mueller didn’t charge Weber, Podesta or their firms, deeming it outside of his purview as special counsel. Instead, he handed the case off to the Southern District of New York.

Mercury has said it didn’t register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act on the advice of its lawyers, and Gates admitted to lying to Mercury’s law firm last year as part of his plea deal. Weber and Podesta both retroactively registered in 2017 as foreign agents.

“We expected this outcome because we did the right thing from the start,” Michael McKeon, a Mercury partner, said in a statement. “After getting a long, hard look we came out clean because that’s how we run our business. We are especially happy for Vin Weber, who deserves this clean bill of health.”

