Gregory Craig faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for the two charges and a combined $260,000 in fines. | Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo legal Grand jury indicts former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig

Gregory Craig, the former Obama White House counsel, was charged by a federal grand jury on Thursday with making false statements and concealing material information about his work in private practice lobbying on behalf of the Ukrainian government.

The two-count indictment , filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., says that Craig, 74, purposefully and repeatedly misled federal investigators about his need to register as a foreign lobbyist, including in 2017 when interviewed by prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller.


Craig, who served under President Barack Obama during his first year in office in 2009, is the first Democrat to face criminal charges in a case with ties to the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. While the special counsel’s investigation officially wrapped up last month, the Justice Department recently said it was placing new emphasis on examining foreign lobbying activities that became a featured part of Mueller’s efforts.

At issue for Craig is work he did starting in 2012, after his White House stint, at the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom law firm preparing a report concerning Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s jailing of one of his political opponents, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

The report was meant to be used by President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who had been lobbying for Yanukovych at the time, to defend the former president.

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Craig’s work came under renewed scrutiny by Mueller’s team as it prosecuted its case against Manafort, who hired Skadden Arps in 2012. The firm, which Craig retired from last year, pleaded guilty in January to misleading the Justice Department about its work with Manafort and paid a $4.7 million settlement. A Dutch lawyer at the firm, Alex van der Zwaan, pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI and spent nearly a month in prison before being deported to the Netherlands.

According to the 22-page indictment, Craig was aware of federal requirements to register as a foreign lobbyist but didn’t want to do it “at least in part because he believed doing so could prevent him or others at [his] law firm from taking positions in the federal government in the future.”

Registering as a foreign lobbyist would have also required Craig to disclose that a third party had paid his firm more than $4 million for the report, the indictment said. And it also would have exposed his firm’s “parallel engagement” with Ukraine to help in prosecuting Tymoshenko on additional charges.

“These disclosures, as well as the fact of registration itself, would have undermined the report and Craig’s perceived independence,” the indictment said.

Craig’s alleged crimes started in December 2012 after he was quoted discussing the report in The New York Times. A Justice Department unit dealing with foreign lobbying sent a letter to his firm seeking more information and advising it that its work on behalf of Ukraine might require registration as a foreign lobbyist.

The firm responded in February 2013, by letter with Craig’s signature, saying that it wasn’t performing activities requiring it to register, and it made no reference to his contacts with U.S. media.

After investigating the matter, the Justice Department in September 2013 told Craig and his law firm that it did indeed need to register its work. That kickstarted several more months of discussions and exchanges before the department in early 2014 reversed course and determined that Craig didn’t need to register.

On Thursday evening, Craig released a statement, which he also read in a YouTube video, explaining his position and maintaining his innocence.

“I never discussed the findings of our report with any U.S. officials and certainly did not lobby any U.S. officials on behalf of Ukraine,” he said. “I did not help Ukraine promote its spin when it released our report.“

“My purpose in talking to The Times was to prevent mischaracterization of our report by Ukraine and its public relations firm. Several months later, the FARA Unit of the Department of Justice made a formal determination agreeing with me,” Craig added, referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

He concluded: “I did not participate in a scheme to mislead the government or conceal material facts. I was always honest about the reason for my contacts with the media. This prosecution is unprecedented and unjustified. I am confident that both the judge and the jury will agree with me.“

Anticipating the indictment, Craig’s attorneys on Wednesday night issued a preemptive statement saying their client’s work had been “thoroughly investigated” by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, who they said declined to press charges.

The lawyers, William W. Taylor III and William J. Murphy, said the Justice Department’s National Security Division then asked for Craig’s case to be taken up by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington. “Mr. Craig is not guilty of any charge and the government’s stubborn insistence on prosecuting Mr. Craig is a misguided abuse of prosecutorial discretion,” the attorneys’ statement said.

In the indictment, the Justice Department said it made the decision “in reliance on Craig’s representations and having been misled by Craig” about his work on the Ukraine project and his contacts with the media. The indictment also said Craig “repeated certain of the false and misleading statements” that he made to the department’s unit about the timing and nature of his contacts with reporters when he sat for an interview with Mueller’s office in October 2017.

Craig faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for the two charges and a combined $260,000 in fines. He is scheduled to be arraigned at 1:30 p.m. Friday before Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson, with the first status conference at 10 a.m. Monday before U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee who previously handled Manafort’s D.C. case.

The Ivy League-schooled attorney had two stints working for Democratic administrations: In 1998 and 1999, he served on President Bill Clinton’s defense from the White House as Republicans pursued impeachment proceedings. He returned for Obama in January 2009, helping the new president on national security matters in particular.

A spokesman for Obama declined comment Wednesday night when asked about the statement from attorneys for the former White House counsel expecting an indictment.

Craig’s post-Obama White House career included a brief stint as defense counsel representing former Sen. John Edwards in his case involving nearly $1 million in payments that his backers made to support a pregnant mistress during the 2009 presidential campaign. A jury in 2012 deadlocked on five felony counts in the Edwards case and voted to acquit him on one charge before the Justice Department dropped the case outright in 2012.