Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort helped the Ukrainian government hire Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in 2012. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Legal Law firm that worked with Manafort in Ukraine admits to misleading DOJ

A prestigious New York law firm admitted to misleading the Justice Department about its work with Paul Manafort on behalf of the Ukrainian government and agreed to hand over nearly $4.7 million in a settlement made public Thursday.

Manafort — President Donald Trump's former campaign chief, who pleaded guilty last year to charges related to his work in Ukraine — helped the Ukrainian government hire Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in 2012.


The law firm produced a report on the prosecution of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Her imprisonment had led to international condemnation of Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president at the time and Manafort’s patron. When the report was finished, a Skadden partner reached out to a “national newspaper” to set up a call with a lobbyist for Ukraine, according to the settlement.

But when the Justice Department sought to determine whether the firm needed to register as a foreign agent under U.S. law, Skadden, relying on the partner’s representations, misled the Justice Department about the partner’s contact with the media and submitted false documents, according to the settlement.

John Demers, the assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement that Skadden’s failure to register with the Justice Department “hid from the public that its report was part of a Ukrainian foreign influence campaign.”

The settlement doesn’t name the Skadden partner, but it appears to be Greg Craig, a former White House counsel under President Barack Obama who led the Ukraine work.

The Skadden partner was quoted in the “national newspaper” discussing the report on Dec. 12, 2012, according to the settlement. Craig was quoted in The New York Times on that date in an article that noted the report “seemed to side heavily” with Yanukovych’s government.

Craig retired from Skadden last year. A lawyer for Craig declined to comment.

Skadden agreed to register retroactively as a foreign agent as part of the settlement.

“We have learned much from this incident and are taking steps to prevent anything similar from happening again,” the firm said in a statement.

Skadden had already been roped into the investigation into Manafort’s activities in Ukraine, part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s broader probe. Lawyer Alex van der Zwaan pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI about the firm’s work for Ukraine and spent nearly a month in prison.

Mueller’s investigation has thrown a spotlight on the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires lobbying and public relations firms working for foreign governments and political parties to register with Justice Department but hadn’t been aggressively enforced in the past.

Dan Pickard, a lawyer at Wiley Rein who has advised clients on complying with FARA, called the settlement with Skadden “very unusual.”

The Justice Department had sought to make lobbyists comply with the law voluntarily in the past, Pickard noted. But “we’re living in a period of heightened enforcement,” he wrote in an email.

Emails quoted in the settlement make clear that Skadden went to great lengths to avoid doing public relations work that would require it to register.

At one point, another Skadden partner wrote to Craig to tell him the Ukraine work “should not include PR advice” because Skadden was “in this as lawyers, not spin doctors.”

“Good advice,” Craig replied.

But Craig actively worked to help promote the report, according to the settlement, reaching out to a reporter at The New York Times to offer the report as an exclusive before it was released publicly. He even offered to drop off a copy of the report at the reporter’s home.

When the Justice Department started asking questions after the Times story appeared to figure out whether Skadden needed to register as a foreign agent, the firm told the Justice Department that Craig only “provided brief clarifying statements about the report” to reporters at the Times and two other publications.

The Justice Department presented evidence in the settlement that he disseminated the report to the news media. But in a 2013 email cited by prosecutors, Craig told another Skadden partner the firm “did not ‘disseminate the report to news media.’”

“At no time did [Skadden] attorneys ‘contact the media,’” Craig wrote. “Quite the contrary, we were approached by the media – asked for interviews, asked for background commentary, etc. – and we did not respond. The only time we responded was to correct misinformation.”

It’s not clear why Skadden went to such lengths to avoid registering as a foreign agent, although the settlement hints at one possible reason.

The Ukrainian government agreed to pay an ostensible fee of only 95,000 Ukrainian hryvnias — less than $12,000 — for Skadden to produce the report, with the understanding that an unnamed Ukrainian businessman would pay millions more to cover the firm’s fees and the cost of the work. Skadden refused to reveal the identity of the businessman when Justice Department lawyers inquired about it in 2013.

“Registration under FARA would have required [Skadden] to disclose, among other things, accurate and complete information related to the compensation that it received for preparing the Report on behalf of the [Ukrainian government], and the identity of” the businessman who paid for it, the settlement states.

