The Justice Department indicted former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig Thursday on charges of providing false statements to federal investigators regarding his lobbying work on behalf of Ukraine.
Craig, 74, was charged with two counts of making false statements to and concealing material information from the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) Unit. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted. His arraignment is upcoming.
The indictment arose from the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose team reportedly discovered the alleged offenses because Craig’s work was connected to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who lobbied for pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine.
Manafort had hired Craig’s law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, to issue a press release on behalf of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych defending the imprisonment of Yanukovych’s political opponent, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Manafort was hit last month with two conspiracy charges connected to his lobbying work in Ukraine and has been sentenced to a total of nearly seven years in prison on separate charges in two other cases.
“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,” Craig’s attorneys, William Taylor and William Murphy, said in a statement Wednesday.
Craig left Skadden abruptly last year with no explanation. The firm reached a settlement with the DOJ in January to pay $4.6 million and register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act in exchange for immunity from prosecution.