Dana Bash: This is so telling about where the Republican party is NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 24: Trump Tower stands on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on August 24, 2018 in New York City. Following new allegations over hush money that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid to an adult-film actress, the Manhattan district attorneyÕs office in New York City may seek criminal charges against the Trump Organization in the coming days. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Why GOP is standing in the way of Capitol riot investigation WASHINGTON - NOVEMBER 08: US Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA) remarks on the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the US Capitol November 8, 2006 in Washington, DC. Warner said he supports President George W. Bush's nomination of former CIA Director Robert Gates for Secretary of Defense. Warner said he anticipates Gates' confirmation before the end of the year. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), joined by Senate Assistant Minority Leader John Thune (R-SD) (L) and Senate Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), speaks following a Senate Republican Policy luncheon at the Russell Senate Office Building on May 18, 2021 in Washington, DC. WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 17: Retired Gen. James Cartwright, (C), arrives for a hearing with his attorney Greg Craig (L), at US District Court, October 17, 2016 in Washington, DC. Cartwright has charged with making false statements during a federal investigation. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) (CNN) — A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted Greg Craig, a prominent Democratic attorney who worked for two presidents, charging him with making false statements and concealing material information in connection with work he performed for Ukraine in a case stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Craig, 74, is the highest-profile Democrat to be indicted in a matter connected to Mueller’s work, which resulted in charges against numerous Republicans tied to President Donald Trump. The case, which is being handled by the US Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia in association with the Justice Department’s national security division, is likely to bring renewed attention to the Justice Department’s application of a once-obscure law applying to unregistered foreign agents, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA. Craig was originally investigated for an alleged FARA violation, though he was charged with other crimes after the statute of limitations on FARA expired in his case. He is scheduled to enter a plea in federal court Friday afternoon. Craig’s lawyers, William Taylor and William Murphy, called the indictment “unfair and misleading.” “This indictment accuses Mr. Craig of misleading the FARA Unit of the Department of Justice in order to avoid registration. It is itself unfair and misleading. It ignores uncontroverted evidence to the contrary,” the lawyers wrote. “Mr. Craig had no interest in misleading the FARA Unit because he had not done anything that required his registration. That is what this trial will be all about.” Craig himself released a video statement later Thursday, calling the prosecution “unprecedented and unjustified.” “I am confident that both the judge and the jury will agree with me,” he added. The charges against Craig, who was White House counsel during the Obama administration, concern work he performed for Ukraine in 2012 while he was a partner at top law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. The Justice Department has said it was Paul Manafort, who later became Trump’s campaign manager, who arranged to hire Skadden to work for Ukraine, although Craig said Thursday it was Democratic political operative Doug Schoen “who first introduced the project to me.” Schoen did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Skadden’s client, the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice, hired it to write a report on the trial of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister of Ukraine, a project on which Craig was the lead attorney. According to the indictment, from the start of the work on the report, Craig didn’t want to register as an agent for Ukraine “at least in part because he believed doing so could prevent him or others at [Skadden] from taking positions in the federal government in the future.” The indictment also alleges that Craig was deterred from registering out of his desire to hide that a third party – a private individual – paid the firm more than $4 million for the report and that the firm had a “parallel engagement with Ukraine to assist in the prosecution of Tymoshenko on additional charges.” Craig said in his video statement that the third party was Victor Pinchuk, a Ukranian oligarch whom Craig described as “pro-Western.” Pinchuk did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment. In late 2012, Craig had contact with several newspaper reporters at the time of the public release of the report – a step prosecutors said in the indictment required him to register as an agent of Ukraine. But it was what came next that caused prosecutors to bring charges, according to the indictment. After DOJ’s FARA unit inquired with the firm about whether it should register as a result of its work, Craig allegedly withheld information about his contacts with reporters from attorneys at his firm and “omitted material facts regarding his acts in furtherance of Ukraine’s media plan” from DOJ’s FARA unit, according to the indictment. In early 2013, when FARA unit officials asked Craig about his work for Ukraine, he gave them a letter containing “material false and misleading statements and omissions,” including that he provided only “brief clarifying statements” to one of the reporters and that he had been in contact with the other reporters after the document’s public release, the indictment says. After the FARA unit then concluded that the firm needed to register as an agent of Ukraine, Craig and other Skadden attorneys met with members of the FARA unit in October 2013, and Craig “made false and misleading statements,” particularly that “his media contacts were solely reactive and for the purpose of correcting misinformation.” A letter he sent FARA officials two days later contained similar claims.<doc-sep>FILE PHOTO: Attorney Greg Craig speaks to reporters on the outcome of the courts' decision regarding Elian Gonzalez, in Washington, U.S., June 1, 2000. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Greg Craig, who served as former President Barack Obama's top White House lawyer, was charged on Thursday with lying about work he performed in 2012 for Ukraine in a case that grew out of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. Craig, 74, faces up to 10 years in prison for charges of making false statements and violating a lobbying law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). He is accused of lying to the Justice Department about his work after he left the White House on a legal review that largely vindicated the prosecution of a political enemy of Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian-aligned president of Ukraine at the time. Craig said in a statement he headed a team of lawyers that worked on an independent report for Ukraine's justice ministry. After researching FARA requirements, they found they did not need to register as foreign agents under the law. "This prosecution is unprecedented and unjustified. I am confident that both the judge and the jury will agree with me," Craig said. Craig's lawyers indicated he would plead not guilty. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, the New York law firm that produced the report, agreed in January to turn over the $4.6 million it was paid and retroactively register as a foreign agent, as part of a settlement with the Justice Department. Skadden produced the 187-page report at the behest of Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Donald Trump's presidential campaign who is currently serving a 7 1/2-year prison sentence for lobbying violations and financial crimes. Manafort was apparently happy with Craig's work. "You are 'THE MAN,'" he wrote Craig in an email after the report received favourable media coverage, according to the indictment. The report was meant to be an objective review of the Ukrainian government's prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, the country's former prime minister who was convicted in 2011 on corruption charges and sentenced to seven years in prison. Story continues It criticized Tymoshenko's behaviour during the trial and concluded that her due-process rights had not been violated, but also said that she had been improperly imprisoned during the trial. The report was used by Yanukovych's government to justify Tymoshenko's pretrial detention to the European Court of Human Rights and influence U.S. lawmakers. Yanukovych was one of Manafort's main lobbying clients. FUNDED BY UKRAINIAN BILLIONAIRE According to the indictment, Craig covered up aspects of his work in order to avoid registering as a foreign agent under FARA, a rarely enforced law that was enacted in 1938 to counter Nazi propaganda. Had Craig complied with the law, he would have been forced to reveal that funding for the report largely came from Viktor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian billionaire. Pinchuk paid the firm $4 million for its work, according to Skadden filings made as part of its settlement. The Ukrainian government only paid Skadden $12,000 - an amount so low that it aroused suspicion in Ukrainian media. Craig also failed to disclose that Skadden was simultaneously helping out with Tymoshenko's prosecution on other charges, prosecutors say. "That would do enormous damage to the credibility" of the report, Craig wrote in an email to other Skadden attorneys, according to the indictment. Craig privately had reservations about Tymoshenko's treatment but left them out of the report, the indictment said. "Evidence of criminal intent - i.e., that she intended to commit a crime - is virtually non-existent," he wrote in a memorandum that was not included in the report, according to the charges. During his tenure as Obama's White House counsel from January 2009 to January 2010, Craig led the administration's unsuccessful effort to shut down the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He also represented former President Bill Clinton during his 1998 Senate impeachment trial. Another Skadden lawyer, Alex van der Zwaan, pleaded guilty last year to lying to investigators about the report. Craig's case stems from Mueller's 22-month investigation into whether Trump's presidential campaign worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election. That probe led to charges against 34 people, including Russian agents and former key Trump allies, but Attorney General William Barr said last month that Mueller did not find enough evidence to charge Trump or others with criminal conspiracy. Barr also said he decided there was not enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice. He is expected to release a redacted version of Mueller's final report to Congress next week. (Additional reporting by Tim Ahmann, Nathan Layne and Mark Hosenball; editing by Lisa Shumaker, Bill Berkrot and Chris Reese)<doc-sep>Manafort was the first former Trump aide to be arrested in the special counsel's investigation, though his charges related only to his consulting in Ukraine. In March, he was jailed on counts of fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy against the US and conspiracy to obstruct justice.<doc-sep>Gregory Craig in 2016. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images Attorneys for former Obama White House counsel Gregory B. Craig told reporters on Wednesday that the lawyer anticipates he will soon face federal charges for some of the legal work he did for the government of Ukraine in 2012 and for subsequently failing to register as a foreign agent. The case, initiated during the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, relates to Craig’s time working for the white-shoe D.C. law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. In 2012, Craig was hired by the Justice Ministry of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych to review the prosecution of a political rival. According to the Ukrainian government, Skadden was paid $12,000 for the work, but prosecutors reportedly have said that Paul Manafort helped route over $4 million to the law firm via an offshore account. Last September, the special counsel’s office transferred Craig’s case over to prosecutors in D.C., where Craig’s attorneys expect he will be indicted at the request of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. In 2018, a different Skadden lawyer, Alex van der Zwaan, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his work on a report on Viktor Yanukovych’s rival and served 30 days in prison. Van der Zwaan allegedly handed a copy of the opposition research to Paul Manafort to help him lobby for Yanukovych and later deleted emails linking the two. But van der Zwaan is Dutch, and did not serve in the Obama administration, making the likely indictment of a former White House counsel a major political victory for President Trump and Attorney General William Barr, as the AG prepares a counter-investigation into the formation of the special counsel.<doc-sep>
Dana Bash: This is so telling about where the Republican party is NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 24: Trump Tower stands on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on August 24, 2018 in New York City. Following new allegations over hush money that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid to an adult-film actress, the Manhattan district attorneyÕs office in New York City may seek criminal charges against the Trump Organization in the coming days. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) WASHINGTON - NOVEMBER 08: US Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA) remarks on the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the US Capitol November 8, 2006 in Washington, DC. Warner said he supports President George W. Bush's nomination of former CIA Director Robert Gates for Secretary of Defense. Warner said he anticipates Gates' confirmation before the end of the year. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), joined by Senate Assistant Minority Leader John Thune (R-SD) (L) and Senate Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), speaks following a Senate Republican Policy luncheon at the Russell Senate Office Building on May 18, 2021 in Washington, DC. White House counsel Greg Craig listens as President Barack Obama makes a surprise appearance during the daily press briefing as Press Secretary Robert Gibbs looks on at the White House in Washington, Friday, May 1, 2009. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) (CNN) — Attorneys for Greg Craig, a prominent Democratic lawyer and former White House counsel in the Obama administration, said Wednesday evening that they expect him to be indicted by federal prosecutors in a case that stems from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. An indictment against Craig connected to work he performed for Ukraine while he was a partner at the high-profile law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP has been expected for several weeks, and CNN reported in late March that prosecutors were close to bringing a case over what they allege were false statements made by Craig. The case is significant not only because of Craig’s reputation as a legal heavyweight but also because it has its origins in the Justice Department’s newfound taste for prosecutions connected to a once-obscure law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which is used to pursue cases of individuals acting as unregistered foreign agents. It is also notable because while most of the cases charged as a result of Mueller’s investigation concerned Republicans connected to President Donald Trump, Craig is a Democrat. An indictment against him could come as soon as Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter. CNN has reported that the statute of limitations for the matter for which Craig was originally investigated – having failed to register as a foreign agent – has expired and that prosecutors have instead been weighing bringing a false statement charge against him. Though an initial inquiry into Craig and Skadden was opened by Mueller, Craig’s case was later referred to federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and eventually to prosecutors in the US Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia. It is prosecutors from that office, “at the request of” the Justice Department’s national security division, who are expected to charge Craig, his lawyers said. “This case was thoroughly investigated by the SDNY and that office decided not to pursue charges against Mr. Craig,” his attorneys said Wednesday. “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.” After examining Craig’s case, federal prosecutors in New York concluded they had insufficient evidence to bring charges against him, CNN has reported. Craig initially came into the crosshairs of federal prosecutors in mid-2017. He and Skadden had performed work beginning in 2012 for Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice. It was a client relationship the Justice Department has said was forged with the assistance of Paul Manafort, who later became Trump’s campaign chairman. The issue that has been under examination has to do with contact Craig made in late 2012 with several newspaper reporters at the time of the public release of a report he had written for Skadden’s client, the Ukranian Ministry of Justice, on the trial of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister of Ukraine.