Prosecutors at the trial of former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig attempted an act of courtroom jujitsu Thursday as they argued that the venerated member of the Washington legal establishment implemented a scheme to deceive the Justice Department about his dealings with Ukraine.
With Craig’s defense preparing to try to leverage widespread admiration for him during nearly a half a century of work in D.
C. legal circles and Democratic politics, the prosecution argued to jurors that the very reason Craig concocted a scheme to deceive the Justice Department about his work for Ukraine was that revealing the details of that work threatened to tarnish the reputation he’d cultivated.“Gregory B. Craig had a choice. He could tell the truth and be forthcoming when the Department of Justice asked him questions about his work for a foreign government, or he could lie and conceal,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston said as she kicked off a 45-minute opening statement. “We are here because the defendant chose to lie and conceal."
Gaston was quick to tell the jury that the work that landed Craig in hot water — a report he prepared for the Ukrainian government in 2012 on the corruption prosecution of former Prime Minister Yulia Thymoshenko — amounted to an effort by the former lawyer for two U.S. presidents to trade on his standing in Washington and globally.
“He had a sterling reputation that he had built over the course of a lifetime. It was precisely because of that reputation that Ukraine hired him,” the prosecutor said. “They wanted more than just an independent report. They wanted to leverage the defendant’s reputation to improve Ukraine’s reputation around the world.
Gaston said Craig lied for two reasons. He didn’t want to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act because it could jeopardize his chance at a top post in a future administration, she said. She also argued Craig was deeply reluctant to disclose details about the Ukraine work, including that while Ukraine appeared to be getting the elite law firm’s work “practically for free,” a Ukrainian oligarch was secretly paying more than $4 million for the report.
The prosecutor said Craig also feared disclosing that the law firm at the time — Skadden Arps — had a simultaneous deal to advise Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice on how to prosecute Tymoshenko in a second planned trial — a relationship some would clearly view as a conflict of interest compromising the ostensibly independent report.
“There were aspects of the defendant’s work on the report that were not public and that he did not want to become public….The defendant’s reputation is tied up in all of this,” Gaston emphasized.
Craig’s defense, which will make its opening statement Thursday afternoon, maintains he never lied or misled the Justice Department investigators. They’ve argued in pre-trial hearings that Craig didn’t have an open-ended duty to disclose everything in his voluntary responses to the Justice Department officials’ inquiries.
Craig’s defense maintains he had a legitimate belief throughout that he never had to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, which was rarely enforced criminally before Mueller’s investigation was launched in 2017. His lawyers also argue that especially as the time neared to release the report in late 2012, his actions were no longer driven by loyalty to his client, but by a desire to make sure his report was not badly distorted by Ukraine’s government and its lobbyists.
Two of those lobbyists, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, also played roles related to the Craig report.
Both Manafort and Gates pleaded guilty in the course of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian influence on the Trump presidential campaign.
Manafort is serving a seven-and-a-half year prison term and is not expected to testify. Gaston flashed his picture on TV screens in the courtroom for a only few seconds, before taking it down.
Gates — who is cooperating with prosecutors while awaiting sentencing — will be a prosecution witness, Gaston told jurors.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine