The trial of former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig on a criminal false-statement charge was abruptly postponed Tuesday after prosecutors and the defense raised belated concerns about the jury selection process.
Opening statements in the case — which was investigated by former special counsel Robert Mueller’s office — were expected Tuesday morning, but U.
S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson shocked many in the courtroom by announcing that limits she placed on public access to jury selection Monday may have violated Craig’s constitutional right to a public trial.Craig’s defense told Jackson that they did not believe they could waive Craig’s rights on the point without bringing in other lawyers.
“Are you telling me we need to start over?” Jackson asked one of Craig’s attorneys, William Murphy, after some discussion about the access concerns and another defense objection to the process.
“Yes…..It’s unfortunate,” Murphy said.
Starting over may not be easy. A total of 70 jurors were called specially for Craig’s trial and the judge said it was unclear how quickly another group adequate to undertake jury selection could be assembled.
Jackson said she thought it was unlikely the trial could proceed in the near future and might have to be postponed to November, but she called a short recess to check with the jury office.
While courtrooms are normally open as jurors are interviewed, with some private matters occasionally being discussed out of public earshot at the judge’s bench, Jackson used a different process, asking all 70 potential jurors questions as a group with the courtroom open to some members of the press, then excluding the public as jurors answered those questions.
“I did something I have never done before,” Jackson said of the procedure, although she appeared to be preparing to do it for the related Paul Manafort trial before her, which was scuttled after he agreed to a plea deal.
Craig, 74, faces a single felony false-statement charge over an alleged scheme to deceive Justice’s Foreign Agent Registration Act office when it sought information about work he and his former law firm, Skadden Arps, did in 2012 examining the politically charged trial of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
The criminal case against Craig is an outgrowth of Mueller’s now-closed investigation into Russian influence on President Donald Trump’s campaign. Justice Department officials were initially satisfied with Craig’s answers and concluded that he did not need to register as an agent of Ukraine, something Craig was reportedly not eager to do because it might impact his chances of taking another high government post in a future Democratic administration.
Craig has the unwelcome distinction of being the most prominent Democrat snared in Mueller’s probe. Craig’s Ukraine-related work apparently came under fresh scrutiny in 2017 by Mueller’s team as they examined the history of two top Trump campaign officials, Manafort and Rick Gates.
Both men spent years as highly-paid consultants to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and were involved in hiring Craig for the $4 million assignment to assess the fairness of Tymoshenko’s trial and in efforts to publicize the 186-page Skadden report released in December 2012.
Manafort, who served for a few months as Trump’s campaign chairman, is serving a seven-and-a-half year prison sentence after being convicted at one trial of tax and bank fraud and pleading guilty to head off another trial more directly related to the Ukraine lobbying at the heart of the case against Craig.
Gates, who’s expected to be a key prosecution witness against Craig, is still actively cooperating with the government as he awaits sentencing on conspiracy and false-statement charges he pleaded guilty to relatively early in the Mueller investigation.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine