Greg Craig: Former Obama White House counsel indicted in relation to work with Paul Manafort

Barack Obama’s former White House counsel has been indicted by a federal grand jury for making false statements and concealing material information about his work for the Ukraine, officials have confirmed.

The charges surrounding Gregory B Craig, a 74-year-old Washington-based attorney, do not have to do with work he performed throughout the previous administration. Rather, the new charges stem from alleged criminal violations he carried out after serving in the White House.

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers made the announcement Thursday afternoon, along with the US Attorney for Washington Jessie Liu, Assistant Director William Sweeney and officials from the FBI field office in New York.

Mr Craig faces a maximum sentence of five years and a fine of $250,000 (£191,483) for the first charge and another five year sentence and $10,000 (£7,659) fine for the second. He refuted the charges in a statement through his lawyers, reading, “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.”

The investigation into Mr Craig comes as the Justice Department is cracking down on unregistered foreign lobbying and consulting. Federal prosecutors in New York have been investigating two prominent Washington lobbying firms in a similar probe, and Justice Department officials in Washington have been increasingly willing to prosecute people who they believe intentionally conceal their lobbying work from the federal government.

The scrutiny of Mr Craig stems from an investigation of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his work on behalf of a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. The charges come about three months after his former law firm agreed to pay more than $4.6m (£3.52m) and publicly acknowledge that it failed to register with the government for its work for the Ukraine.

Mr Craig was the first White House counsel to Mr Obama. In private practice, his clients have included former senators like John Edwards and James Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was charged in a leaks investigation.

The work that drew the Justice Department’s attention occurred in 2012 when Mr Craig and Mr Skadden were hired by the Ukrainian government to compile a report on the prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former Ukrainian prime minister.

Mr Tymoshenko was a political opponent of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was a longtime Manafort patron.

In the statement Wednesday, Craig’s lawyers denied that he lied to the government or his firm. They acknowledged that Craig spoke to reporters about the report but denied it was part of a public relations campaign that would run afoul of US laws.

Additional reporting by AP