Greg Craig was accused by special counsel Robert Mueller and lead litigator Andrew Weissman of  FARA (Foreign Agent Registration Act) lobbying violations; and later charges he lied when questioned about them.
The Greg Craig FARA pursuit was similar to special counsel accusations made against Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, and special counsel threats toward the same objective against George Papadopoulos.
The sketchy use of potential FARA violations to capture targets was a specific technique deployed by Weissmann.  However, the difference between Manafort and Flynn was Greg Craig decided to fight (including fighting claims he lied about the lobbying construct) instead of taking a high-pressure DOJ plea deal.  Today a jury rejected the accusations.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Prominent Washington lawyer Greg Craig was found not guilty Wednesday of lying to the Justice Department about work he did for the government of Ukraine in a case that arose from the special counsel’s Russia investigation and that centered on the lucrative world of foreign lobbying.

The jury deliberated for less than a day before clearing Craig, a White House counsel in the Obama administration, of a single count of making false statements to federal investigators.

The swift verdict was a setback to the Justice Department’s crackdown on lobbyists who do unregistered work for foreign governments and came as prosecutors have been ramping up enforcement of a decades-old law meant to police foreign influence and promote transparency. U.S. officials hoped a conviction would demonstrate an aggressive approach to lobbyists who fail to register their foreign work or who give false information to the Justice Department to avoid identifying themselves as a foreign agent, as Craig was alleged to have done.

[…]  One juror, Michael Meyer, 60, said he was agitated that prosecutors, including Mueller, had devoted resources and attention to the case given the more serious allegations that he said were illuminated by the special counsel’s work.

“I just could not understand why so many resources of the government were put into this when, in fact, actually the republic itself is at risk,” Meyer said. “I was deeply offended personally … that this particular case was brought against this particular man.” (read more)


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