A quintessential DC insider is likely going to jail on a minor charge and it’s good he’s not getting away with it, says John Kiriakou.
By John Kiriakou
Special to Consortium News
Federal prosecutors last month stepped up their investigation of Washington super-lawyer Greg Craig in what they called an “off-shoot” of the Paul Manafort investigation. The accusation against Craig was that he failed to register as a lobbyist for work he did on behalf of the Ukrainian government in 2012. His former firm, the internationally-renowned Skadden Arps, reached a $4.6 million settlement with prosecutors, but Craig may still face charges.
The accusation that Craig violated FARA, or the Foreign Agent Registration Act, isn’t a big deal in the greater scheme of things. It means he did some work for a foreign government and didn’t fill out the necessary Justice Department paperwork. He’s also accused of making false and misleading statements to the department’s FARA unit.
More importantly, it points to the impunity with which Washington big-shots normally operate. Manafort thought he was untouchable because he was the great Republican strategist, the legendary co-founder of Black, Manafort, and Stone, the most important Republican political operatives of the 1980s and 1990s. Craig is the same. He was Barack Obama’s White House counsel. And he’s former Secretary of State John Kerry’s best friend. Like Manafort (and the Podestas, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and a host of other big muckety mucks) he thought he was above the law.
Dem’s Fixer
Obama and Craig in Oval Office, June 11, 2009. (White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Craig has made a career of being the go-to guy for Democrats, and especially for Democrats in trouble. First of all, the guy is crazy smart. He got a bachelor’s from Harvard, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He earned a master’s from Cambridge and did his law degree at Yale. It was there that he was a classmate of Bill and Hillary Clinton. His career was made before he finished his education.
After graduation, Craig joined the Washington law firm of Williams and Connolly, one of the biggest and most important legal players in the capital. He took time off to be director of policy planning in the Clinton State Department and to serve as general counsel to Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)
Craig was one of five attorneys who defended Clinton during his impeachment hearings and was the legal team’s overall coordinator. When he returned to Williams and Connolly in 2000, he represented a myriad of high profile people from the father of Elian Gonzalez, the child who was eventually returned to Cuba after being brought to the U.S. by his mother, who drowned on the way; to Richard Helms, the former CIA director who lied to Congress about CIA involvement in the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende. Craig even represented former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
It was this pedigree that landed Craig back in the White House as Obama’s general counsel. When he left the White House for the second time he cashed in on his experience. Who wouldn’t, especially in Washington? And his reputation was fearsome.
I had my own brush with Craig in 2011 when I was working for John Kerry on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff. I had done the initial legwork on an investigative report on poverty in Haiti. I concluded that the country’s seven largest merchant families, all of whom happened to be white, had conspired to keep the citizenry in poverty because Haitian goods, especially textiles, were so cheap that any price inflation only further enriched the merchant families.
I sent the initial draft of the report to Kerry, who killed it on the spot. Why? I asked. The answer was clear. “Because Greg Craig represents those families and he’s my best friend.” The report was never published. Collecting riches on the backs of the oppressed wasn’t important to John Kerry. Offending or alienating one of the most powerful men in Washington was.
Enmeshed in Ukraine
Craig finally got himself into some trouble in 2012, when he bit off more than he could chew in Ukraine. He worked on an investigation commissioned by President Viktor Yanukovich (later overthrown with U.S. support in 2014) to conduct an investigation of Yanukovich’s political enemy, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who narrowly lost the 2010 presidential election to Yanukovich. Yanukovich eventually arrested and charged Tymoshenko with corruption and abuse of power and she was sent to prison. (Tymoshenko had been a leader of the U.S.-backed Orange Revolution that overturned Yanukovich’s 2004 election.)
Craig worked on a written report, paid for by Yanuklovych, justifying her arrest. Craig concluded that, while Tymoshenko had been denied access to legal counsel at critical parts of her trial, the evidence against her was solid, and her conviction should be sustained. The human rights community was outraged, calling it a “whitewash.”
Tymoshenko in 2009. Craig worked for her enemy. (Wikipedia)
Yanukovich had paid Paul Manafort $4 million for the report. It’s unclear how much of that made it to Craig, but the payoff was thought to be substantial. Craig was asked to leave Skadden Arps when one of the attorneys under his supervision, Alex van der Zwaan, was charged with lying to the FBI about the report and about the firm’s relationship with the Ukrainian government.
I don’t mean for this to sound like gloating, but I’m glad that Craig, Manafort, and others are taking it on the chin in the Mueller investigation. It’s about time. Why should the rest of us have to follow the rules if the special people in Washington don’t? Why are so many prosecutions so selective? Justice is supposed to be blind. Maybe in this case that will be true. Sure, Craig just forgot to fill out a form. But tough luck. That’s the law.
Mueller shouldn’t be blamed for focusing on something minor. If there is going to be criticism, it should be leveled at Congress, which has made us one of the most over-criminalized and over-regulated countries on the planet. Why pass a law if it’s not going to be respected or prosecuted?
Greg Craig is probably not going to go to prison for failing to register. But he is going to be knocked down a peg or two. It’s symbolic. But it’s good for the country.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.
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Awesome John, you should get a Youtube channel, or go one other’s channels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtPmDEiiM-c&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2Pv8ETDvgomdO_ZxjJ6acgTHrsNOqs23WgX_jvF2ISqVYfeEdi-_duxt8
Is Consortium News running clickbait now? The subtitle teases us that a (former) Senior Official is (gasp!) “likely going to jail”. Only in its last paragraph does the article come back to the sober reality that of course, this perfumed member of our Establishment “is probably not going to go to prison”. The whole RussiaGate charade is a long-running object lesson that the law means little for an elite that decides which laws get passed, and which ones actually get enforced (and when). The Donald nominally in charge of the whole circus may tweet a bit but given his own shady business past, these consequence-free mores suit him just fine; no way is he going to change a system that protects himself as well.
I’m in agreement with mike k. Looks like a scapegoat to me. How many others are skating by? The whole system is so corrupt, I don’t think Hercules could clean the stables.
Kiriakou writes “The human rights community was enraged.” But the source he gives for this is an NBC article that merely states “Human rights groups criticized the report as a white wash.”, without giving any details, or indeed stating which groups these were. Since the expression “human-rights group”, as used in MSM, covers a multitude of sins, including some infiltrated and hijacked, and even out-and-out front groups for the terrorist establishment, I cannot take this claim seriously without some specifics.
Everything else we know about the Ukranian regime and oligarchs suggest that Craig & co. were right in saying that Timoshenko was railroaded, but was guilty as charge.
Even Manafort would have walked rather than pay for his dirty deeds, except that Mueller has been explicitly tasked with providing some number of scalps from people formerly associated with Trump regardless of their relevancy to “Russiagate.” Congressman Schiff would probably have an apoplectic fit in the well of the House if someone doesn’t pay with hard prison time for Hillary’s election loss (and that can’t include Hillary herself). Somebody must die for Hillary’s sins, according to current Democratic scripture.
BTW, John, is there a link to an online copy of your aforementioned Haiti report?
US “private corporations” work with pro Russia Yanukovich to overthrow orange revolutionary so as to eventually overthrow Yanukovich in favor of CIA agent Poroshenko? That’s some ivy league CHUTZPAH. dirty dirty dirty.
Kiers, Yanukovich is as much ‘pro-Russian’ as trans-national bankers are pro-American.
To me the most egregious example of prosecutorial failure is when Giuliani, Dean, Ridge, etc. were being paid by MEK while MEK was still on the foreign terrorist organization list. This while mentally challenged Muslims were being entrapped by the FBI. When Obama was assassinating an American citizen for his youtube videos.
It was disgusting and the lack of prosecuting, or even any chatter at all, about doing so to these folks aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, was an even more obvious “justice for some, not for others” than the failure to prosecute torturers and bankers. In the latter, we’d found out the particular things later, and the breaches of law or guilty parties not as clear. Giuliani and Dean etc. however were clearly violating the law in real time and nothing was done.
Good point about how some people are above the law in this country. It was Hillary’s state department that took MEK off the terrorists watch list. Speaking of Hillary and her connections to people who seem to get away with flouting the law, I’m waiting for Tony Podesta to be charged for not registering as a foreign lobbyist and some of the same things that Manafort was charged for. Podesta worked side by side with Manafort and yet I haven’t heard anything from Mueller about him.
The Clintons will protect anyone who is close to them. Remember that woman who was trying to take children from Haiti after the earthquake? Many of them weren’t orphans as she stated and as she was being arrested the Clintons stepped in and got her out of the country.
Of Mueller is going to go after people like Manafort and Craig then I’m sure that there are plenty of others who are working with foreign governments that haven’t registered as foreign lobbyists either. Who’s going to pick up where Mueller leaves off?
… “come into my web, said the spider to the fly” is how the Battle for Ukraine has played out in this geopolitical war of Nationalities and Historical Cultural Loyalties. —
Democrat George Soros and Hilary Clinton vs. Ukrainian Nazis and rightwing Republicans; – both in search of Brzezinski’s Central Asian “New Silk Road” of a Central Asian Land Route (of commerce and trade) from east to west / and west to east.
Brzezinski was historically influenced by the Admiral Alfred Mahan’s book, ” TheInfluence of Sea Power Upon History”
… clues to a/the mystery / of a World nudged forward into International Conflict Spread World Wide by means of European Colonization of Previously/Formally FREE LIVING Peoples/Within their own non-political collectives/colonies
… until usurp/ed by european Capitalists/Usurpers of Nationalist/Native designed Rights/Laws of Indigenous Nations’ National/ Tribal Laws and Decrees — which became Trampled Upon and Discombobulated by the White Man’s strictures imposed by New Authority Rules/”Laws” – IMPOSED by Force of Death/ Harsh Punishment/ Separation of Family/ STRICTURES that impel into Obedience.
What affect / – the Sound and Fury – / of American Missiles setting up on Russia’s Territorial Border!!!
Is that Not a Veritable Threat to your very existence ???
Is not Trump a veritable interlocutor into the complete annihilation of
Putin’s “Gog and Magog” turbid State of Existence???
As such, — Into The WORLD Stage – comes the Demi-gogue Trump
and the shakeup in Cataclysmic but so inline with the US Military’s
Destruction of the Baltic States of Yugoslavia under Clinton
with the willing Inhumane Killings / Murders of innocent people
and weapons financing of Both Sides in Internecine Warfare Of
NEIGHBOR against NEIGHBOR in a US Instigated Inhumane War
which INSTIGATED a nightmare of Neighbor Against Neighbor,
like as unto Black against Black murders within same communities
of US “ghettos/ barrios” where the economic war for sustainability /
\ continuance of species is contingent upon urban Police Authority/
\ and their assignment to Keep/Maintain Control in Poverty Strick’n/
\ urban areas where whims and fantasy-with poverty and hunger/
\aliened with the want to Not DIE by Killer Cops/ A NAZI Bigots/
\ Takeover – by Right Wing Coup’D’Etat & Internationalist Bankers/
\Surreptitiously FUNDED by The White Shroud of Jewish Obscurity /
\ under neath the Banner of ‘God Bless America, the Exceptionalist /
\Protagonist/White Sheet Fixation of Glory-AKA- The Angel of Death /
Since Hillary’s disciple, Victoria Nuland, was instrumental in setting up the Ukrainian NAZI government, no doubt with Hillary’s advice, rather than saying “George Soros and Hilary Clinton vs. Ukrainian Nazis and rightwing Republicans”, you could have more factually stated “the American neolibs/neocons set up a NAZI government to further antagonize Russia and Putin”. Viktor Yanukovych, supposedly a Russophile, surely alienated Putin by trying to ‘straddle the fence’, getting benefits from both the EU and Russia without committing to either side. His Ukrainian neutrality not only caused his overthrow by Nuland and the Obama administration, but also dampered Russia’s enthusiasm to support his regime during the Euromaidan/ NAZI coup in Kiev.
I’ll echo the thanks for unearthing mechanisms buried by MSM. Like Antiwar7, I have a question too.
I assume the rightists in Ukraine have sort of a friend in Poroshenko. What is it they are marching around with torches for, more precision guided munitions? Would this have happened with Tymoshenko, or would she have just said for instance…we’ll shoot for joining the EU but nevertheless allow Russian as an official second language in the east? Just curious…would she have kept the lid on these elements a little more?
Kind of a reversal of what was expected that the investigation for sure is zeroing in on an American helping a pro-Russian candidate in an election elsewhere rather than the other way around (I mean we don’t know yet bout the other way around). Not that I believe Yanukovych would have been worse. I just don’t know.
I skipped an article shared I think by Truthdig [can’t remember now exactly], and at the moment can’t find it by any means attempted. Found this https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-18/ukraine-unveils-irreversible-commitment-join-eunato-its-constitution
Just remembered. It was shared by American Committee for East West Accord. But there’s a subscription hurdle (Haaretz), and I’m behind on simply donations as it is. https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-inside-the-extremist-group-that-dreams-of-ruling-ukraine-1.6936835
It’s nice to see Jeffrey Epstein mentioned. His name should come up, along with Harvey Weinstein and Anthony Weiner, every time the Clintons are mentioned. Along with Bill Clinton’s behavior you come to the conclusion that we don’t really know who these people are or what they really want. The fact that Epstein is not a household name for wealthy scum is a good example of how our biased media protects certain people.
I’m betting that Epstein got his sweetheart deal of only being sentenced for 18 months, but only spent 13 months in prison and got to leave every day for work because he promised to keep his mouth shut about who else was involved with the underaged girls.
Bill and Hillary flew on his jet to his private island numerous times. Bill is on record for 26 times and he ditched his security team when he did that. Trump too was a friend of Epstein’s as was one of the royal family. Prince Andrew IIRC. I sure hope that case can be reopened which I believe it can be by another state charging Epstein. The woman deserve justice.
The author:
“Mueller shouldn’t be blamed for focusing on something minor. If there is going to be criticism, it should be leveled at Congress, which has made us one of the most over-criminalized and over-regulated countries on the planet. Why pass a law if it’s not going to be respected or prosecuted?”
Good point but what kind of mandate does Mueller have other than to pile on to Trump. I thought he was supposed to investigating Trump’s collusion with Russia. The suspicion is that the well was dry on that one so anything else will do. Would Craig and Manafort be investigated, or Flynn or whoever else caught “lying” or failing to fill out the right forms if it weren’t for the Trump lynch mob? Maybe, but failing to fill out some forms is a little bizarre.
Yes, rich guys including former presidents get away with a lot, and the guys that crashed the market by selling bogus packages of mortgages should have been prosecuted, but prosecuting criminal behavior should focus on the serious stuff.
What Mueller is doing is basically continuing the “Opposition Research” of Hillary and the DNC and their collaborators (Fusion GPS, New Knowledge, Crowdstrike, etc and much of the Justice Department). While it is good that Mueller would arrest Gates and Manafort for corruption in the Ukraine, the ignoring of the same crimes by Greg Craig and the Podesta Brothers, stamped his investigation as partisan,and malicious prosecution.
Agreed that the ‘bigger issues’ such as Obama’s Wall Street bailout guarantees ($16.8 Trillion– Mike Collins; $21 Trillion Nomi Prins), which were a further pilfering of the American taxpayer and economy, with no charges was a huge disgrace (even the $700 billion under Bush for TARP went unquestioned). When you see Kamala Harris refusing to prosecute Steven Mnuchin for illegal predatory lending practices, you are looking at the New Normal where Money trumps Law.
Whenever I hear NPR apologizing for torture and rehabilitating its proponents, I wish that Mr. Kiriakou could rebut in real time. Apparently, serving time for blowing the whistle on torture does not qualify one to contribute to NPR’s stunted coverage.
Thank you John for you heroic service.
I remember when a rise in the minimum wage in Haiti was proposed but Hillary managed to stop it for her friends who owned businesses there.
Hillary’s brother managed to get part ownership in a gold mine in Haiti.
Remember the “friends of Bill” Club.
Thank you, John, for filling us in on this backstory. Interesting news, for sure. It is important to know how things work in the power elite.
John Kiriakou,
I had a question. You wrote that the seven richest families in Haiti “had conspired to keep the citizenry in poverty because Haitian goods, especially textiles, were so cheap that any price inflation only further enriched the merchant families.”
How did keeping them in poverty enrich the families? Just keeping wages low so their labor costs were down, or something else? Because if the former, then maybe inflation could help the workers, under some conditions. I’m actually curious, and not trying to poke holes.
I had the same question.
America has a corrupt and politicised “justice” system used for the purpose of partisan political persecution.
This applies at a lower level as well.
Most people (about 94% of them) don’t get anything remotely resembling a trial or a fair judicial process. They are thrown into some fetid hellhole of a dungeon until they agree to plead guilty to some absurd trumped up charges. “Plead guilty, or you can stay in this hellhole for years, and when you do actually go for trial, we’ll ask for a sentence of 500 years.”
The US “justice” system has about as much credibility as the Soviet “justice” system of the 1920s and 1930s.
The prime victims of this, of course, are young black men serving effective sentences of life imprisonment for minor drug offences or petty crime. All 2.3 million of them. They are worth $50-60,000 a year to the prison industrial complex. The prison has just replaced the plantation, where they can be exploited as the new slave labour class, paid rates that would make Far Eastern sweatshops look generous.
Yet of course this doesn’t inhibit the Exceptional And Indispensable People from climbing on their high horse and delivering lofty sermons and pious lectures to the rest of humanity about their human rights failings.
The US is like Nazi Germany on steroids. There will be no peace in the world until what Americans have visited upon the rest of the planet for so long, the slaughter, butchery, starvation and immiseration of hundreds of millions, is visited upon them. Maybe when they have to watch their children starve and die of basic medicines, they will finally understand what they have inflicted on so many for so long. Like Germans starving and freezing in the rubble of their ruined cities in 1945. That’s what it will take.
I am starting to actually believe what you just laid out. I guess history will decide, as it does not appear that any real attempt for truth will occur in time to change anything.
I hear you, John. There’s a whole host of people in DC who need to be taken down…. David Addington and Scooter Libby, GW Bush, Barack Obama, a bunch of CIA and FBI heads etc etc etc. All these guys blatantly broke the law and none of them paid an actual price for it. There are many things that DC needs to start leading by a different example than they have given heretofore.
Dear John Kiriakou, The two-tier legal system began when President Ford allowed Nixon’s crimes to go unpunished. It is funny that Nixon ran on “getting tough on crime” and since Nixon’s fall from grace, it is considered justifiable for the oligarchs to arbitrarily punish the poor while the wealthy can do whatever they want. Just look at the mass incarceration of our people. You have provided interesting details and your personal touch is immeasurable. Thank you.
Great Article John, Thanks for shedding light on these buried news headlines.
I’d say, there’s some people studying law at these high-profile schools in order to know how to circumvent, manipulate and sidestep the Law.
“some people” ?
Nope, all of them.
They just study Law so that they can enrich themselvels. Law has nothing to do with Justice or Right.
Integrity has no need of rules.
The author of this article wrote:
“If there is going to be criticism, it should be leveled at Congress, which has made us one of the most over-criminalized and over-regulated countries on the planet.”
This is so true.
I just retired after 40 years of practicing law. The problem the author describes exists at both the state and federal levels. It applies to both criminal and civil statutes. It allows people in power to selectively punish and harass anyone they want. But people with connections – at least as long as they are connected to the powers du jour – can commit the exact same offenses with no consequences.
Everyone else is at risk. The risk could be political or simply career oriented (e.g. a prosecutor hammering some unfortunate soul just to get some headlines) or or simply the result of an out of control prosecution machine.
I have come to the conclusion that the problem is less a political problem than it is a cultural problem. We value personal gain and power more than we value honorable behavior. It the problem had simply been legal or political, it would be fixable. However, since it appears to be a problem of character, we may – as a nation – have hard times ahead.
“I have come to the conclusion that the problem is less a political problem than it is a cultural problem.”
Some with different experience/practices would tend to render your sentence as ” On present analyses of implemented strategies it appears that it facilitates various opportunities of transcendence of culture including but not restricted to practices” through not being subject to false binaries including but not restricted to political/cultural.
“we may – as a nation- have hard times ahead”
One of these opportunities lies in the immersion of some in cultures, frames and practices of temporary social relations believing that “the nation” deliniated by these cultures, frames and practices will continue to exist to have hard times ahead.
The very occasional use of our corrupt legal system to persecute one of their own, is no cause to celebrate our totally crooked “justice” system and the 100% criminals who administer it. Selective prosecution is still fraudulent and illegal. There is no cause for celebration here.
Serving up a scapegoat does nothing to redeem this totally crooked US system. How the laws on the books are actually enforced is the key to discerning a valid legal system.
Thank you for this interesting and revelatory piece, Mr Kiriakou.
Especially interesting because I have heard nothing about any of this on NPR…. Not overly surprising, given Craig’s links to the Dems and Kerry, Obama, Podesta and the Clintons in particular. And the Dems general coyness about their (the Obama) admin’s direct interference in and fomenting of the coup in Ukraine.
No one graduates phi – they belong/join it.
He’s of the entitled group who will never see cell time; grist for the masses and no more.
The kleptocrats, oligarchs, and socio/psychopaths continue to wear their pilot’s caps.
“…when will we ever learn?…”
“A quintessential DC insider is likely going to jail on a minor charge and it’s good he’s not getting away with it, says John Kiriakou.”
A sacrificial lamb has many uses; as apparently do Lazaruses.
Whether these are good or not or the degree of goodness/notsogoodness is a function of evaluation which is a function of purpose.
There’s no difference between what Manafort and Gates did in the Ukraine, and what Craig and the Podesta group did there (and what Jeffrey Sachs and an army of similar parasites did in Russia, “advising” Clinton’s puppet Yeltsin, helping oligarchs ransack the economy, and pocketed outrageous ‘fees’ for their services. The only tangible difference is that Manafort is looking at life imprisonment, getting caught in the net of a political witch hunt, while Craig and Podesta, not tainted by connection to Trump and being in the good graces of the Establishment, will receive a stern talking to.
The recent calls for Alexander Acosta to resign, as he was the chief prosecutor who signed off on Jeffrey Epstein’s “non-prosecutorial sentence” for sexually trafficking tens (hundreds?) of girls aspiring to be models, just demonstrates the two-tiered Justice system we have in America. Rich, connected= no jail time. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article221404845.html (and lots of their links)
Meanwhile, Maria Butina has been in solitary in torturous conditions simply for supposed FARA violations.
I am I correct in remembering that Podesta failed to file the same paperwork, but the Feds just mailed him a copy of the form and told him to fill it out???
“Manafort had organized a public relations campaign for a nonprofit called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECMU). Podesta’s company was one of many firms that worked on the campaign, which promoted Ukraine’s image in the West.” https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/former-lobbyist-tony-podesta-others-under-investigation-federal-prosecutors-over-n896396
Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
“Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”
Not only – likely also giving the orchestra other sheet music to play, or even arranging a revival tour for Benny and the Jets.