Trump Slams ‘Corrupt’ NY Times for Burying Story on Ex-Obama Official Charged in Manafort Case

By Ken MeyerApr 12th, 2019, 11:07 am
 

President Donald Trump is attacking New York Times and Washington Post again — this time because their coverage on a former Obama administration figure’s legal troubles isn’t exactly as he wants it to be:

Let’s get some context.

The Times and WaPo have covered the news that Gregory Craig, a lawyer who previously worked in President Barack Obama‘s administration, was indicted for lying to federal officials and attempting to conceal his work as a foreign lobbyist. The charge pertains to the legal services Craig performed on behalf of the Ukrainian government in 2012, two years after he left the White House.

Craig’s felony counts resulted from the investigations of unregistered foreign lobbying that arose from Robert Mueller‘s probe – the same one that prompted charges against former advisers to Trump over their ties to Russia. The special counsel interviewed Craig in 2017 about the kind of work he did when he was a senior partner at the law firm Skadden Arps, during which, he supposedly lied.

Interestingly, Craig’s work for the Ukrainian government happened while Viktor Yanukovych was still president, which was also when Paul Manafort was working for Yanukovych as a political consultant and a representative. Manafort is currently facing several years in prison for obstructing justice and committing tax and bank fraud connected to his own undisclosed foreign lobbying.

Reports suggest that Manafort and Craig’s work intersected when Skadden was hired to make a report in defense of Yankovich’s prosecution and imprisonment of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and political rival of his. Manafort supposedly planned on using this report to boost Yanukovych’s international reputation.

Putting the Manafort-Craig connection aside, it’s worth noting that Alex van der Zwaan, another Skadden associate, pled guilty to lying to investigators last year about the nature of his talks with former Trump aide Rick Gates. Furthermore, Craig’s charge of making false statements to the government is the same crime that Michael Flynn pled guilty for.

[Photo via Getty Images]

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