A federal judge on Tuesday dropped one of two pending criminal charges against President Barack Obama’s White House counsel, Greg Craig.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson dismissed the charge of making lying or misleading statements to the Department of Justice’s Foreign Agents Registration Act, but the other separate charge about lying will continue to trial, which is scheduled to begin Monday. Craig had sought to have both charges dropped. He faced a minimum of five years for each charge.
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Craig, 74, was charged in a Washington, D.C., court of lying to the special counsel’s office about work for Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich between 2012 and 2013. The charge detailed that Craig had lied to avoid having to register as a foreign agent because of his work with Yanukovich.
Accusations against Craig stemmed from the investigative probe by Robert Mueller into possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, as well as his associate Richard Gates, were both charged with FARA violations as a result of the investigation. No substantial evidence was presented from the investigation to charge the president with collusion or obstruction of justice.
Jackson cited a lack of clarity in her Tuesday decision to dismiss the single charge against Craig. “Given this ambiguity concerning the breadth of the provision and the documents to which it was intended to apply, the rule of lenity requires the dismissal of the count,” Jackson said Tuesday. “This is a close question … At the end of the day, one ends up with two equally plausible and supportable textual interpretations.”
