Democratic pollster divulges details to jurors about Greg Craig's Ukraine work

Democratic pollster and political consultant Doug Schoen took the stand at former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig’s trial Friday, telling jurors how he enlisted Craig in the Ukraine-related project that led to the veteran Washington lawyer facing a felony charge of trying to mislead Justice Department officials.

Schoen also detailed an unusual aspect of Craig’s 2012 report examining the trial of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko: while the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice officially commissioned the review, most of the bill — which ran to more than $4 million — was secretly paid for by a Ukrainian oligarch, steel magnate Victor Pinchuk.

“My client in Ukraine, Victor Pinchuk said that he would like me to see if there was a high-quality lawyer who could potentially be engaged to do that project,” Schoen said.

As the pollster and consultant entered the witness box, he seemed to give a nod in Craig’s direction. Schoen later told jurors he worked with Craig when in the White House two decades ago when Craig was an attorney fighting President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

“I had been impressed with Mr. Craig and his work in the White House,” Schoen recalled. “He has certainly been a lawyer of substantial reputation.”

Craig’s revered status in the Washington legal community is a key part of both the prosecution and the defense at his trial for allegedly trying to obscure his role when the Justice Department began looking into the report seven years ago.

Defense lawyers contend such an effort would be entirely out of character for the esteemed attorney, but the prosecution says he sought to trick Justice officials because he didn’t want to limit future opportunities by registering under the Foreign Agent Registration Act and because he feared sullying his reputation by disclosing unknown details about the Ukraine-focused report, including the funding from Pinchuk.

Schoen testified that after receiving an initial $150,000 from Pinchuk’s foundation and relaying it to Skadden, he handed over the reins to one of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s top advisers, American political consultant Paul Manafort.

“Mr. Manafort was handling the finances from this point forward,” Schoen declared. He said he had little involvement in issues related to the report thereafter, but Craig did ask in August 2012 if the roles of Pinchuk and Schoen in it could be disclosed. Schoen said no.

“It would be a practical impossibility for me to put my name on work product I had nothing to do with,” Schoen testified, adding that Pinchuk also declined to be identified.

“His answer was: ‘This isn’t my project. I am not involved. I am not their client,” Schoen said.

Schoen was a prosecution witness, but Craig’s defense sought to emphasize to jurors that their client did not seek to work with Manafort but was drawn in by Schoen without initially knowing that the longtime GOP consultant was involved.

The Justice Department concluded in 2013 that Craig and his then law firm Skadden Arps did not need to register under FARA, but as former special counsel Robert Mueller’s office explored potential Russian influence on the Trump campaign, the episode involving Craig came under scrutiny because of Manafort’s role as chairman of Trump's presidential bid.

Jurors also heard from a former Skadden associate, Alex Haskell, who was involved in a key event in the case: the delivery of an advance copy of the report to New York Times reporter David Sanger in December 2012.

Prosecutors say Craig lied and misled about how and when Sanger got the document.

“Did Mr. Craig ask you to send a copy of the report to Mr. Sanger?” prosecutor Jason McCullough asked.

“Yeah,” said Haskell, now a counsel to Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“Did you send a copy of the report to Mr. Sanger?” McCullough inquired.

“I did,” Haskell said.

The issue is a critical one because Craig may have been required to register as a foreign agent if he was disseminating the report to American journalists and because Craig insisted in a letter to Justice that he only gave the report to reporters at their request.

Prosecutors also highlighted that emails show Craig ended up hand-delivering a copy of the report to Sanger’s home in Washington, suggesting that demonstrated the lengths to which Craig was willing to go to get the document to the attention of the prominent Times reporter.

However, the defense emphasized that delivery took place only because Sanger could not open the electronic version Haskell sent.

The trial day opened Friday with a mild rebuke from the judge for Craig over his interactions with the government’s first witness, Michael Loucks, a partner Craig worked with at his former law firm Skadden Arps.

Defense attorney William Taylor told Jackson that Craig saw Loucks in a courthouse hallway after Thursday’s testimony and shook his hand, saying, “I’m not supposed to do this, but I just wanted to say hello.”

Jackson told Craig such interaction was unwise.

“I would like to caution you….I don’t think it’s appropriate, as you apparently didn’t either, to go up to a witness and even greet him in a friendly neutral way in the middle of the trial,” the Obama-appointed judge said as jurors waited outside the courtroom.

Schoen was not the first Democratic consultant to testify in a case related to the Mueller probe. At Manafort’s trial in Virginia last year on tax and bank fraud charges, Tad Devine was the government’s lead-off witness.

Manafort was convicted on eight criminal counts at that trial and later pleaded guilty to two additional counts. He’s currently serving a sentence of about seven-and-a-half years in prison and is not expected to testify at Craig’s trial.