Tag: Making false statements

Former White House counsel Greg Craig was indicted by a grand jury Thursday for allegedly making false statements to the Department of Justice about work performed for Ukraine in 2012. Craig, 74, who was charged with concealing material information from the Foreign Agents Registration Act Unit and making false statements, failed to disclose work he performed for Ukraine because he believed it would prevent him from future roles within the federal government, according to the indictment, which stemmed from special counsel Robert Mueller's probe. Craig and his law firm were hired in early 2012 to lead an independent inquiry into whether former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko received a fair trial after she was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2011 for abuse of office, federal prosecutors say. He was also signed on to consult about Tymoshenko’s second trial. The investigation into Craig grew out of Mueller’s probe of lobbying efforts undertaken at Manafort’s direction and at the behest of the pro-Russian, pro-Putin Yanukovych government. Craig allegedly made false statements about the report in 2013 in response to the FARA Unit’s inquiries and again in 2017 after being interviewed by Mueller. The attorney allegedly stated in a formal written response to the FARA Unit that his firm did not inform, consult or act under the instruction of Ukraine. He failed to inform the FARA Unit that he generated the written inquiry report, that his firm advised the hiring of a public relations firm, was informed about the firm's strategy and met with a lobbyist whom he informed of the firm's strategy, according the indictment. Due to the allegedly misleading information provided by Craig, the FARA Unit determined the attorney and his firm did not have to register as a foreign agent, according to the indictment. "It ignores uncontroverted evidence to the contrary," the statement said.

“The witch-hunt is over,” Papadopoulos said. Declassification of surveillance material is paramount.” Alexander Downer's secret meeting with FBI led to Trump-Russia inquiry – report Read more Papadopoulos was one of Mueller’s first prosecutions. The 31-year-old from Chicago pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to 14 days’ prison for lying to the FBI about his contact with Russian nationals and Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud. Downer, in an interview with The Australian newspaper last year, claimed Papadopoulos had told him Russia might use “damaging” material they had on Trump presidential rival Hillary Clinton in the lead-up to the election. Downer said he passed the information back to Canberra “the following day or a day or two”. Papadopoulos’s book, Deep State Target, will be released on Tuesday and details his account of dealings with Downer, Thompson, Trump and others. In September last year Trump wrote on Twitter “key allies” had asked him not to release classified FBI documents related to the probe into Russian influence. “While the (Mueller) report is likely mired in classified material, and most will likely never be revealed to the public, I do hope what is public is what Alexander Downer’s and Erika Thompson’s roles were and why Downer has become so protected,” Papadopoulos said. Downer, Thompson and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was contacted for comment on Papadopoulos’s claims. Downer has previously shrugged off Papadopoulos’s spying accusation, telling BBC radio last year: “I’m not going to get into these sort of allegations.”

Another top prosecutor has left special counsel Robert Mueller's team, marking the second high-profile departure announcement this month and raising speculations that the Russia probe will soon be wrapped up. Zainab Ahmad, a U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York who worked on extensively on counterterrorism cases, was one of the prosecutors who signed former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s guilty plea for lying to the FBI concerning his contacts with a Russian official. But the special counsel’s office said on Monday that Ahmad is done with her work on the investigation concerning alleged cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia. News. Her name came up last year during Justice Department official Bruce Ohr’s closed-doors interview as part of the Republican-led House Oversight and Judiciary Committee probes. Ohr told lawmakers that he shared details about his meetings with former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the salacious anti-Trump dossier, with a number of his expansive circle of contacts in the department and other officials, including Ahmad. The departures are likely to fuel the speculations that the Russia investigation is nearing its end following years of legal battles that netted sentences against President Trump’s associates. Yet both the Justice Department and Mueller team are tight-lipped when the report on the alleged collusion could see the light. The report produced by the special counsel will have to undergo the DOJ scrutiny and it will be up to Trump-appointed Attorney General William Barr to determine how much information Congress will see. Fox News' Catherine Herridge, Cyd Upson, Brooke Singman and Louis Casiano contributed to this report.

Former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos reported to a federal prison in Oxford, Wisconsin, Monday after a federal judge rejected his last-minute bid to delay his two-week sentence. Papadopoulos was sentenced in September for lying to the FBI in the Russia investigation. But in a 13-page opinion Sunday, U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss said Papadopoulos waited too long to contest his sentence. Moss noted that Papadopoulos agreed not to appeal in most circumstances as part of his plea agreement, and the judge said the challenge to Mueller's appointment was unlikely to be successful in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Papadopoulos had filed an initial motion on Nov. 16, nearly two months after the deadline for appealing his conviction or sentence. He followed up with a request to delay his sentence pending that motion on Nov. 21, the day before Thanksgiving. In recent months, he has spent many nights posting on Twitter, as has his wife, venting anger about the FBI and insisting he was framed by the government. He also has offered to testify before the Senate's intelligence committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, if he's granted immunity or other conditions. His lawyer argued that the appellate case could constitute new evidence that could allow him to mount a challenge. Papadopoulos, the first Trump campaign aide sentenced in Mueller's investigation, triggered the initial Russia investigation two years ago.

Play Video 0:39 Donald Trump said on Monday he “feels badly” for his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty last week to lying to the FBI, and claimed without evidence that Hillary Clinton “lied many times” to the agency without consequences. The president spoke after John Dowd, a lawyer who sought to take the blame for a Trump tweet which analysts said indicated the president was guilty of obstruction of justice over Flynn’s firing, offered a new defence of Trump’s actions: the president cannot obstruct justice. I will say this: Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and it destroyed his life, and I think it’s a shame.” Trump added: “Hillary Clinton on 4 July weekend went to the FBI, not under oath – it was the most incredible thing anyone has ever seen – lied many times, nothing happened to her. Flynn, a retired general who was a senior adviser in Trump’s campaign and his first national security adviser, has pledged to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump’s associates coordinated with Russian efforts to sway last year’s election in the Republican’s favour. Trump said in a tweet on Saturday that he fired Flynn “because he lied to the vice-president and the FBI” about his conversations with the ambassador last December. The tweet could signal the president took part in the obstruction of justice. If Trump did fire Flynn for lying to the FBI, that would mean the president knew Flynn had committed a serious crime when, according to the Comey, the president asked Comey the next day to halt an FBI investigation into Flynn. Dowd, the lawyer who said he had written the tweet, told Axios on Monday: “The president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the constitution’s article II] and has every right to express his view of any case.” Any suggestion the Trump tweet had admitted obstruction of justice, whoever wrote it, would he said be “an ignorant and arrogant assertion”. A tweet is a shorthand.” Dowd said the first time the president knew for a fact Flynn lied to the FBI was when he was charged.