Former Obama Admin Official On Trial, Media Silent

The mainstream press has been totally silent on the criminal trial of Greg Craig, the former Obama Administration official who is facing charges “connected to a Ukraine-related legal project.”

“Craig served in 2009 as President Barack Obama’s first White House counsel, was a key figure in Obama’s first presidential bid and had previously joined President Bill Clinton’s White House to defend him against impeachment,” POLITICO said. “Craig is charged with scheming to conceal material facts during a Justice Department inquiry into his Ukraine work and whether it required him to file under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”

Part of the trial, which is ongoing, involves testimony from Rick Gates, former right-hand-man to Paul Manafort, who was President Donald J. Trump’s campaign manager. Manafort was convicted on financial crimes unrelated to the Trump campaign from more than a decade ago, and the media went berserk because some of Manafort’s business dealings were in Ukraine. In plain, Manafort’s case fit hand-in-glove with their now-debunked narrative that Trump was a Russian stooge.

Gates testified for the prosecution – against Craig – Thursday. Yet there has not been a single mainstream cable news segment on the subject. Compare that to the wall-to-wall coverage the press doled out during the Manafort trial, and you begin to see the omnipresent bias of our esteemed media.

“Prosecutors say Craig was intent on not [disclosing his Ukrainian ties] because he believed that such a filing would harm his chances of a senior post in a future Democratic administration,” according to POLITICO.

Manafort and Craig are connected via an “independent review” of the criminal abuse-of-power trial of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in 2012. Craig and his law firm handled the review, while Manafort’s main client was former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The review was bankrolled by Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian steel oligarch who backed Yanukovych.

“Detailed disclosures called for under [the Foreign Agents Registration Act] could have undermined the credibility of the review by exposing the secret funding of the $4.6 million project by Pinchuk and by revealing a parallel assignment that Craig’s law firm at the time, Skadden Arps, had to advise Ukraine’s government on a planned second trial of Tymoshenko on other charges, prosecutors contend,” according to the report.

The charges against Craig relate to whether he lied to the Department of Justice about releasing the report. The DOJ contends that he gave an advanced copy of the report to The New York Times.

“Craig and his defense lawyers have argued that his contacts with the press were solely aimed at protecting his and Skadden’s reputation in the face of repeated indications that Manafort’s team and others working for Ukraine’s government intended to falsely portray the rather equivocal report as a vindication of the prosecution and imprisonment of Tymoshenko, Yanukovych’s key political rival,” POLITICO said.

Craig has pleaded not guilty.

In a time of press hysteria surrounding shady business deals in countries that are geographically close to Russia, it seems that this story should be garnering more media attention. But it is not. Because the press does not care about telling the whole story. It only cares about carrying water for the DNC.