Gregory B. Craig

Craig was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on March 4, 1945. Craig's father, William Gregory Craig (1914–2005), was a Navy officer who served in World War II and after the war served as chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges system (1973–1976), chancellor of the California Community College system (1977–1980), and president of the Monterey Institute (1980–1988). The elder Craig unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for Governor of Vermont. He spent some of his early years in Palo Alto, California. Craig attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He then attended Harvard University, graduating with an A.B. in 1967. At Harvard, Craig sang with the Krokodiloes, Harvard's oldest all-male a cappella group. Craig graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a concentration in history. After graduating, Craig, along with Kendall, took a job at the law firm of Williams & Connolly. ==Legal and government career from 1972 to 2009==

Craig worked mostly at Williams & Connolly from 1972 to 2009, with his tenure there interrupted by periods working as a public defender, on the staff of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, at the State Department, and at the Clinton White House. Antonelli and Yeldell were convicted by a jury in Washington, but that conviction was vacated on grounds of jury bias, and at a retrial in Philadelphia the two men were acquitted. Craig is an admirer of Edward Bennett Williams, saying that he was "the great lawyer of our generation." In 1981, Craig was a member of the team that represented John W. Hinckley Jr., who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan; Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity. In 1996, Craig was offered the post of White House Counsel by Bill Clinton, but Craig declined. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright appointed Craig to the post of Director of Policy Planning at the State Department in 1997. He also stated that he mainly coordinated with Podesta and that "I could name to John ten other lawyers in America that could do the job as well, if not better." Craig then returned to private practice at Williams & Connolly as a partner. During the Elián González affair in 2000, Craig represented Juan Miguel Gonzáles, the Cuban father of six-year-old Elián González, in an international child custody dispute involving "the volatile field of Cuban-American relations" which ended with the boy's return to Cuba. Other high-profile clients represented by Craig while at Williams & Connolly include Richard Helms, the ex-director of Central Intelligence who was convicted of lying to Congress over the CIA's role in removing Salvador Allende; Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; and Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. He reported earning a salary of $1.7 million from the firm in 2008. ==Obama presidential campaign==

Craig met Barack and Michelle Obama for the first time in 2003, at the home of Vernon Jordan, a close friend of the Clintons, and the then-Illinois state senator impressed Craig. Despite close ties to the Clintons, Craig urged Obama to run for president, and became an informal foreign policy adviser to him. In March 2007, Craig publicly declared his support for Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary; because of his close ties to the Clintons, this attracted widespread attention. In summer 2008, during the presidential campaign, Obama decided to support legislation (specifically, an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) for granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration's warrantless NSA wiretapping program. This angered many Democrats, because it was a reversal of Obama's earlier vow during the primary campaign to oppose such legislation and to filibuster against it. During the campaign, Craig "seemed on a mission to destroy Hillary's political future." He emerged as "an outspoken critic of Hillary's foreign policy experience and ... a leading contender to be secretary of state after Obama got the nomination." ==White House Counsel in Obama administration==

with President Barack Obama on May 1, 2009, as photographed by Pete Souza. In its November 2008 issue, shortly before the 2008 presidential election, the ABA Journal speculated that Craig might be named Secretary of State in an Obama administration. Craig also reportedly hoped for that position or another foreign policy post in the Obama administration, which did not materialize. Obama ultimately appointed Craig to serve as his first White House Counsel. Craig drafted the executive order banning the use of torture and another executive order which ordered the closure within a year of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp (which never materialized). Since the summer of 2009, "word had been leaking that Greg Craig's days [as White House Counsel] were numbered and that Obama campaign legal counsel Bob Bauer would be moving in to take Craig's spot." Craig did not know who was responsible for the sustained leaks, although "he suspected they were driven by someone in the White House who was frustrated with the slow progress on shuttering" the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. Alter also reported that Emanuel became enraged when Craig personally traveled with four Chinese Muslim Uighurs released from Guantanamo to Bermuda. Craig stated then that he had no plans to leave and that the president had faith in him, but the Times reported that "colleagues and Democrats close to the White House said they expected him to move on around the end of the year, and they have been talking about possible replacements." Craig's ouster following the "whisper campaign" against him angered his friends and supporters inside and outside the White House, who viewed him as a scapegoat. Elizabeth Drew called it "the shabbiest episode of [Obama's] presidency." Craig's resignation took effect on January 3, 2010. He became the highest-ranking official to leave the Obama administration up until that point. ==Private practice after the White House==

Craig stated that he had planned to return to Williams & Connolly from the White House until he got a call from an old friend, Clifford Sloan, and a new friend, Joseph H. Flom, who asked him to join their law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, to establish a crisis-management team and a new practice group focusing on global issues and litigation strategies. In April 2010, it was reported that Craig, as a Skadden partner, was representing the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs; the firm engaged Craig to advise it on litigation strategy in a Securities and Exchange Commission civil suit. When asked about Craig's new role, Deputy White House Press Secretary Bill Burton said that the administration did not have any advance knowledge of Craig's new role and also said, "I assume that people who leave the administration know [the Obama administration's rules barring former White House officials from lobbying for two years after leaving office] and are following those rules." Edwards was subsequently acquitted. The task force recommended a middle ground on continuing U.S. economic and military aid to Egypt; the group's report, released in November 2012, called for "an approach whereby the United States continues to provide substantial economic and military aid while linking both direct support and backing for international financial support to Egyptian cooperation on key U.S. interests." The report, released in December 2012, found that Tymoshenko was denied legal counsel at "critical stages" of the trial and that her lawyers were wrongly barred from calling witnesses in her defense. Craig promoted the report to journalists and members of Congress without much success. Some experts said that Craig should have registered as a foreign agent, as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires those to lobby on behalf of foreign governments to register; In January 2019, Craig's former law firm, Skadden, paid $4.6 million to the U.S. government in disgorgement as part of a civil settlement. ==Indictment and acquittal==

In April 2018, Craig resigned from Skadden following the indictment of Alex van der Zwaan, a lawyer at the firm's London office. Craig was the lead attorney supervising the firm's work for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, in which van der Zwaan participated. Van der Zwaan was later charged as a result of the Mueller investigation, and he pleaded guilty to making false statements. Following a referral from Mueller's office, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (USAO-SDNY) in Manhattan investigated Craig and others, including ex-lobbyist Tony Podesta and former Republican U.S. Representative Vin Weber, as part of a broader investigation into the activities of Paul Manafort. Geoffrey S. Berman, who was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2018 to 2020, wrote in his 2022 memoirs that, throughout his two and a half years as U.S. attorney, officials in Trump's Justice Department repeatedly attempted to interfere with the office to politically benefit Trump, and that these officials "kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically." Berman wrote that USAO-SDNY had come under a level of political pressure from Trump officials that was "unprecedented and scary," and that he rebuffed these requests. O'Callaghan denied making the statements. Craig was indicted on April 11, 2019, on a single count of making false statements. The indictment was criticized as weak and politicized. and testified in his own defense. Prosecutors did not call Manafort as a witness. The jury was informed by the judge not to consider possible offenses committed before October 2013 because the statute of limitations for those actions had run out. On September 4, 2019, the jury acquitted Craig after less than five hours of deliberation. Berman, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote in his 2022 memoirs that the acquittal "was vindication, but the case should never have been brought. .... The case was too weak to be brought. It was inappropriate to be brought. And that's what the trial showed." In 2022, following the publication of Berman's book, the Senate Judiciary Committee opened an investigation into allegations that the Trump administration sought to use the U.S. Attorney's office in SDNY for partisan reasons. ==Personal life==

Craig is married to Derry Noyes. The two were married on July 27, 1974, in New Canaan, Connecticut. Derry is the daughter of Eliot Noyes, the noted industrial designer known for his work on the IBM Selectric typewriter. Derry Craig is a graphic designer. The couple have five children. ==See also==