Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom Washington, D.C. offices. June 19, 2015. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/NLJ

The office building's lights were turned off, casualties of a government shutdown, when the team from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom arrived to meet with Justice Department officials in a last-ditch bid to avoid registering as an agent of Ukraine.

It was October 2013, and Lawrence Spiegel, the law firm's general counsel, had flown into Washington from New York on his birthday to attend the meeting with Greg Craig, a prominent Skadden partner whose work for Ukraine had drawn the Justice Department's scrutiny. Remembering the midday meeting, Spiegel said in a D.C. courtroom Monday that it was held in what "appeared to be sort of a secured location—it sort of had this feel like we were almost entering a bank vault, in terms of where we were."

Spiegel recalled the meeting Monday as Craig stood trial in Washington federal court on a charge he misled the Justice Department to avoid registering as a foreign agent of Ukraine.

A luminary in Democratic legal circles who served as President Barack Obama's first White House counsel, Craig was charged in April with deceiving the Justice Department about a report he prepared for Ukraine in 2012 on the widely criticized prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and political rival of the country's president at the time, Viktor Yanukovych.

Prosecutors have alleged that Craig concealed the extent of his involvement in the public release of the report to skirt the Foreign Agents Registration Act, an 80-year-old law requiring the disclosure of foreign influence in the U.S. Craig has argued he was entirely truthful with the Justice Department, and while not charged with failing to register under FARA, has denied that he ever acted as a foreign agent of Ukraine.

Spiegel on Monday became only the latest current or former Skadden lawyer to be called to the stand in Craig's trial, following in the footsteps of Cliff Sloan, a former partner who worked on the Tymoshenko report, and Ken Gross, a partner with FARA expertise who also accompanied Craig to the October 2013 meeting.

The meeting marked a turning point in Skadden's dealings with the Justice Department. Prosecutors have seized on it to make their case that Craig misled the Justice Department.

In his testimony Monday, Spiegel said the Justice Department had concluded a month before the meeting that Craig and his firm were required to register as foreign agents of Ukraine. Spiegel recalled Craig "very strongly advocating" that Skadden should not have to register as a foreign agent, even drafting a letter laying out the firm's argument and asking for the Justice Department's leadership to review the matter. Skadden never sent the letter, Spiegel said, choosing to instead request a meeting.

"We had decided that the tone of the letter was not the type of way that we as an institution would want to express ourselves in dealing with the Department of Justice," he said.

At the October meeting, Craig did much of the talking, Spiegel said.

While he could not recount what exactly was said, Spiegel said he remembered "very generally" the basic themes of Craig's arguments: that Skadden was "at heart" not operating as an agent of Ukraine and that the firm's limited press interactions were intended only to correct mischaracterizations of the report.

The day after the meeting, Skadden sent the Justice Department a letter summarizing its view that Craig's media contacts were not driven by Ukraine.

"That was our broad theme," Spiegel said, "that we were not their agent."

In January 2014, the Justice Department reversed course and told Skadden it would not have to register under FARA.

Craig's lead defense lawyer, Zuckerman Spaeder partner William Taylor, called attention to the lack of note-taking at the 2013 meeting. Taylor asked Spiegel whether he, his Skadden colleagues or the Justice Department officials had taken notes. Spiegel said he couldn't recall.

In the brief cross-examination, Taylor also asked whether Craig was "passionate" in his view that he was not obligated to register as a foreign agent.

"I would say he was very passionate in his view," Spiegel said.

Spiegel's testimony detailed how leaders of Skadden responded to the Justice Department's inquiry. For Spiegel, the process began in late December 2012, when Earle Yaffa, the managing director of Skadden, provided him with a copy of the Justice Department's initial letter. Attached to the letter was a Post-it note from Yaffa, with a message "in substance saying, 'Handle this,'" Spiegel recalled.

Prosecutors displayed emails showing that Skadden partner David Zornow, the head of the firm's litigation practice, and executive partner Eric Friedman were also apprised of the Justice Department's inquiry.

From the outset, Spiegel turned to Craig and Sloan, another lead partner on the Ukraine project, to provide details about the firm's work on the Tymoshenko report. Spiegel said that, early on in the process, Craig shared his concern that registering as a foreign agent could prevent him and others on the Skadden team from taking government roles in the future.

At one point, Spiegel said he was miffed by Craig's handling of the Justice Department's inquiries. He recalled receiving an email from Craig in late May 2013 asking him to review a response to a letter the Justice Department had sent in April.

"I recall being annoyed. I was learning about it at the end of the day. I think it was 4:30 p.m. And the direction was that they wanted it to go out that day," Spiegel testified. Skadden ultimately sent its response in early June.

Spiegel had another issue: He couldn't recall Craig previously informing him of the Justice Department's April letter.

In an email to Sloan, he wrote, "I don't recall having been sent the letter to which he is responding."

Following Spiegel's testimony, prosecutors called Heather Hunt, who until earlier this year served as the chief of the FARA unit in the Justice Department's national security division. Hunt, who is now the unit's senior counsel for FARA administration, recalled Craig making the case in the October meeting that his contacts with the media were aimed at correcting mischaracterizations of the Tymoshenko report and were not made on Ukraine's behalf.

"That was the takeaway of the meeting: He did it on his own and not at the request or on the direction of the government of Ukraine," she said.

Just as he did in his cross-examination of Spiegel, Taylor used his cross-examination of Hunt to underscore that no notes have surfaced from the October 2013 meeting. Under questioning from prosecutor Jason McCullough, Hunt appeared to defend her decision not to take notes.

"When I'm at a meeting like this, I talk, I don't write," she said. "Otherwise I'd be looking down all the time and wouldn't be able to carry on a conversation and honestly listen to what they're saying."

Earlier in the trial, prosecutors presented evidence aimed at showing that Craig was more involved in the rollout of the Tymoshenko report than he led the Justice Department to believe. Prosecutors have focused particularly on evidence suggesting that Craig helped connect the Ukrainian government with a public relations firm, and they have highlighted how he hand-delivered a copy of the report to the home of a New York Times reporter.

In his questioning of Hunt, McCullough asked whether Craig had told her that he suggested the public relations firm FTI Consulting to Ukraine. McCullough also asked whether Craig disclosed that he had met with a public relations consultant for Ukraine or connected a New York Times report to a lobbyist for Ukraine.

In response to each question, Hunt responded, "No."

She said such information would have been "very relevant" to the Justice Department's inquiry.

Following Hunt's testimony, prosecutors said they would not call any more witnesses but did not formally rest their case against Craig.