Greg Craig was acquitted Wednesday of a charge he deliberately deceived the Justice Department about his past work for Ukraine, bringing a dramatic end to a criminal case that spun out of the special counsel's Russia investigation and ensnared a venerated Washington lawyer who served as President Barack Obama's first White House counsel.

The verdict from a jury of nine men and three women came after nearly five hours of deliberations and capped a three-week trial that gripped the legal community and the K Street lobbying corps. The acquittal also represented a setback for the Justice Department as it steps up enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, a decades-old law requiring the disclosure of lobbying, public relations work and other influence efforts for foreign governments. Although Craig was not charged with violating FARA, prosecutors alleged that he misled the Justice Department about his past work for Ukraine to avoid the perceived stigma of registering as a foreign agent, so the 1938 law figured prominently in the case.

As the verdict was read aloud, defense lawyer William Taylor of Zuckerman Spaeder reached over and clenched Craig's right shoulder. An emotional Craig left the courtroom and retreated into a side room.

Outside court, Craig thanked the jurors "for their service" and expressed gratitude for his defense lawyers who, he said, "made it all possible."

The trial centered on a legal project Craig led for the Russia-aligned government of Ukraine in 2012, when he was a prominent partner at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Craig was retained by the Ukrainian government to conduct a purportedly independent review of the widely criticized prosecution of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a political rival of the country's president at the time, Viktor Yanukovych.

Craig, 74, was accused of concealing the extent of his role in the public release of the Tymoshenko report when the Justice Department inquired about whether he needed to register as a foreign agent. Prosecutors argued that, by avoiding FARA's disclosure requirements, Craig was able to conceal the fact that Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk paid Skadden more than $4 million to prepare the Tymoshenko report.

In January, months after Craig retired under a cloud of legal scrutiny, Skadden agreed to pay $4.6 million as part of a settlement with the Justice Department to resolve claims the firm failed to register under FARA.

Craig's case stemmed from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller III's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, a probe that resulted in the conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on charges tied to his past work for Ukraine. In 2012, while serving as a top adviser to Yanukovych, Manafort played a critical role in retaining Craig to review the Tymoshenko prosecution.

The special counsel's office referred Craig's case to career prosecutors in Manhattan, who declined to press charges. Responding to the verdict Wednesday, Taylor questioned why career prosecutors in Washington ultimately brought the prosecution.

"Why, after the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York rejected this prosecution, did this Department of Justice decide it had to hound this man and his family without any evidence and without any premise. It's a tragedy, it's a disgrace. I'm glad it's over," Taylor said.

One of the jurors, Michael Meyer, said some on the panel were "very disturbed" by Craig's conduct and believed he had not been entirely forthright with the Justice Department. But because of statute of limitations issues, jurors were instructed to focus on Craig's conduct between October 2013 and January 2014. Meyer said there was "no question in the room he hadn't done anything in that period" that was illegal.

In his closing argument Tuesday, prosecutor Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez used forceful language to underscore the significance of FARA, telling jurors that Pinchuk's role and other details about the project would have been revealed if Craig registered as a foreign agent.

"All of this would have come out. But none of it did at the time. This is why FARA matters. So don't let the defense get up here and tell you that this is a case merely about words, as if this case doesn't matter. It does," Campoamor-Sanchez said.

In the defense closing, Murphy said Craig never viewed himself as an agent of Ukraine. Murphy called attention to Craig's years in public service and urged jurors to prevent the prosecution from "sounding a horrible false note at the end of an incredible career of honor, service and integrity."

"What value does 50 years of a life well lived have on the scales of justice as you weigh the evidence?" he asked. "I suggest to you it weighs a lot."

In the course of the three-week trial, prosecutors presented emails and other evidence that provided a behind-the-scenes—and occasionally unflattering—look inside Skadden as it prepared the Tymoshenko report and responded to scrutiny from the Justice Department team tasked with enforcing FARA. Prosecutors also called several friends and former colleagues of Craig's to the stand, including Skadden's general counsel, Lawrence Spiegel, who recalled Craig's "very passionate" resistance to registering as a foreign agent.

Also called to the stand was Craig's longtime secretary, Catherine Whitney, and Cliff Sloan, a close friend and former Skadden partner who co-authored the Tymoshenko report. Sloan joined Georgetown University Law Center after leaving Skadden earlier this year.

With Sloan on the stand, prosecutors introduced internal Skadden emails that revealed the trepidation felt inside the firm as it weighed whether to work for Ukraine. The emails showed that Sloan advocated for tailoring the Ukraine work so that the firm's lawyers would act strictly as "rule of law" advisers and not engage in public relations work that would trigger a FARA registration.

Prosecutors argued that Craig nonetheless took an active role in the public relations strategy for the report, pointing out in the trial that he hand-delivered an advance copy of the 186-page document to the home of New York Times reporter David Sanger. In a high-stakes moment during the trial, Craig took the stand in his own defense and testified that he contacted Sanger, among other reporters, to correct mischaracterizations about the report and to counter Ukraine's efforts to spin its findings.

But Campoamor-Sanchez portrayed Craig's communications with Sanger and another reporter at The New York Times as more proactive than he'd led the Justice Department to believe in 2013. Campoamor-Sanchez seized on a letter Craig sent to the Justice Department's FARA unit in October 2013, in which he claimed he had sent copies of the Tymoshenko report to Sanger and other journalists "in response to requests from the media."

"That is not true, sir," the prosecutor said.

"It is true," Craig said.

The trial featured testimony from Rick Gates, a longtime associate of Manafort, who said Craig had been involved in the public relations strategy for the Tymoshenko report. In a more than 90-minute closing argument Tuesday, Murphy called Gates a "congenital liar" who was willing to say anything as part of a plea deal in which he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

But the prosecution's witness list was filled largely by Craig's former colleagues at Skadden, including some friends, creating an awkward dynamic that gave rise to flashes of tension in court.

Early in the trial, a defense lawyer disclosed that Craig had approached the prosecution's first witness, Skadden partner Michael Loucks, as he left the courthouse after testifying for the prosecution. The revelation of that encounter drew an admonition from U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who cautioned Craig to "resist the temptation to reconnect with colleagues" during the trial.

Later in the trial, prosecutor Molly Gaston appeared to briefly question whether Craig had heeded that advice—and whether Sloan had testified truthfully. Last week, when Sloan was called back to the stand as a defense witness, Gaston asked whether he had left the courthouse with Craig after testifying for the prosecution. Sloan denied leaving with Craig, prompting Gaston to approach the bench with a photograph showing the two men together outside court. A defense lawyer recognized the photograph and said it had been taken a few years earlier, when Craig and Sloan represented James "Hoss" Cartwright, a retired Marine general who pleaded guilty in 2016 to lying to the FBI in a leak investigation.

"Then, I just made a big mistake," Gaston said, according to a transcript of the discussion at the bench. She then withdrew her question about whether Sloan had left court with Craig.

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