President elect Barack Obama has selected Gregory Craig as his White House General Counsel. If you remember I wrote about Craig in my posts about bundlers for the Obama campaign. He acted as an adviser and committed to raising over $200,000 for the campaign.
Craig is a friend of the Clintons who he met while at Yale law school. Many remember him as the man who directed the President’s team defending him against impeachment, but Craig has defended numerous other high profile clients. Here are a few.
He led the successful insanity defense for John Hinckley Jr, who attempted to assassinate President Reagan.
He represented Senator Ted Kennedy during the 1991 rape trial of William Kennedy Smith.
He represented the Cuban father of Elian Gonzalez during the 2000 child custody dispute which ended when U.S. Marshals enforced court orders that the child be moved from the Florida home of relatives.
He represented United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan during the Volker Commission’s investigations in 2004 into the scandals involving the oil-for-food program.
He represented Pedro Miguel Gonzalez Pinzon, a Panamanian legislator wanted in the US for the murder in 1992 of a US soldier, and the attempted murder of another.
In 1977, he represented the first FBI agent ever to be indicted, John J. Kearney, who was accused of illegal wiretapping, breaking and entering, and mail opening in connection with the FBI investigation of the Bill Ayers’ co-founded Weatherman organization. (Finally a link with someone who did not work with Ayers….I will give him that)
In 2000, Gregory Craig represented panamanian president Ernesto Perez Balladares, who was accused of orchestrating a scheme to illegally smuggle immigrants into the United States.
He represented the Mevses family, who financed a coup that overthrew the first democratically elected government in Haiti.
Not surprisingly, Craig is strongly supported by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, which is a liberal think tank critical of US policies in Latin America.
Maybe it is my general disdain for lawyers as a whole, but I know there has to be a better choice for general counsel. There are very good lawyers in this country that have chosen out of conscious to not represent people such as these. Gregory Craig has represented just about every scumbag that I know and a few that I didn’t. It appears that Obama has continued the trend of politics as usual as he resurrects another Clinton administration.
You doubt me. Everyone so far has a link to the Clinton administration. They are the same Washington crowd that he promised would not run Washington anymore. He promised Change. Now reports are saying Hillary Clinton will be our next Secretary of State. My thoughts on that tomorrow.
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