Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Dutchman first to be sentenced in Russia probe
Lawyer’s sentence is 30 days for lying to Mueller’s team
WASHINGTON — A London-based lawyer was ordered to serve 30 days in prison after a federal judge Tuesday handed down the first sentence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Alex van der Zwaan, 33, a son-in-law of a prominent Russian banker, pleaded guilty Feb. 20 to lying to the FBI about his contacts in September and October of 2016 with a business associate of Paul Manafort, who is a former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump, and with Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy and a former Trump aide. Prosecutors said van der Zwaan also destroyed emails the special counsel had requested.
According to prosecutors, van der Zwaan, who is a Dutch citizen, said he had been told by Gates that the Manafort associate had been an officer with the Russian military intelligence service. Van der Zwaan turned over secret recordings to Mueller’s investigators that he had made of his conversations with Gates, the associate, and a senior partner at his law firm.
In court Tuesday, van der Zwaan said, “What I did was wrong. I apologize to the court for my conduct. I apologize to my wife and to my family for the pain I have caused.”
At the hearing Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, citing the need to deter others from lying in an investigation of international importance, said the 30-day incarceration was necessary.
“These were not mistakes. These were lies,” Jackson told van der Zwaan as he stood before her.
In addition to the prison time, Jackson ordered van der Zwaan to pay a $20,000
fine and imposed two months of supervised release. She allowed him to voluntarily surrender to prison authorities.
The sentencing came just hours after another development in the special counsel’s investigation.
In a court filing late Monday, prosecutors revealed that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had in August explicitly authorized the special counsel to investigate allegations that Manafort colluded with the Russian government.
Manafort, 68, has challenged Mueller’s authority and asked a judge to dismiss charges against him that include acting as an unregistered foreign agent and conspiring to launder tens of millions of dollars he received from his Ukrainian political consulting. He said Mueller overstepped his bounds by charging him for conduct that occurred years before the 2016 presidential election.
But in their new filing, prosecutors revealed that Rosenstein — who appointed Mueller — specifically authorized the investigation of any crimes related to payments Manafort received from the Ukrainian government during the tenure of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Rosenstein also empowered Mueller to investigate allegations Manafort “committed a crime or crimes by colluding with Russian government officials” to interfere with the presidential election.
Prosecutors say in the filing that given their mandate to investigate links between Trump associates and Russia, it was logical and appropriate to investigate Manafort for ties to Russia-backed politicians and oligarchs.
“It would also naturally look into any interactions they may have had before and during the campaign to plumb motives and opportunities to coordinate and to expose possible channels for surreptitious communications. And prosecutors would naturally follow the money trail from Manafort’s Ukrainian consulting activities,” they wrote.
None of the charges Manafort faces allege coordination with the Kremlin. He has pleaded innocent and denied any wrongdoing related to Russian election interference.
INTEREST IN MANAFORT, GATES
While van der Zwaan is not a central figure in the investigation, filings in his case illustrated Mueller’s continuing interest in Manafort and Gates’ actions through Trump’s presidential campaign.
Van der Zwaan was an attorney in the London office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom from 2007 to 2017, when the firm worked with Manafort while he served as a political consultant in Ukraine.
Gates, 45, who was deputy campaign manager for Trump and worked with Manafort in Ukraine, pleaded guilty Feb. 23 to conspiracy and lying to the FBI in a cooperation deal with Mueller’s probe.
Van der Zwaan admitted lying and withholding documents about information prosecutors said was “pertinent” to their investigation: that Gates had been in direct contact during Trump’s presidential run with the Manafort associate, identified in court documents as “Person A,” an individual who “has ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016.”
Prosecutors said that when van der Zwaan was interviewed by the FBI in November, he told investigators that Gates had informed him that Person A was a former officer of the Russian military intelligence service known as the GRU.
Prosecutors made the allegation without naming the Manafort associate but described his role with Manafort in detail. The description matches Konstantin Kilimnik, the Russian manager of Manafort’s lobbying office in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.
Kilimnik ran Manafort’s office in Kiev during the 10 years he did consulting work there, the Post reported in 2017.
Kilimnik has previously denied intelligence ties, telling the Post in a statement in June that he has “no relation to the Russian or any other intelligence service.”
A spokesman for Manafort, who is under a court gag order, has previously declined to comment about the van der Zwaan filings.
Van der Zwaan faced a recommended sentence ranging from zero to six months in prison and asked for no prison time for one count of lying to investigators, a felony. He made his false statements to Mueller’s investigation on Nov. 3, and Skadden said it terminated him that month.
Van der Zwaan is also married to the daughter of billionaire German Khan, who owns the Alfa Group, Russia’s largest financial and industrial investment group.
Van der Zwaan attorney William Schwartz said the defendant should not be punished because of who his family is and that he deserved credit for the loss of his career, suffering of his wife, who is expecting the couple’s first child in August in a difficult pregnancy, and for turning over recorded conversations and other evidence of his guilt.
“It is unusual conduct to make a false statement, and then immediately provide proof of a false statement,” Schwartz said, saying that if it were another defendant those tapes “could have found their way to the bottom of the Thames” River in London.
Jackson acknowledged at the hearing van der Zwaan’s character and willingness to turn over evidence of his crimes, but said that given his means that allowing the defendant to “pay a fine at the door and walk away would not send a message of deterrence. It would do the opposite,” Jackson said.
“It is a message that needs to be sent, particularly because you are an attorney,” she said.
She said Van der Zwaan appeared to be a “smart and up-and-coming young man,” but added that his expressions of remorse “were somewhat muted, to say the least.”
Jackson said she did not know if van der Zwaan was motivated to join Manafort and Gates for excitement, the money, or was engaged in a deeper “coverup,” but that in lying “he put his own interests ahead of the interests of justice” in an investigation of national and international importance into whether the U.S. democratic process was corrupted.
Manafort has acknowledged staying in frequent contact with Kilimnik during the time he worked for Trump’s campaign. He has said he met with Kilimnik in person in May 2016 and again in New York City in August 2016, about two weeks before Manafort resigned as Trump’s campaign chairman.
A Manafort spokesman expressed confidence in June that investigators would ultimately conclude Manafort’s interactions with Kilimnik were “perfectly permissible and not in furtherance of some conspiracy.”
As part of its investigation, the special counsel also has charged 13 Russians and three Russian entities — including the Internet Research Agency, which U.S. officials said churned out social media posts to manipulate American public opinion during the 2016 campaign.
Late Wednesday, The Washington Post, citing three people familiar with the discussions, reported that Mueller informed Trump’s attorneys last month that he is continuing to investigate the president but that he does not consider him a criminal target at this point.
In private negotiations in early March about a possible presidential interview, Mueller described Trump as a subject of his investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the people said. Prosecutors view someone as a subject when that person has engaged in conduct that is under investigation but there is not sufficient evidence to lodge charges.
The special counsel also told Trump’s lawyers that he is preparing a report about the president’s actions while in office and potential obstruction of justice, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations. At the time, Mueller reiterated the need to interview Trump, the people said.
The president and some of his allies seized on the special counsel’s words as an assurance that Trump’s risk of criminal jeopardy is low. Other advisers, however, noted that subjects of investigations can easily become indicted targets.