A lawyer who is the son-in-law of a Ukranian-Russian oligarch named in the controversial Donald Trump dossier pleaded guilty on Tuesday to lying to investigators in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
It is not clear, however, if Alex van der Zwaan, 33, has signed a cooperation deal with Mueller.
His attorney said in federal court in Washington that there is “some possibility” he would not face a long sentence — but because he doesn’t have a criminal record, he might only get a few months even without a deal.
Van der Zwaan admitted to the sole count of making false statements about his communications with former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates.
Gates and his longtime business associate, former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, were indicted in October on charges of money laundering, conspiracy and other offenses tied to their lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian political figures.
A sentencing date of April 3 has been set for van der Zwaan. His lawyer requested an expedited schedule, noting that his wife, former debutante Eva Khan, is pregnant.
Her father is German Khan, a billionaire who filed a libel suit in October against Fusion GPS, the investigation firm behind a partly unsubstantiated intelligence dossier that alleged Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians.
Van der Zwaan worked in the London office of international law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate Meagher & Flom for a decade. The firm said it fired him last year and has been cooperating with Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links to the Trump campaign.
Van der Zwaan’s former employer, Skadden Arps, worked on a report on behalf of the Ukrainian government that critics said sought to justify the false imprisonment of Ukraine’s former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko.
The watchdog group Freedom House criticized the report as “utterly baffling.”
Manafort and Gates were also working on behalf of Tymoshenko’s rivals, including ousted president Viktor Yanukovych. The New York Times reported in September that Manafort arranged for the Skadden firm to do the work — and that prosecutors were asking questions about it.
According to prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, van der Zwaan leaked the report and talking points from the law firm — which was supposed to be independent in the matter — to Gates.
When van der Zwaan was questioned in November, he claimed that his last communication with Gates was an “innocuous” text message in mid-August 2016, according to court documents. He also said his last communication with someone described as “Person A” — a Ukrainian-based associate of Manafort — was in 2014; he further claimed that he did not know why a 2016 email exchange with Person A was not turned over to Mueller.
But, according to federal prosecutors, van der Zwaan spoke with both Gates and Person A in September 2016 regarding the Tymoshenko report, surreptitiously recorded encyrpted calls and deleted the email in question.
Van der Zwaan, a Dutch citizen who was born in Brussels, has been in the U.S. since he was questioned in November. The FBI has seized his passport and his travel is restricted to Washington and New York until he is sentenced.
The charge against van der Zwaan was announced just days after Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election. Trump attorney Ty Cobb declined to comment saying the case, like the Manafort and Gates indictments, is not related in any way to the White House.
If van der Zwaan pleads guilty, he will be the fourth person to cut a deal with Mueller. The others are:
- Mike Flynn: Trump’s short-tenured national security advisor pleaded guilty in December to a charge of making false statements to the FBI about his communications with Russia after the election but before the inauguration — allegedly made at the urging of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Flynn’s former deputy, K.T. McFarland.
- George Papadopoulos: The former Trump campaign advisor secretly pleaded guilty in October to lying to federal agents about his contacts with Kremlin-connected Russians — communications that Manafort was allegedly knew about.
- Richard Pinedo: The California man pleaded guilty this month to selling bank account and other stolen identify information to the Russian defendants accused of interfering in the election.