Mueller Wins Fourth Guilty Plea as Ex-Skadden Lawyer Admits Lies
Ex-Skadden lawyer pleads guilty to lying in U.S. Russia probe.
(Bloomberg) -- A London-based lawyer pleaded guilty to lying to U.S. officials investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election about his contacts with Rick Gates, a former associate of onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Alex van der Zwaan, a former associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, admitted in court in Washington that he misled investigators about the last time he talked with Gates, who was indicted in October with Manafort over their consulting work in Ukraine. His sentencing is scheduled for April 3. He faces as long as six months in jail under advisory guidelines, and there is no indication that he is cooperating with the broader investigation.
Van der Zwaan is the fourth person to plead guilty in Mueller’s wide-ranging probe, which has also netted indictments of more than a dozen people. The Los Angeles Times reported that Gates will plead guilty in the coming days.
The case against van der Zwaan ups the pressure on Gates and Manafort, who helped enlist Skadden to draft a 2012 report that defended the prosecution of a political rival of their client, then-President Viktor Yanukovych. Mueller has accused Manafort and Gates of secretly funneling $4 million through offshore accounts to pay for it.
Van der Zwaan was one of the lawyers who worked on the report, which defied the view held by the U.S. and the European Union that the case was politically motivated.
Van der Zwaan misled investigators about the last time he talked with Gates when he was questioned Nov. 3 by U.S. authorities regarding the work, according to the special counsel. He told investigators that his last contact with Gates was an innocuous text message in mid-August 2016, when they actually spoke the following month about the report in a call the lawyer secretly recorded, the information says.
Prosecutors say van der Zwaan lied about his talks with someone else, whom they identified only as Person A. During the hearing Tuesday, it came out that Person A is in Ukraine, but no other details were disclosed. The lawyer told investigators he last spoke with Person A in 2014, when in fact they spoke in September 2016 during the secretly recorded call with Gates.
Van der Zwaan also deleted and failed to produce emails sought by the special counsel and a law firm, prosecutors said.
The case is U.S. v. Van der Zwaan, 18-cr-00031, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
To contact the reporters on this story: Andrew Harris in Washington at aharris16@bloomberg.net, Steven T. Dennis in Washington at sdennis17@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider, Paul Cox
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.