US: Dutch lawyer is first person to be sentenced in Mueller probe

A Dutch lawyer tied to former Trump deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates was sentenced Tuesday, April 3, to 30 days in jail and ordered to pay a US$20,000 fine after admitting to lying to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

Alex van der Zwaan is the first person to be sentenced in Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He pleaded guilty to lying to Mueller’s team in February and faced up to six months in prison.

“What I did was wrong,” van der Zwaan said in court Tuesday. “I apologize to the court for my conduct. I apologize to my wife and to my family for the pain I have caused.” While van der Zwaan is not a central figure in the investigation, filings in his case illustrated Mueller’s continuing interest in Paul Manafort and Gates’s actions through Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Van der Zwaan was a lawyer in the London office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom from 2007 to 2017, when the firm worked with Manafort during a decade when he served as a political consultant in Ukraine.

Full Content: Wall Street Journal

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