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Trump-Russia inquiry: lawyer who worked with Manafort charged with lying to FBI

The interest in Van der Zwaan is likely linked to his work with Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager.
The interest in Van der Zwaan is likely linked to his work with Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Prosecutors investigating possible collusion between the Trump election campaign and the Kremlin scored another victory on Tuesday after a lawyer who worked with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in Ukraine was charged with lying to the FBI.

Alex van der Zwaan, who is reportedly married to the daughter of a Russian-Ukrainian oligarch, was charged with making false statements in connection to work he did in Ukraine. According to court documents filed in Washington, Van der Zwaan failed to produce a 2014 email exchange with an unidentified person – referred to as Person A – to the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign and its ties to Russia. He is expected to plead guilty to the charge, and to appear in federal court in Washington on Tuesday afternoon.

It is unclear if the case against Van der Zwaan, who according to reports worked in the London office of the Skadden Arps law firm, is connected to the broader question of whether or not the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin. But the indictment against a largely unknown figure who is not known to be connected to the president shows the wide-ranging nature of the ongoing investigation, which is being led by Robert Mueller, the special counsel and former head of the FBI.

It underscores – once again – that Mueller’s team has been willing to prosecute any individual who has been found lying or omitting the truth in the ongoing criminal investigation. Two campaign officials – Michael Flynn and George Papadopolous – have pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and are now cooperating with the investigation.

“No, I’m not,” the president said in mid-December. But in fact Trump had ordered special counsel Robert Mueller’s firing in June 2017, just one month after Mueller was appointed, the New York Times reported. Trump backed down when the White House Counsel, Donald McGahn, refused to convey the order to deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.

Trump-aligned voices on Capitol Hill and in the media, meanwhile, prominently including Fox News, continue to call for Mueller’s head, and attacks on Mueller from inside the White House have proliferated.

Previous media reports have linked Van der Zwaan to work that was done in 2012 on behalf of Skadden Arps for the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice. The interest in Van der Zwaan is likely linked to his work with Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager. Manafort has pleaded not guilty to previous charges that he laundered money in connection to his years working for a pro-Kremlin party in Ukraine. The alleged crimes pre-date his work for the Trump campaign.

According to a report in the New York Times, Manafort worked with Skadden Arps to draft a report five years ago that sought to defend a move by his client, Viktor Yanukovych, to jail a political opponent. That work became a matter of interest for Mueller’s team, the New York Times reported, because of their interest in studying Manafort’s work for Yanukovych and for Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. They were also interested in payments for that work, the newspaper reported.

The indictment also stated that Van der Zwaan exchanged an innocuous text message with Rick Gates, who has separately been indicted on criminal charges by Mueller’s team, in August 2016. Gates has reportedly decided to change his not guilty plea to guilty in exchange for leniency. Van der Zwaan is reportedly married to the daughter of German Khan, a Russian-Ukrainian billionaire.