Attorney charged with lying to Mueller team in Russia probe
WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller revealed another criminal charge on Tuesday in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, this time against a lawyer who had worked with some of President Trump’s former campaign aides.
Prosecutors working for Mueller charged that the lawyer, Alex Van Der Zwaan, lied to FBI agents about his conversations with former Trump aide Rick Gates, who was indicted last year on charges related to his work on behalf of pro-Russian factions in Ukraine.
Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was charged along with Gates .
A plea hearing was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Washington.
The charge, outlined in a two-page filing, alleges that Van Der Zwaan secretly recorded telephone conversations with Gates in September 2016.
Prosecutors accuse Van Der Zwaan, an associate in the London firm of Skaaden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, of lying to federal agents about his last contacts with Gates in August 2016 and failing to turn over email communications to federal investigators.
According to the court documents, federal investigators focused on Van Der Zwaan’s 2012 work on a report related to the trial of former Ukranian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a political rival of then-Ukraine President Victor Yanukovych, whose government Manafort and Gates worked to promote.
