I see that there is some interest in the latest guilty plea in the Mueller investigation. I’m not sure I can do this justice, because it’s pretty complicated and IANAL. Perhaps some of our lawyers can chime in.
Let’s start with the basics:
Special counsel Robert Mueller has filed a charge against a lawyer for lying to investigators about his interaction with former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates in September 2016.
Alex Van Der Zwaan is expected to plead guilty Tuesday afternoon. The filing is further evidence of Mueller’s investigation of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Gates and their work for Russian-allied clients.
Van Der Zwaan is also accused of lying about the failure to turn over an email communication to the special counsel’s office. He was speaking with investigators about his work with Skadden Arps in 2012, when Manafort arranged for the firm to be hired by the Ukrainian Minister of Justice to prepare a report on the trial of Yulia Tymoshenko.
She is one of the top political rivals of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who hired Manafort and Gates as political consultants for more than a decade.
Now Mueller has one more plea deal from one more person who can tell him about Manafort’s activities. Tick tock, Manafort.
Here’s the New York Times. Skadden Arps says it fired Van Der Zwaan last year and has been cooperating with the investigation. Van Der Zwaan is the son-in-law of oligarch German Khan, who is connected to Alfa Bank. It was an Alfa Bank computer that was communicating with a Trump computer via a DeVos computer.
That’s all I know. Help me figure it out.
And open thread!