Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged another individual in his Russia probe, according to a court filing revealed on Tuesday.
Alex Van Der Zwaan has been charged with lying to the Special Counsel’s office and special agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on November 3, 2017 in conversations dealing with Van Der Zwaan’s “work as an attorney employed by a law firm engaged in 2012 by the Ukraine Ministry of Justice to prepare a report on the trial of Yulia Tymoshenko.”
Tymoshenko co-led Ukraine’s Orange Revolution and served twice as the country’s prime minister.
According to a 2017 story on Tymoshenko in the Kyiv Post, Van Der Zwaan is the son-in-law of Russian oligarch German Khan. He is expected to plead guilty at a hearing Tuesday afternoon.
The charging document accuses Van Der Zwaan of lying about three distinct facts.
First, Mueller alleges that Van Der Zwaan lied about his last communication with Richard Gates, the associate of Paul Manafort who is already facing an indictment by Mueller. Van Der Zwaan apparently claimed this communication occurred in mid-August 2016 and that it “consisted of an innocuous text message.”
Second, Mueller alleges that Van Der Zwaan lied about his last communication with an unknown individual identified only as “Person A.” Van Der Zwaan apparently claimed the last communication with Person A occurred sometime in 2014—and focused on a discussion of “Person A’s family.”
The charges allege, however, that Van Der Zwaan actually last communicated with both Gates and Person A in September 2016 regarding the Tymoshenko report—and that Van Der Zwaan “surreptitiously recored the calls.”
Finally, Mueller alleges that Van Der Zwaan lied when he told FBI agents and Mueller’s team that “he did not know why an email between him and Person A in September 2016 was not produced,” to Mueller’s team.
In fact, Mueller alleges, Van Der Zwaan “deleted and otherwise did not produce emails sought by the Special Counsel’s Office and Law Firm A, including the email between Person A and him in September 2016.”
[image via Andrew Burton/Getty Images]
Follow Colin Kalmbacher on Twitter: @colinkalmbacher
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