Dutch lawyer Alex van der Zwaan turned himself in on Monday, making him the first person convicted in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation sentenced to serve time.
Alex van der Zwaan, 33, reported to a low-security Federal Bureau of Prisons facility near Allenwood, Pennsylvania, on Monday to serve the 30-day sentence he received for lying to investigators in the course of Mueller’s investigation, according to a bureau spokesperson. His projected release date is June 4, according to information on the prison bureau’s website.
In February, van der Zwaan, a former London-based attorney for the U.S. law firm Skadden Arps, pleaded guilty to a felony false-statement charge, admitting that he lied to the FBI and lawyers for Mueller’s office during questioning about his involvement with a report Skadden prepared in 2012 at the request of the Ukrainian government.
Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced van der Zwaan to 30 days in prison and a $20,000 fine.
Van der Zwaan had asked to be out in time to be at the birth of his first child in London in August.
Van der Zwaan’s case doesn’t appear to have a direct connection to alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The fact that investigators are willing to allow him to leave the country suggests he is not a pivotal witness in the Manafort case.
At van der Zwaan’s sentencing, he made a brief statement apologizing for his actions, but the judge said he seemed inadequately contrite.
Van der Zwaan is married to the daughter of Russian oligarch German Khan. Khan is business partners with Viktor Vekselberg, the recently sanctioned Russian oligarch who attended Trump's inauguration and may have given money to Michael Cohen's LLC.
While van der Zwaan is the first person sentenced to prison as part of the Mueller inquiry, he is not the first to spend time in jail in connection with it. That appears to be George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, who spent a night in the detention center in Alexandria, Virginia, last July after being arrested as he arrived at Dulles Airport on a flight from Germany. Papadopoulos was released the next day. He ultimately pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the FBI and is awaiting sentencing.
First Mueller convict reports to prison (Politico)