Mueller Time! New Tuesday indictment hints at significant direction of probe
Surprise! It’s Mueller Time – again!
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.
He 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 the firm did work for the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice to prepare a report on the trial of Yulia Tymoshenko.
Van der Zwaan has a plea hearing scheduled for Tuesday afternoon at US District Court in Washington, DC.
Besides being a key Skadden Arps player in their Lonfon office, Van der Zwaan is the Russian-speaking son-in-law of Russian oligarch German Khan.
You can read the court filing here. It is an “Information” — meaning a plea deal has been reached!
The move suggests
- Rick Gates has in fact been cooperating for a while with Team Mueller.
- Van der Zwaan is likely to have provided more evidence to Mueller in pursuit of a plea deal.
- Mueller probably has evidence from Tymoshenko, who has long been blowing the whistle about evidence that Manafort has been conspiring with Russian and Ukranian millionaire crooks.
- Mueller is looking intensely at multiple cover-ups and conspiracies between Team Trump players and Russians.
- As Seth Abramson points out on Twitter:
Given the new charge Mueller just filed against a Manafort-connected lawyer, today seems like a good day for anyone who “accidentally” forgot to turn over something to Mueller or withheld info to say “Oops!” and call Mueller’s office and fix it.
Maybe that was Mueller’s point.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) February 20, 2018
- And there’s this fun fact!
Van der Zwaan’s father-in-law is Russian oligarch German Khan, a founder of Alfa Group (which owns Alfa Bank), who has sued BuzzFeed over publication of the Steele Dossier https://t.co/1FDcJLin4C
— Alex Parker (@AlexParker) February 20, 2018
I guess that lawsuit’s down the tubes now…
So, yes, things just got worse not only for Donald Trump but for his wheeler-dealer Russian-loving K Street allies including several players at big name Skadden Arps, who must now be sweating bullets.
