In February, Alex 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. | Win McNamee/Getty Images First Mueller convict reports to prison Dutch attorney Alex van der Zwaan turned himself in Monday after being sentenced for lying to investigators.

A Dutch attorney now has the dubious distinction of being the first person imprisoned in connection with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

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. His attorneys sought leniency because his wife is pregnant and is due in August, and made clear that they wanted him to begin serving the sentence as soon as possible so he would have a strong chance of making it home to London before his wife delivers.

It’s still unclear whether that will happen. Jackson sought to facilitate van der Zwaan’s getting home by announcing that she would permit him to depart during a two-month probation she ordered to follow his short stint in custody. However, van der Zwaan’s attorneys said at the sentencing that it was possible he could be tied up in the deportation process for months if immigration authorities detained him when his prison sentence was complete.

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Spokespeople for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and for Mueller’s office had no immediate comment on what arrangements are in place for van der Zwaan’s departure from the country.

A lawyer for van der Zwaan, William Schwartz, declined to comment on Tuesday.

Van der Zwaan’s attorneys had requested that he be spared prison, but urged that if he was sentenced to time in custody he serve at the Allenwood low-security facility, part of a complex that also includes a medium-security center and a high-security penitentiary.

A consultant for white-collar convicts facing prison, John Webster, said someone serving a short sentence would normally be sent to a federal prison camp. However, the Dutch attorney isn’t eligible for that sort of minimum-security facility, which has few physical obstacles to keep inmates from walking away.

“He’s not a U.S. citizen, so he cannot go to a camp,” Webster said.

The consultant said the other prisoners at Allenwood’s low-security facility were unlikely to give van der Zwaan any trouble, or pay much attention to him at all.

“It’s not a bad place,” Webster said. “He’s going to be safe, not raped, abused, beaten up or anything along those lines. … He’s going to be just an administrative headache. They got to process his discharge paperwork the day he checks in. You do have a decent percentage of organized-crime guys there from the Tri-state area. … You’re going to find some guys there doing pretty serious time, 10, 15, 20 years.”

Van der Zwaan was drawn into the Trump-Russia investigation by actions he took in 2012. At the time, his law firm was preparing to release a report commissioned by Paul Manafort, a future Trump campaign chairman, and Manafort’s aide Rick Gates for Ukraine’s Justice Ministry in a bid to defend then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who had jailed one of his most prominent political opponents, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

According to prosecutors, van der Zwaan considered working for Manafort and Gates, but when speaking with investigators made false statements about his most recent interactions with Gates. Mueller’s team also said van der Zwaan deceived others at his law firm, including former White House counsel Greg Craig, who was the lead author of the report. Craig was not charged and has not commented publicly on the case.

Manafort and Gates were indicted last October on charges of money laundering and failing to register as foreign agents for their Ukraine-related work. Gates pleaded guilty in February and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, but Manafort is still fighting the original charges, as well as a new tax and bank fraud indictment filed in Virginia federal court in February.

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.

“The expressions of remorse, even those made on his behalf, were somewhat muted, to say the least,” Jackson said.

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.

