In addition to a 30-day sentence, Alex van der Zwaan was also given a $20,000 fine and two months of probation. He can leave the country as soon as his sentence is completed. | Alex Wong/Getty Images Dutch attorney gets 30 days in first sentence for Mueller probe Alex van der Zwaan had admitted to lying to investigators.

Special counsel Robert Mueller obtained the first sentence in his high-profile investigation Tuesday, as a Dutch attorney who admitted to lying to investigators was ordered into federal custody for 30 days.

Former Skadden Arps lawyer Alex van der Zwaan, 33, pleaded guilty in February to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with former Trump campaign official Rick Gates and Konstantin Kilimnik, a suspected Russian intelligence operative who worked closely with Gates and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.


Attorneys for van der Zwaan pleaded with U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson to forgo any prison time, give him a fine and let him return to his London home by August, when his wife is due to give birth.

However, the judge said some time in jail was appropriate given van der Zwaan's offense and the fact that he is a lawyer.

“We're not talking about a traffic ticket,” she said. “This was lying to a federal officer in the course of a criminal investigation...This was more than a mistake. This was more than a lapse or a misguided moment."

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In addition to the 30-day sentence, Jackson also imposed a $20,000 fine and two months of probation, but she said she would permit van der Zwaan to reclaim his passport and leave the country as soon as his month in custody is completed. It's not immediately clear where or in what type of facility he will serve the 30 days.

Van der Zwaan was drawn into the saga in 2012 as his law firm prepared to release a report commissioned by Manafort and 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.

Manafort and Gates' work on behalf of Yanukovych's political party has drawn Mueller's scrutiny. Gates has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, and Manafort is awaiting trial.

The report was billed as an arms-length review of the circumstances surrounding Tymoshenko's trial. However, Mueller's team told Jackson that, in the words of an unnamed witness, van der Zwaan had "gone native" and began communicating about the report with Gates, offering talking points for the Ukrainian government in advance of its release. The Dutch attorney also gave a draft copy of the report to a public relations firm working with Ukraine, contrary to instructions from senior attorneys at Skadden, prosecutors said.

During an interview at the special counsel's office in Washington on Nov. 3, 2017, van der Zwaan sought to play down his interactions with Gates, who had been indicted just days earlier, according to prosecutors. Van der Zwaan said falsely that his last contact with Gates was in August 2016 and consisted of "an innocuous text message," when he knew the two had been in touch more recently, Mueller's team alleged.

Prosecutors also said van der Zwaan told investigators he did not know why Skadden had no record of an email between him and Kilimnik, when in fact he had not turned over the message to the firm.

Van der Zwaan's defense asked that he be permitted to serve at a Bureau of Prisons center in Allenwood, Pennsylvania. The judge said Tuesday that she would recommend that, but federal policies usually dictate that a sentence of less than six months be served at a halfway house or at the D.C. jail.

One of van der Zwaan's defense attorneys, William Schwartz, argued that leniency was appropriate given the impact of the episode on the Dutch lawyer's family and on his legal career. He is likely to lose his license as a solicitor in the United Kingdom, Schwartz said.

But Jackson was largely unmoved by those arguments, noting that van der Zwaan came from an upbringing of privilege and lacked any hardship that could have mitigated his actions.

Van der Zwaan is married to the daughter of a Ukrainian-Russian energy mogul, German Khan, whom Forbes ranks 138th on its list of billionaires, with a net worth of $9.3 billion.

"This glass was dropped on a very think carpet, which has cushioned him," the judge said of the defendant. She credited him for supporting himself and his wife in recent years, although she noted that van der Zwaan's father-in-law has provided funds to the couple since the attorney was fired from his job.

Khan is mentioned in the so-called dossier a private investigation firm prepared on alleged ties between Trump and Russia. Schwartz complained to the judge Tuesday that prosecutors mentioned the father-in-law in their pleadings, although they made no direct claim that the family connection influenced van der Zwaan's decisions to withhold documents and lie to investigators.

"I was stunned to see a gratuitous reference to his father-in-law as an oligarch in their papers, as if that has some bearing" on the case, Schwartz said.

The fact that prosecutors are not requiring future cooperation from van der Zwaan suggests that they don't see him as a crucial player in the Trump-Russia saga. Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said the defendant's reason for lying remains murky.

"To be candid, we don't know what was motivating the defendant," Weissmann said. "We count on people to tell us the truth. We count on people to turn over documents that are responsive."

Defense attorneys said he lied to Mueller's team because he feared being fired if Skadden found out he had recorded work-related conversations without permission, including at least one with former Obama White House Counsel Greg Craig, a Skadden partner who oversaw the Tymoshenko report. Van der Zwaan was ultimately fired by the firm late last year, after his inaccurate statements to the Mueller team.

Weissmann said that concern about the consequences at Skadden could have been part of the explanation, but there was "reason to doubt that is simply the sole motive."

Mueller's team offered no specific recommendation to Jackson on an appropriate sentence in the case. Weissmann said that was the special counsel office's policy, which he also followed as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn.

Van der Zwaan spoke to the court only briefly during the sentencing hearing at the federal courthouse near Capitol Hill.

"Your honor, what I did was wrong and I apologize to the court for my conduct," he said. He also apologized to his family for his actions.

Later in the hearing, Jackson said she did not detect great remorse.

"The expressions of remorse, even those made on his behalf, were somewhat muted to say the least," the judge declared shortly before she imposed the sentence.

Jackson also rebuffed Schwartz's argument that van der Zwaan's freedom was curtailed in recent months as he spent his days at a "residential hotel" awaiting legal proceedings.

"I'm not really moved by the complaint that he is in his hotel room with nothing to do," the judge said, saying he was not in custody and could have been doing community service to keep busy.