Belgian-born lawyer Alex van der Zwaan was given 30 days in prison and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine by a U.S. judge Tuesday, making him the first person to be sentenced in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing Russia investigation, Reuters reports.
Van der Zwaan, who worked in 2012 for the Ukraine Ministry of Justice, had pleaded guilty in February to lying about an interaction with former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates, the longtime associate of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Van der Zwaan apparently falsely told Mueller's team that his final communication with Gates was an "innocuous text message," the charges say. Van der Zwaan actually spoke "with both Gates" and an unnamed Russian intelligence-linked source in 2016 about a report on the trial of Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Ukrainian prime minister. "It's unclear whether Van der Zwaan's case is related to the U.S. election," The Chicago Tribune writes.
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