Alex van der Zwaan

[2] On 20 February 2018, he pleaded guilty[12][5][13] to one count of making a false statement to investigators while answering questions about Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.

[5] At the firm, he worked on complex matters, including the freezing of assets of the rich, a legal tactic attempted by companies and billionaires in disputes with business partners.

[23] In November 2017, Van der Zwaan was fired from Skadden Arps for gross misconduct due to the false statements he made to the United States Special Counsel's Office.

[28][12][29][30][5] Van der Zwaan worked closely with Gregory B. Craig in preparing the report, assisting with fact-finding and attending meetings in Ukraine.

[4] In a 2017 interview former United States ambassador to Ukraine John E. Herbst said that Skadden Arps "should have been ashamed" of the report, calling it "a nasty piece of work".

[24][5][28] Prosecutors also said Van der Zwaan deleted emails sought by the special counsel's office—such as emails between him and Manafort associate Konstantin Kilimnik (known as "Person A"), including one requesting that Van der Zwaan use encrypted communications and one from September 2016—rather than turning them over to Skadden Arps, which was gathering documents for the special counsel.

[2][5][32][33][34] In a 3 November 2017 interview with Special Counsel prosecutors and FBI agents, Van der Zwaan maintained that his last communication with Gates was an innocuous text in mid-August 2016 and that his last contact with Kilimnik was a 2014 discussion of the latter's family; prosecutors determined instead that he had discussed the 2012 Skadden Arps report with Gates and Kilimnik in September 2016 during phone calls that he surreptitiously recorded.