Milbank: It’s Mueller time for Russia election-meddling probe

In between, on Tuesday morning, a Dutchman entered the federal courthouse on Third Street NW and earned the dubious distinction of being the first person sent to prison in the Mueller probe.

Alex van der Zwaan, son-in-law of a Russian oligarch, business associate of Manafort and soon-to-be-sentenced felon, stepped from a Cadillac Escalade and into a multilingual pack of 18 cameras and activist Bill Christeson, who shouted, “Lock him up!”

“Charming guy,” the defendant said with a smile and slight accent as he joined his friends in the court’s security line.

And now he’s going to meet several other charming guys — during his 30-day stay in prison. It was a symbolic sentence for a man who, prosecutors said, had “a moral compass that was off-kilter” and repeatedly lied to investigators about his dealings with Manafort and business partner Rick Gates, also a Trump adviser. He avoided a longer sentence because he ultimately came clean.

Van der Zwaan, 33, who worked for the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom while also trying to ingratiate himself with Manafort and Gates in Ukraine, cut an unsympathetic figure. If he is remembered for anything other than being first in the pokey, it will likely be for his nonchalance in the courtroom.

Van der Zwaan’s bit role as the first jailbird of the Mueller probe gives some clues about where else it may go. He’s the son-in-law of German Khan, who is worth more than $9 billion and is an owner of a Russian bank that figured prominently in the “dossier” about alleged Russia-Trump collusion. Van der Zwaan also knew that Gates had been in contact during Trump’s presidential campaign with a person tied to Russian intelligence services.

Unnerving the president

Wherever Mueller is heading, it seems to be unnerving the president, who tends to become more erratic at pivotal moments in the probe. Trump has been stirring up a trade war and stoking anti-immigrant sentiments.

I’d be on edge if I were in Trump’s shoes, too. Mueller’s Men — there were 11 lawyers and investigators, none female, in court for the van der Zwaan sentencing — aren’t a cuddly bunch.

Defense lawyer William Schwartz made an improbable plea of poverty, saying that the defendant is “not wealthy” and dismissing references “to his father-in-law as an oligarch, as if that has some bearing.”

Judge Amy Berman Jackson was unmoved. She told van der Zwaan that he “may self-deport” home to Europe after his month in the pen. Outside the court, the newly sentenced van der Zwaan, no longer smiling, was again accosted by the activist Christeson. “Hey, Alex — it’s Mueller time!” he shouted, invoking the old beer ad. “Congratulations.”

The Escalade pulled away. “One down, 30 to go,” a news photographer joked.

Thirty may be a stretch. But many others will soon follow the lying Dutchman.