Respectfully disagree. First, he hasn’t sung like a canary. He would be a co-operating witness if that were the case, and he isn’t. Second, there was a serious aggravating factor here, namely the gravity of the matter on which he was questioned and on which he lied to federal agents. He didn’t lie to federal agents on a routine matter of little relative significance. He lied to them about questions directed at protecting our national security from the gravest, most hostile threat it has faced in my memory. He lied to them about the presence of a Russian spy at the heart of Manafort’s organization. It’s also relevant, if you’re giving him credit for the bourgeois asset of his legal career, that his other assets include access to a billionaire family fortune. That makes his $20K fine feel like a $2 for the rest of us. Nor will this sentence send any kind of signal to others contemplating co-operation with Mueller. Once the tariff for lying to him has been set at 30 days in jail plus loose change, a disincentive is created.
Same visions bedevil me when I hold a salad fork.
He got the Affluenza White Man sentence. Even Martha Stewart received 5 months and I don’t think she was involved in the destruction of democracy.
If you think that it’s merely a coincidence that van der Zwaan is married to the daughter of a Russian oligarch then you’re as stupid as a Trump supporter.
Well, now we know the true cost of lying to the Special Counsel. Mueller lost a lot of gravitas with this sentence.
He’s probably going to be ok … starting a 1000 … maybe a 1500 piece puzzle -----
I wouldn’t start a 2000 piece though …
You know, I’d bet there are any number of guys serving more than 30 days who have pregnant wives and sick mothers. I’ll save my sympathy for someone who deserves it. Oh, and he’s been bored. My heart bleeds.
But she did cause several thousand perfectly good goddamn bathrooms and kitchens to be needlessly redecorated. Yeah, I’m lookin’ at you Martha! I hope Snoop slaps you silly.
I do not rule out a pardon, folks. Now that would send out a huge message.
Sadly, they will probably put him in one of the light security country club lockups.
When it was his turn to defend his client, van der Zwaan lawyer William Schwartz brought up van der Zwaan’s family situation — his wife’s pregnancy has been difficult, and his mother is also suffering a health issue — and the stress that the four-plus months that he has been in the United States has put on on him and his loved ones.
“Schwartz later said that his client was willing to resign from position in jail as that would enable him to pursue his obligation to spend more time with his family.”
The sentencing guidelines are the guidelines. Mueller nabbed him with the thing that was easiest to get a conviction on and leveraged it to get Gates to plead guilty. He got Van der Zwaan over the same time period that he first indicted Gates and Manafort. Gates was deeply resistant to cooperation. Mueller got Van der Zwaan’s admission over the course of November-early December 2017 and worked out the guilty plea. He used that info to nail Gates and force him to change strategies. Gates basically did a 180 within 2 months from the time that he nailed Van der Zwaan. The key info he used on Gates was the confession about Kilimnick’s role as a Russia intel agent.
Mueller is keeping his eye on the prize and using tried and true techniques of nabbing small guys, flipping witnesses and using that info to go after big fish.
Thank you Judge Jackson for handing down a 30 day sentence in prison, plus the$20,000 fine and the probation this liar is ordered to serve.
Kudos!!!
Hmmmmmm, what if father-in-law will be a bit concerned about the light sentence? You know, that uneasy feeling that maybe there was a reason for it, and all of that wondering what Sonny Boy might have spilled?
Maybe that’s the biggest punishment. A harsher one would totally indicate lack of real cooperation.
Maybe Zwaan won’t be sleeping well for many years to come.
The article states that he lost his job with the firm.
Keep in mind Zwaan’s guilty plea helped Mueller get Gates - the key that unlocks the door to several angles of the election conspiracy.
When the only things to do are eat, shit and do a puzzle, you can make a lot of progress on a puzzle.
Torture is never a joke.
This was a satisfying read.
Sentence seems a little light. But now I get to have an earworm for the day; “Thirty Days in the Hole.”