George Nader (businessman)

George Aref Nader (Arabic: جورج نادر, born May 15, 1959) is a Lebanese-American consultant, lobbyist, political adviser, and repeat sex offender. He has repeatedly acted as an unofficial liaison between United States politicians and the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and as a lobbyist for private security firm Blackwater.

George Nader
Born (1959-05-15) 15 May 1959[1]
Lebanon
CitizenshipUnited States
Lebanon
United Arab Emirates[2]
Alma materCleveland State University
Criminal statusPleaded guilty
Conviction(s)Child pornography infractions
Child sexual abuse
Criminal penalty10 years in prison
Details
CountryUnited States, Czech Republic
Date apprehended
1991; 2003; 2019

Nader has served as an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates and as a consultant to Blackwater founder Erik Prince. In January 2018, special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators questioned Nader in connection to suspicions that the UAE had been involved with President Trump's 2016 campaign.[3] In August 2016 Nader met with Donald Trump Jr., Erik Prince, and Joel Zamel, an Israeli entrepreneur and specialist in social media manipulation, to offer help to the Trump team in winning the elections. There are conflicting accounts of whether the nearly $2 million Nader paid Zamel after Trump's victory is attributed to that or not.[4] In 2021, Nader pleaded guilty to violating U.S. campaign finance laws by using over 3.5 million dollars to reach out through a front to Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign for the U.S. Presidency.[5]

Nader has had several run-ins with the law over the years related to sexual abuse of children. He was convicted in the 1990s of transporting child pornography publications, and imprisoned in 2003 for sexually abusing ten boys in the Czech Republic.[6] He pleaded guilty in early 2020 to flying a 14-year-old boy from Europe to the US for sex, and transporting pornography depicting child sexual abuse and bestiality.[7][8][9]

Early life

Nader was born in Lebanon,[10] and is a Christian.[11] As a teenager, he moved to the US, not knowing any English. He went on to attend Cleveland State University.[12]

Career

From 1981 through the 1990s, Nader was editor of Middle East Insight;[13] the magazine ceased publication in 2002.[14]

During the George H. W. Bush Administration he helped to free American hostages in Lebanon after the Iran–Contra affair.[13] During the Clinton Administration, Nader tried unsuccessfully to broker an Israeli–Syrian peace agreement, working with Estée Lauder heir Ronald Lauder.[13]

In the 2000s, Nader left Washington and spent most of his time in the Middle East, especially in Iraq after the 2003 Iraq invasion.[14] During that time, Nader volunteered to act as a "shadow diplomat" connecting U.S. politicians to Middle Eastern officials.[13] Erik Prince, founder of security firm Blackwater, hired Nader to help with contracts with the Iraqi government; in a 2010 deposition, Prince identified Nader as a "business development consultant".[15]

In August 2016, Nader met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower offering assistance to his father's presidential campaign.[16] Nader served as an envoy representing Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammad bin Salman, and Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The meeting included Erik Prince and Joel Zamel, an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation[17][16] and owner of intelligence gathering firms including Wikistrat and the Psy-Group, who bragged to have received $2 million from Nader as part of the presidential campaign.[18]

Nader attended a December 2016 meeting in New York between the United Arab Emirates officials and president-elect Donald Trump's associates Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn, and Steve Bannon.[13] In January 2017 he was at a meeting on the Seychelles islands between the Emiratis and Erik Prince, and was present when Prince met with officials from the UAE and Kirill Dmitriev, head of state-run Russian Direct Investment Fund.[13]

Working with Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy in 2017, Nader funded a conference criticizing Qatar that was hosted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.[19] At the time Nader and Broidy were pushing the White House to remove Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whom the Saudis and Emiratis saw as insufficiently tough on Iran and Qatar.[10]

In January 2018, Nader was served a grand-jury subpoena,[20] and special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators questioned him to elicit if the UAE had tried to influence members of President Trump's campaign.[13][21] Kathryn Ruemmler, an Obama-era White House counsel, was among the lawyers representing Nader.[1] Nader was granted immunity for information for the investigation.[10][22]

Campaign finance charges

In December 2019, court documents were unsealed that showed Nader had been charged in federal court with violating campaign finance laws, and falsifying records.[5] The prosecutors alleged that, using banking industry executive Andy Khawaja as a front to obscure the source, Nader sent over $3.5 million to organizations supporting Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign for president, in an attempt to cultivate ties with the candidate.[5] Following Donald Trump's election, Khawaja donated $1 million to the inauguration organizers.[5] The documents indicated that Nader continually reported the status of his efforts to an unnamed foreign nation.[5] Nader pleaded guilty in 2021 to "felony conspiracy to defraud the US government" in the case,[23] and he was sentenced in July 2023 to 20 months in prison, to be served at the end of his in-progress sentence for child sexual abuse.[24] (See below.)

Child sexual abuse charges

Nader has been convicted of multiple crimes involving the sexual exploitation of minors. A 1985 charge, of receiving films and magazines from the Netherlands, depicting pre- and post-pubescent boys engaged in sexual acts, was dismissed due to an invalid search warrant.[25] A federal court in Virginia in 1991 gave him a six-month sentence on a felony charge of transporting pornographic videotapes from Germany, of boys about 13 or 14 years old.[25] Prosecutors agreed to put the case under seal "due to the extremely sensitive nature of Mr. Nader's work in the Middle East."[25]

In 2003, he was convicted in Prague, Czech Republic, of sexually abusing ten boys, for which he served one year in prison.[25][1] A spokesperson of the court told press that the crimes occurred between 1999 and 2002. In one case, at his room in the Hilton Prague Hotel, Nader requested oral sex from a 14-year-old boy. After he refused, Nader masturbated in front of him and paid him 2,000 koruna (about US$60).[1]

In January 2018 he was questioned by FBI agents working on behalf of special counsel Robert Mueller, and child pornography was incidentally found on one of his three cell phones, as agents inspected it pursuant to a warrant.[26][27] In June 2019 he was arrested by federal agents and charged with possession of child pornography and images of bestiality[8] and, for a second time, transportation of child pornography, and held in jail pending trial in Virginia.[28] Also in 2019 he was charged with transporting a 14-year-old Czech boy from Europe for sex at his Washington-area home in February 2000.[9] Nader reached a plea deal with prosecutors in January 2020: he pleaded guilty to charges of possession of child pornography and transportation of a minor,[29] and in June 2020, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.[30]

See also

References
  1. Bradley Klapper; Karel Janicek; Desmond Butler; Tom LoBianco; Eric Tucker (15 March 2018). "Mueller witness is convicted pedophile with shadowy past". AP NEWS. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  2. Vogel, Kenneth P.; Confessore, Nicholas (8 February 2021). "Using Connections to Trump, Dershowitz Became Force in Clemency Grants". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 April 2021.
  3. Mazzetti, Mark; Kirkpatrick, David D.; Protess, Ben; LaFraniere, Sharon (4 April 2018). "Witness in Mueller Inquiry Who Advises U.A.E. Ruler Also Has Ties to Russia". The New York Times.
  4. Mazzetti, Mark; Bergman, Ronen; Kirkpatrick, David D. (19 May 2018). "Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election". The New York Times.
  5. Tau, Byron; Horwitz, Jeff. "Mueller Witness With Trump Ties Is Charged With Illegally Funneling Money to Support Clinton". WSJ. Retrieved 4 December 2019. (subscription required)
  6. Mueller witness was convicted on child porn charge, by Josh Gerstein, at Politico; published March 16, 2018; retrieved May 21, 2018
  7. "Figure linked to Trump transition charged with transporting child pornography". Washington Post.
  8. "Businessman Named in Mueller Probe Arrested on Charges Including Child Porn". The New York Times. Associated Press. 3 June 2019. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 3 June 2019.
  9. Mangan, Dan (19 July 2019). "Mueller witness George Nader charged with transporting 14-year-old boy for sex, child porn". CNBC. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  10. Kirkpatrick, David D.; Mazzetti, Mark (21 March 2018). "How 2 Gulf Monarchies Sought to Influence the White House". The New York Times.
  11. George A. Nader (3 May 1987), "AT HOME WITH THE AYATOLLAH AND HIS MEN", The Washington Post, retrieved 20 May 2018
  12. Max Kutner (6 March 2018). "Who Is George Nader? Mueller Investigating Whether Magazine Editor Helped UAE Buy White House Influence". Newsweek.com. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  13. Prokupecz, Shimon; Scannell, Kara; Murray, Sara (7 March 2018). "'Man of mystery' cooperates with Mueller in Russia probe". CNN. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  14. Szathmary, Zoe; Weber, Joseph (5 March 2018). "George Nader in spotlight amid Mueller probe: Who is he?". Fox News. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  15. Mark Mazzetti, Maggie Haberman and David D. Kirkpatrick Mueller's Focus on Adviser to Emirates Suggests Broader Investigation New York Times, 3-3-2018
  16. "Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election". The New York Times. 19 May 2018.
  17. "Trump Jr. met Gulf princes' emissary in 2016 who offered campaign help". Reuters. 19 May 2018.
  18. Byron Tau; Rebecca Ballhaus (19 May 2018), "Mueller Probe Expands to Israeli Entrepreneur With U.A.E. Ties", The Wall Street Journal, retrieved 21 May 2018(subscription required)
  19. Gardiner Harris (13 May 2018). "He Was a Tireless Critic of the Iran Deal. Now He Insists He Wanted to Save It". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 May 2018.
  20. Natasha Bertrand Was George Nader Allowed Into the White House? The Atlantic, March 8, 2018, accessed 114 May 2018
  21. Mark Mazzetti, David D. Kirkpatrick, Adam Goldman. Adviser to Emirates With Ties to Trump Aides Is Cooperating With Special Counsel. NYT, March 6, 2018
  22. Zeeshan Aleem (28 March 2018). "George Nader, one of the Trump-Russia investigation's most mysterious figures, explained". Vox.com. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  23. "UAE Adviser Illegally Funneled Foreign Cash Into Hillary Clinton's 2016 Campaign". The Intercept. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  24. "Office of Public Affairs | Businessman Sentenced for $3.5M Foreign Conduit Contribution Scheme | United States Department of Justice". www.justice.gov. 18 July 2023. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
  25. Gerstein, Josh (16 March 2018). "Mueller witness was convicted on child porn charge". Politico. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
  26. Barrett, Devlin; Weiner, Rachel (3 June 2019). "Figure linked to Trump transition charged with transporting child pornography". The Washington Post. Retrieved 3 June 2019.
  27. Shimon Prokupecz, Kara Scannell and Sara Murray (7 March 2018). "'Man of mystery' cooperates with Mueller in Russia probe". CNN.
  28. Weiner, Rachel (7 June 2019). "George Nader, accused of a history of inappropriate contact with children, left country multiple times during Mueller interviews". The Washington Post. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  29. Weiner, Rachel (13 January 2020). "George Nader, key witness in Mueller probe, pleads guilty to child sex charges". The Washington Post. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  30. Weiner, Rachel (26 June 2020). "George Nader sentenced to 10 years in prison for child sex charges". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 26 June 2020. Retrieved 26 June 2020.

Further reading
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