George Aref Nader ( ar, جورج نادر, born May 15, 1959) is a Lebanese-American consultant,

lobbyist In politics, lobbying, persuasion or interest representation is the act of lawfully attempting to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying, which ...

, political adviser, and repeat

sex offender A sex offender (sexual offender, sex abuser, or sexual abuser) is a person who has committed a sex crime. What constitutes a sex crime differs by culture and legal jurisdiction. The majority of convicted sex offenders have convictions for crime ...

. He has repeatedly acted as an unofficial liaison between United States politicians and the

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia (The Middle East). It is located at th ...

and

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...

and as a lobbyist for private security firm Blackwater. Nader has served as an adviser to Crown Prince

Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan ( ar, مُحَمّد بِن زَايد آل نَهيَان, Moḥamed bin Zāyed Āl Nahyān; born 11 March 1961), colloquially known by his initials as MBZ, is the third president of the United Arab Emirates ...

of the

and as a consultant to Blackwater founder

Erik Prince Erik Dean Prince (born June 6, 1969) is an American businessman, former United States Navy SEALs, U.S. Navy SEAL Officer (armed forces), officer, and the founder of the private military company Blackwater USA, Blackwater. He served as Blackwat ...

. 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. In August 2016 Nader met with

Donald Trump Jr Donald John Trump Jr. (born December 31, 1977) is an American political activist, businessman, author, and former television presenter. He is the eldest child of Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, and his firs ...

, and

Joel Zamel Joel Zamel (born 1986) is an Australian-Israeli inventor, entrepreneur, owner and operator of private intelligence and political analysis agencies which offer forecasting simulations, wargaming, influence operations, social media campaigns, private ...

, 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 close to 2 million dollars Nader paid Zamel after Trump's victory is attributed to that or not. 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 Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

's 2016 campaign for the U.S. Presidency. Nader has had several run-ins with the law over the years related to

sexual abuse of children Child sexual abuse (CSA), also called child molestation, is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include engaging in sexual activities with a child (whethe ...

. He was convicted in the 1990s of transporting

child pornography Child pornography (also called CP, child sexual abuse material, CSAM, child porn, or kiddie porn) is pornography that unlawfully exploits children for sexual stimulation. It may be produced with the direct involvement or sexual assault of a chi ...

publications, and imprisoned in 2003 for sexually abusing ten boys in the Czech Republic.Mueller witness was convicted on child porn charge
by Josh Gerstein, at ''

Politico ''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American, German-owned political journalism newspaper company based in Arlington County, Virginia, that covers politics and policy in the United States and intern ...

''; published March 16, 2018; retrieved May 21, 2018 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.

Early life

Nader was born in

Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus li ...

, and is a Christian. As a teenager, he moved to the US, not knowing any English. He went on to attend

Cleveland State University Cleveland State University (CSU) is a public research university in Cleveland, Ohio. It was established in 1964 and opened for classes in 1965 after acquiring the entirety of Fenn College, a private school that had been in operation since 1923. ...

Career

From 1981 through the 1990s, Nader was editor of ''Middle East Insight;'' the magazine ceased publication in 2002. During the

George H. W. Bush Administration George may refer to: People * George (given name) * George (surname) * George (singer), American-Canadian singer George Nozuka, known by the mononym George * George Washington, First President of the United States * George W. Bush, 43rd Presiden ...

he helped to free American hostages in Lebanon after the

Iran–Contra affair The Iran–Contra affair ( fa, ماجرای ایران-کنترا, es, Caso Irán–Contra), often referred to as the Iran–Contra scandal, the McFarlane affair (in Iran), or simply Iran–Contra, was a political scandal in the United States ...

. During the

Clinton Administration Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office following a decisive election victory over Re ...

, Nader tried unsuccessfully to broker an Israeli–Syrian peace agreement, working with Estée Lauder heir

Ronald Lauder Ronald (Ron) Steven Lauder (born February 26, 1944) is an American businessman, billionaire, philanthropist, art collector, and political activist. He is the president of the World Jewish Congress since 2007. He and his brother, Leonard Lauder, ...

. In the 2000s, Nader left Washington and spent most of his time in the Middle East, especially in Iraq after the 2003

Iraq invasion The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 ...

. During that time, Nader volunteered to act as a "shadow

diplomat A diplomat (from grc, δίπλωμα; romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state or an intergovernmental institution such as the United Nations or the European Union to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or internati ...

" connecting U.S. politicians to Middle Eastern officials.

, 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".

Mark Mazzetti Mark Mazzetti (born May 13, 1974) is an American journalist who works for the ''New York Times''. He is currently a Washington Investigative Correspondent for the Times. Life Mazzetti was born in Washington, D.C. He attended Regis High School ...

Maggie Haberman Maggie Lindsy Haberman (born October 30, 1973) is an American journalist, a White House correspondent for ''The New York Times'', and a political analyst for CNN. She previously worked as a political reporter for the ''New York Post'', the New ...

and

David D. Kirkpatrick David D. Kirkpatrick (born 1970) is an American, London-based international correspondent for ''The New York Times''. From 2011 through 2015, he served as its Cairo bureau chief and a Middle East correspondent. He has received three Pulitzer Pr ...

br>Mueller’s Focus on Adviser to Emirates Suggests Broader Investigation
''New York Times'', 3-3-2018 In August 2016, Nader met with

Donald Trump Jr. Donald John Trump Jr. (born December 31, 1977) is an American political activist, businessman, author, and former television presenter. He is the eldest child of Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, and his firs ...

Trump Tower Trump Tower is a 58-story, mixed-use skyscraper at 721–725 Fifth Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, between East 56th and 57th Streets. The building contains the headquarters for the Trump Organization, as well ...

offering assistance to his father's presidential campaign.Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election
. ''The New York Times''. 19 May 2018. Nader served as an envoy representing

's Crown Prince and de facto ruler

Mohammad bin Salman Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud ( ar, محمد بن سلمان آل سعود, translit=Muḥammad bin Salmān Āl Su‘ūd; born 31 August 1985), colloquially known by his initials MBS or MbS, is Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia. H ...

and

, the Crown Prince of the

Emirate of Abu Dhabi The Emirate of Abu Dhabi (, , or ; ar, إِمَارَةْ أَبُوظَبِي , ) is one of seven emirates that constitute the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is by far the largest emirate, accounting for 87% of the nation's total land area o ...

. The meeting included Erik Prince and

, an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation and owner of intelligence gathering firms including

Wikistrat Wikistrat Inc. is a geostrategic analysis and business consultancy founded in Israel in 2010 by Joel Zamel and Daniel Green and headquartered in the United States. It describes itself as the world's first crowdsourced consultancy leveraging a glo ...

and the

Psy-Group Psy-Group is a former Israeli private intelligence agency. It closed after revelations that it was under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Psy-Group’s CEO was Royi Burstein, a former lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Force ...

, who bragged to have received $2 million from Nader as part of the presidential campaign. Nader attended a December 2016 meeting in New York between the

officials and president-elect

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...

's associates

Jared Kushner Jared Corey Kushner (born January 10, 1981) is an American businessman and investor. He served as a senior advisor to 45th U.S. president Donald Trump, his father-in-law. Since leaving the White House, Kushner founded Affinity Partners, a pri ...

Michael Flynn Michael Thomas Flynn (born December 24, 1958) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general and conspiracy theorist who was the 24th U.S. National Security Advisor for the first 22 days of the Trump administration. He resigned in light of ...

, and

Steve Bannon Stephen Kevin Bannon (born November 27, 1953) is an American media executive, political strategist, and former investment banker. He served as the White House's chief strategist in the administration of U.S. president Donald Trump during t ...

. In January 2017 he was at a meeting on the

Seychelles Seychelles (, ; ), officially the Republic of Seychelles (french: link=no, République des Seychelles; Creole: ''La Repiblik Sesel''), is an archipelagic state consisting of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean. Its capital and largest city, V ...

islands between the Emiratis and Erik Prince, and was present when Prince met with officials from the UAE and

Kirill Dmitriev Kirill Alexandrovich Dmitriev (russian: Кирилл Александрович Дмитриев; born 12 April 1975) is the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a $10 billion sovereign wealth fund created by the Russian government ...

, head of state-run

Russian Direct Investment Fund The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) is Russia's sovereign wealth fund established in 2011 by the Russian government to make investments in companies of high-growth sectors of the Russian economy. Its mandate is to co-invest alongside the wo ...

. Working with Republican fundraiser

Elliott Broidy Elliott B. Broidy (born 1956/1957) is an American venture capitalist and businessman. From 2005 to 2008, he served as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). In 2009, he was convicted in a public corruption and bribery case in ...

in 2017, Nader funded a conference criticizing

Qatar Qatar (, ; ar, قطر, Qaṭar ; local vernacular pronunciation: ), officially the State of Qatar,) is a country in Western Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it sh ...

that was hosted by the

Foundation for Defense of Democracies The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit think tank and registered lobbying organization based in Washington, D.C., United States. The group's political leanings have been described as hawkish and neoconservative ...

. At the time Nader and Broidy were pushing the White House to remove Secretary of State

Rex Tillerson Rex Wayne Tillerson (born March 23, 1952) is an American engineer and energy executive who served as the 69th U.S. secretary of state from February 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018, under President Donald Trump. Prior to joining the Trump administ ...

, whom the Saudis and Emiratis saw as insufficiently tough on Iran and Qatar. In January 2018, Nader was served a grand-jury subpoena, and special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators questioned him to elicit if the UAE had tried to influence members of President Trump's campaign.Mark Mazzetti, David D. Kirkpatrick, Adam Goldman
Adviser to Emirates With Ties to Trump Aides Is Cooperating With Special Counsel.
NYT, March 6, 2018

Kathryn Ruemmler Kathryn "Kathy" Ruemmler (born April 19, 1971) is an attorney who formerly served as Principal Deputy White House Counsel and then White House Counsel to President Barack Obama. Previously a partner at Latham and Watkins co-chairing its white-c ...

, an

Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

-era White House counsel, was among the lawyers representing Nader. Nader was granted

immunity Immunity may refer to: Medicine * Immunity (medical), resistance of an organism to infection or disease * ''Immunity'' (journal), a scientific journal published by Cell Press Biology * Immune system Engineering * Radiofrequence immunity desc ...

for information for the investigation.

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. 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. Khawaja donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration. The documents indicated that Nader continually reported the status of his efforts to an unnamed foreign nation. A December 2021 sentencing memo indicated that Nader had pleaded guilty to "felony conspiracy to defraud the US government” in the case, and prosecutors sought a five-year sentence, to be served at the end of his ongoing 10-year child pornography sentence. (See below.)

Child sexual abuse

Nader has been convicted of multiple crimes involving the sexual exploitation of minors. A 1985 charge, of receiving from the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

films and magazines depicting pre- and post-pubescent boys engaged in sexual acts, was dismissed due to an invalid

search warrant A search warrant is a court order that a magistrate or judge issues to authorize law enforcement officers to conduct a search of a person, location, or vehicle for evidence of a crime and to confiscate any evidence they find. In most countries, ...

. A federal court in Virginia in 1991 gave him a six-month sentence on a felony charge of transporting from Germany

pornographic video Pornographic films (pornos), erotic films, sex films, and 18+ films are films that present sexually explicit subject matter in order to arouse and satisfy the viewer. Pornographic films present sexual fantasies and usually include erotica ...

tapes of boys about 13 or 14 years old. Prosecutors agreed to put the case under seal "due to the extremely sensitive nature of Mr. Nader’s work in the Middle East." In 2003, he was convicted in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

, Czech Republic, of

sexually abusing Sexual abuse or sex abuse, also referred to as molestation, is abusive sexual behavior by one person upon another. It is often perpetrated using force or by taking advantage of another. Molestation often refers to an instance of sexual assau ...

ten boys, for which he served one year in prison. 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$). In January 2018 he was questioned by

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...

agents working on behalf of special counsel

Robert Mueller Robert Swan Mueller III (; born August 7, 1944) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2001 to 2013. A graduate of Princeton University and New York ...

, and child pornography was incidentally found on one of his three cell phones as agents inspected it pursuant to a warrant. In June 2019 he was arrested by federal agents and charged with possession of child pornography and images of bestiality and, for a second time, transportation of child pornography, and held in jail pending trial in Virginia. Also in 2019 he was charged with having transported a 14-year-old Czech boy from Europe for sex at his Washington-area home in February 2000. 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, for which prosecutors recommended the minimum penalty of 10 years in prison; in June 2020, he received that sentence.

Early life

Career

Campaign finance charges

Child sexual abuse

See also

References

Further reading