I’m just catching up on some news and caught this — not seeing it yet on DKos, so trying to get the news out to the community.
Former key Mueller witness George Nader arrested on child pornography charges
Washington (CNN) George Nader, who was a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, was arrested on child pornography charges Monday in New York, federal prosecutors announced Monday.
Nader was arrested upon arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport for "transporting visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct."
He previously pleaded guilty to the same charge in 1991, the Justice Department said.
If convicted, he faces a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum of 40 years.
Nader will make an initial appearance in court in New York but was charged by prosecutors in Virginia.
Updating to add this brief timeline of how the arrest today unfolded:
Figure linked to Trump transition charged with transporting child pornography
<snip>
A Lebanese American businessman, Nader was stopped by federal agents when he arrived at Dulles in January 2018. Those FBI agents served him with a subpoena and wanted to question him as part of the Russia investigation, according to people, who like others familiar with the issue, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
According to the complaint, Nader was interviewed by FBI agents at the airport, and one of his three iPhones was searched for reasons unrelated to child pornography. But on the phone, authorities found 12 sexually explicit videos featuring boys approximately ranging in age from 2 to 14, according to the court documents.
Over the following weeks, Nader began to cooperate with authorities, providing grand jury testimony about his interactions with Trump supporters, according to people familiar with the matter.
Authorities said he was charged under seal on the alleged child pornography in April 2018, but he had left the country at that point.
According to the AFFIDAVIT IN SUPPORT OF A CRIMINAL COMPLAINT (TRIGGER WARNING: that link includes graphic descriptions of the videos found on Nader’s phone so please do NOT click/read unless you are well prepared), the child pornography wasn’t found until February 12th. Nader was picked up at Dulles on January 17th and I’ve found references in the Mueller report to interviews conducted on January 19 and January 22, but none for February, so it would appear that the child pornography was found after Nader met with Mueller.
Fingers crossed that the name “George Nader” is familiar to folks here, but just in case:
George Nader, a well-known Middle East consultant who was a significant witness in the former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, has been indicted on federal child pornography charges, The Washington Post reported.
A “Find” on a copy of The Mueller Report yields 119 hits for “Nader” with the bulk of them appearing in Volume 1 pages 147 — 159, where the report details “Kirill Dmitriev's Transition-Era Outreach to the Incoming Administration” and a meeting between Erik Prince and Kirill Dmitriev in the Seychelles.
Unfortunately, Mueller’s investigation into the Seychelles meeting was obstructed because (Volume 1, page 156):
The conflicting accounts provided by Bannon and Prince could not be independently clarified by reviewing their communications, because neither one was able to produce any of the messages they exchanged in the time period surrounding the Seychelles meeting. Prince's phone contained no text messages prior to March 2017, though provider records indicate that he and Bannon exchanged dozens of messages. Prince denied deleting any messages but claimed he did not know why there were no messages on his device before March 2017. Bannon's devices similarly contained no messages in the relevant time period, and Bannon also stated he did not know why messages did not appear on his device. Bannon told the Office that, during both the months before and after the Seychelles meeting, he regularly used his personal Blackberry and personal email for work-related communications (including those with Prince), and he took no steps to preserve these work communications.
Also of note, according to Wikipedia, this incident and the 1991 incident mentioned in the CNN article above, are not Nader’s only trouble with child pornography:
Nader has been charged with crimes involving the sexual exploitation of minors, and convicted of several of them. A 1985 charge of receiving from the Netherlands films and magazines depicting pre and post-pubescent boys engaged in sexual acts, was dismissed due to an invalid search warrant.[15] A federal court in Virginia in 1991 gave him a six-month sentence on a felony charge of transporting from Germany pornographic videotapes of boys about 13 or 14 years old.[15] Prosecutors agreed to put the case under seal "due to the extremely sensitive nature of Mr. Nader’s work in the Middle East."[15]
In 2003, he was convicted in Prague, Czech Republic for sexually abusing 10 boys, for which he served one year in prison.[1][15] A spokesperson of the court told press that the crimes occurred between 1999 and 2002. In one case, at his room in Hilton Prague Hotel, he requested oral sex from a 14-year-old boy and after he refused, Nader masturbated in front of him, paying him 2,000 koruna.[1]