Common
03-15-2018, 12:01 PM
Mueller witness is convicted pedophile with shadowy past It was a few days before the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump's inauguration and a Lebanese-American businessman was on his way to Mar-a-Lago.
George Nader, an international fixer whose long history included intrepid back-channel mediation between Israel and Arab countries — and a 15-year-old pedophilia conviction in Europe that has not been previously reported — was transiting through Dulles International Airport outside Washington.
It was hardly his first far-flung journey to see top aides of the world's most powerful leader, as Nader had met the U.S. president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and chief strategist Steve Bannon in the days before they stormed the White House.
But he encountered an altogether different scene awaiting him at the airport.
There, special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators stopped Nader, people familiar with the case said. His electronics were seized and he was then allowed to go to his lawyer. Nader later agreed to cooperate with Mueller's investigation, said the people with knowledge of the case as it pertains to Nader. They weren't authorized to speak publicly on the case and demanded anonymity.
Mueller, whose team has spent the last 10 months investigating possible Trump-related wrongdoing connected to Russia, is interested in high-level get-togethers Nader participated in after the presidential election, according to three people familiar with the case.
The first took place in Trump Tower in New York in December 2016 and brought together Nader, Kushner, Bannon — whom Trump fired last August — and Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates. The second occurred a month later in the Indian Ocean archipelago of Seychelles and involved Nader, bin Zayed, former Blackwater boss Erik Prince and Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian banker close to President Vladimir Putin.
For Nader, it was the latest brush with the law in an eventful, globe-trotting career.
Many of Nader's former contacts and onetime friends have noted in recent weeks how they lost touch with him in the early 2000s.
On Wednesday, an official in the Czech Republic told The Associated Press that Nader is a convicted pedophile and served time in a Prague prison around that time.
Nader was convicted by Prague's Municipal Court of 10 cases of sexually abusing minors and sentenced to a one-year prison term in May 2003, said Marketa Puci, the court spokeswoman. She said the crimes occurred between 1999 and 2002.
Nader's legal problems in Prague appear unrelated to his role in Mueller's probe in the United States. But they contribute to the portrait of a man who has led a shadowy existence as a go-between across numerous Middle East capitals and who gave testimony to Mueller's Washington grand jury earlier this month.
http://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article205252829.html#fmp
George Nader, an international fixer whose long history included intrepid back-channel mediation between Israel and Arab countries — and a 15-year-old pedophilia conviction in Europe that has not been previously reported — was transiting through Dulles International Airport outside Washington.
It was hardly his first far-flung journey to see top aides of the world's most powerful leader, as Nader had met the U.S. president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and chief strategist Steve Bannon in the days before they stormed the White House.
But he encountered an altogether different scene awaiting him at the airport.
There, special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators stopped Nader, people familiar with the case said. His electronics were seized and he was then allowed to go to his lawyer. Nader later agreed to cooperate with Mueller's investigation, said the people with knowledge of the case as it pertains to Nader. They weren't authorized to speak publicly on the case and demanded anonymity.
Mueller, whose team has spent the last 10 months investigating possible Trump-related wrongdoing connected to Russia, is interested in high-level get-togethers Nader participated in after the presidential election, according to three people familiar with the case.
The first took place in Trump Tower in New York in December 2016 and brought together Nader, Kushner, Bannon — whom Trump fired last August — and Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates. The second occurred a month later in the Indian Ocean archipelago of Seychelles and involved Nader, bin Zayed, former Blackwater boss Erik Prince and Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian banker close to President Vladimir Putin.
For Nader, it was the latest brush with the law in an eventful, globe-trotting career.
Many of Nader's former contacts and onetime friends have noted in recent weeks how they lost touch with him in the early 2000s.
On Wednesday, an official in the Czech Republic told The Associated Press that Nader is a convicted pedophile and served time in a Prague prison around that time.
Nader was convicted by Prague's Municipal Court of 10 cases of sexually abusing minors and sentenced to a one-year prison term in May 2003, said Marketa Puci, the court spokeswoman. She said the crimes occurred between 1999 and 2002.
Nader's legal problems in Prague appear unrelated to his role in Mueller's probe in the United States. But they contribute to the portrait of a man who has led a shadowy existence as a go-between across numerous Middle East capitals and who gave testimony to Mueller's Washington grand jury earlier this month.
http://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article205252829.html#fmp