6/4/19: The Mueller “Witch Hunt”
continues, with George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman, the latest witch
to be shot down while riding a broom. Nader was arrested on June 3, after
landing at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.
His arrest, under sealed
indictment, stems from the Russia investigation, and he spends today behind bars.
Most Americans will have forgotten, or never have known, but Nadar,
a sometimes Trump adviser, was first stopped by F.B.I. agents at a D.C.
airport on January 17, 2018. He was pulled into a side room and questioned
about suspicious contacts with Russians during the 2016 campaign.
Where was Nader headed at the time? To Mar-a-Lago, to celebrate
Trump’s first year in office.
(Nader had been part of the Trump transition team, headed up
by the paragon of Christian virtues, VP Mike Pence.)
At that time, agents wielding a warrant confiscated his
electronic devices. A subsequent search revealed evidence of possible child
pornography on his phone. A new warrant was issued, and a dozen sexually
explicit videos were recovered. That led to a sealed indictment—but if I
understand correctly, this was the first chance authorities had to arrest
Nader, mostly works overseas. If convicted, Nader—who has already been convicted
on child pornography charges in the Czech Republic in 1991—faces at least fifteen
years in prison.
Unfortunately, Nader is the type of sleazebag who constantly floats
to the surface in stories involving President Trump and his misguided administration.
He first came to the attention of federal investigators when they got wind of a
secret meeting in January 2017, in The Seychelles. (Admit it: you have
no idea where these islands are—nor did I till the story of the secret meeting
first broke—which helps explain why they’d be the perfect spot for a secret
meeting.) Nadar was one participant. Kirill Dmitriev, representing Vladimir
Putin, was another. The third man in attendance was Erik Prince, brother of
Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education.
Once the secret meeting was revealed, Prince claimed it was
all a matter of chance, and he just happened to be vacationing in The
Seychelles, and just happened to run into Dmitriev in a bar—and just happened
to have a friendly chat, of no real consequence.
But the Mueller Report proves otherwise. Nader set it all up.
Mueller had emails and phone records.
That wasn’t the first time Nader was involved in a suspicious
secret meeting. In May 2018 the “Fake News” New York Times broke the
story of another secret meeting. This one, in August 2016, involved Nader, Donald
Trump Jr., and representatives of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Plus, Erik Prince!
Plus, Joel Zamel, representing an Israeli tech company. According
to the Times, Zamel pitched a plan to “to create fake online identities,
to use social media manipulation and to gather intelligence to help defeat
Hillary Clinton.”
(That’s pretty much the same as what the Russians later did
to help the Trump campaign, in case you spend all your time watching Fox News,
or otherwise have your head imbedded in your posterior region.)
Participants in that meeting disagree about what happened
next, with almost everyone who was there conveniently denying any such work was
ever performed (which would almost surely have been illegal).
Oddly enough, however, Mueller’s team later turned up evidence
that Nader sent Zamel $2,000,000 after the election.
And just to spice up the story, let’s toss another felon into
the stew. After Trump won the election, Nader helped arrange a defense consulting
deal between the United Arab Emirates and Elliott Broidy, worth as much as $600 million. It was an odd choice—except
that we now live in Trumpistan. Broidy was not the type you’d trust with a contract
of that magnitude, or any other contract, really, having been convicted in 2009
of paying a cool million dollars in bribes to secure a deal to invest $250 million
in New York State pension funds.
Broidy is also the guy who agreed to pay a $1.6 million hush
money payment to a Playboy Bunny he impregnated.
That deal was worked out by a third felon, Michael Cohen,
President Trump’s former personal lawyer.
(The Bunny later had an abortion.)
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| Nader and Trump in happier times. |
