March 6, 2018: George Nader Cooperating with the Mueller Investigation

 

3/6/18: We learn today that George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman, has begun cooperating with Robert Mueller. Nader works as an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed and the United Arab Emirates. 

He normally travels in rarified circles. 

Media reports say he was stopped by F.B.I agents after landing at Dulles International Airport in January. They handed him a subpoena, relieved him of his electronic devices and questioned him for two hours. 

This meant he missed his connecting flight to…Mar-a-Lago…where he had hoped to help the president celebrate his first year in office. 

What did the F.B.I. want to know? And what is Mueller asking Nader about? One possibility is that Nader funneled money from the U.A.E. into the Trump campaign. That would be flagrantly illegal.

 

Nader also attended a meeting in the Seychelles Islands (population: 94,677) in January 2017. If you’re like me, you’re going to have to google the islands to find out where they are. Nader found them. So did Erik Prince, brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, founder of Blackwater Security, and at the time an informal adviser to the Trump transition team. 

Who else flew to the islands, just because they are so conveniently located? Kirill Dmitriev, representing Vladimir Putin. 

You can probably guess where this is going. Dmitriev managed a powerful Russian trust fund, sanctioned by President Obama. 

According to The New York Times, Nader has since been questioned repeatedly about a variety of meetings, including at least one with Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon at the White House. 

Mr. Prince has denied any secret deals were discussed during this meeting. He just happened to run into Dmitriev, and they had a friendly drink. 

In the Seychelles.

Just a coincidence: Prince and the Russian meet up in a bar.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: The Mueller Report proves that Prince was lying when he said he just happened to meet Dmitriev for a drink. The meeting had been arranged by Nader, at Dmitriev’s request. Nader later gets indicted for sex trafficking of a minor; see: 6/4/19. 

In June 2020, he pleads guilty and is sentenced to spend ten years in jail.

May 20, 2018: Furious President Says He Will Demand the DOJ Conduct an Investigation

 

5/20/18: It’s a quiet Sunday in Trumpistan. Not a single person in the administration gets indicted. 

Still, a Trump Twitter Tantrum ensues. At 8:11 a.m., we get this: 

....At what point does this soon to be $20,000,000 Witch Hunt, composed of 13 Angry and Heavily Conflicted Democrats and two people who have worked for Obama for 8 years, STOP! They have found no Collussion with Russia, No Obstruction, but they aren’t looking at the corruption... 

Thirteen angry Democratic lawyers? Trump is foaming at the mouth. His next tweet comes at 8:19: 

...in the Hillary Clinton Campaign where she deleted 33,000 Emails, got $145,000,000 while Secretary of State, paid McCabes wife $700,000 (and got off the FBI hook along with Terry M) and so much more. Republicans and real Americans should start getting tough on this Scam. 

 

So: You’re only a “real American” if you like Trump? 

Ten minutes later: 

Now that the Witch Hunt has given up on Russia and is looking at the rest of the World, they should easily be able to take it into the Mid-Term Elections where they can put some hurt on the Republican Party. Don’t worry about Dems FISA Abuse, missing Emails or Fraudulent Dossier!

 

This last tweet is absurd. The New York Times has reported that Don Jr. took a second secret meeting at Trump Tower, where it is alleged representatives of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates offered help during the 2016 election. This is the “failed and crooked” Times, which correctly called Don Jr. out on a June 2016 meeting with Russians, which Don Jr. originally denied he took. 

Nor has Mueller “given up on Russia.” One participant in this newly revealed meeting was George Nader. Nader is cooperating with Mueller. Nader was also involved in another secret meeting with a Russian in The Seychelles. No one remembered any of these meetings until the free press dug up the facts. 

Faced with a tightening noose, the “very angry and clearly delusional” (my characterization) Chief Executive does what no president has ever done. He says he will interfere with an investigation into his own administration. 

At 12:37 he makes this clear: 

I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes - and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!

May 22, 2018: Turn Over a Stone in Trumpistan and Criminal Types Scurry Away in the Light

 

5/22/18: It’s another bad day for Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. A long-time business partner pleads guilty and agrees to cooperate with investigators. That partner is Evegeny A. Freidman, a Russian immigrant (of course), known as the New York City “Taxi King.” Freidman avoids a lengthy jail sentence and is required to hand over $1 million to settle unpaid taxes.

 

*

Shera Bechard on the job.

IN A RELATED STORY, Paul Campos, a professor at the University of Colorado, floats a theory about Cohen. Campos notes that Trump’s lawyer was involved in three hush money settlements in 2016. Two involved Trump. One was a payment to Stormy Daniels. A second payment went to Playboy Bunny Karen McDougal. The third involved Elliot Broidy, a heavy-hitting GOP fundraiser, who impregnated another Playboy Bunny, Shera Bechard. (See: 4/14/18 and 4/16/18.) 

Campos’s theory: Broidy took a fall for…Donald J. Trump! 

Campos notes several intriguing details. In all three settlements the women were initially “represented” by a lawyer named Keith Davidson. Davidson has since been accused of conspiring with Cohen to insure all three clients remained quiet. In the Daniels case and the Broidy case, Cohen used nearly identical non-disclosure language. He used the same pseudonyms. For the women: Peggy Petersen. For the men: David Dennison. And the two Petersen/Dennison payoffs were routed through the same L.L.C., Essential Consultants, set up by Cohen during the 2016 campaign. 

Broidy took the hit for his sins and paid $1.6 million to hush up the pregnant Bunny. Soon after, he gained direct access to President Trump. This led to a private meeting at the White House where a business deal with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates was discussed. The United Arab Emirates agreed to give Broidy a contract to provide security services worth perhaps $600 million.

 

Leaked emails between Broidy and George Nader show another interesting connection. Here the Associated Press picks up the story: 

Just two days before that meeting, on November 30, Broidy wired $200,000 from his Bank of America account to Real Estate Attorneys’ Group, a California firm. On December 5, REAG transferred that money to attorney Keith Davidson. Davidson was at the time supposedly representing the legal interests of Shera Bechard, a Playboy model with whom Broidy now claims to have had an affair. (Bechard fired Davidson shortly afterward, when she became convinced that Davidson was actually working in concert with Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, to protect Cohen’s client’s interests rather than hers.) That $200,000 was supposed to be the first of eight quarterly payments that “David Dennison” agreed to make to Bechard, in order to buy her silence about an affair and a subsequent abortion. All this was laid out in an NDA recovered from Michael Cohen’s office when it was raided last month.

 

Now, being a fact-based blogger, let me say we cannot know where this tale will end. We do know this. Nader is cooperating with Mueller. Nader has been in several meetings with Broidy. 

 

Did the Bunny abort Donald’s love child? 

If Broidy was covering for Trump, if Trump were the actual semen donor in the Bechard affair, all kinds of campaign finance laws would have been broken. Broidy’s deal with the UAE might be viewed as a quid pro quo. Trump gets silence from the pregnant Bunny. Broidy gets a contract worth hundreds of millions. Saudi Arabia and the UAE get the kind of U.S. foreign policy they want. To be precise: they want U.S. pressure on Qatar, a neighboring rival. 

And as an added “bonus,” the Playboy Bunny would have aborted…Donald J. Trump’s love child! 

There may be nothing to this theory; but we already know a Trump Tower doorman, Dino Sajudin, was paid $30,000 to keep quiet about Trump and a housekeeper’s child. 

We know Broidy was previously convicted of bribing New York State officials. 

We know that the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, Michael Avenatti, has warned that two other women whose stories appear credible may have received large hush money settlements in 2016. 

So, we can assume Cohen is worried. And if Cohen is worried the President of the United States is worried.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (September 2020): Nothing has ever come of this Broidy-Bunny-Trump Bunny-Baby-story. It could be, for once on this blog, that we were totally wrong. Generally, save for typos and misspellings of names, and too many examples of poor sentence structure, your humble blogger has been on target in what he says. 

It is, of course, interesting to ponder the question: Why did President Trump go out of his way, in the waning days of his sinking administration, to pardon Mr. Broidy?

The fat dope on the left is Mr. Broidy, seen here with his wife.

June 4, 2019: Witch Hunt? A Witch Gets Shot off a Broom

 

6/4/19: The Mueller “Witch Hunt” continues. George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman is 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. That means he spends today consulting with lawyers. 

Nader with the president.

 

Questioned about suspicious contacts with Russians. 

Nadar, an occasional 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. At the time, Nader was headed for Mar-a-Lago, to celebrate Trump’s first year at the helm. 

Nader had also been part of the Trump transition team, headed up by that paragon of Christian virtue, Vice President Jesus. 

Now, agents wielding a warrant confiscated his electronic devices (Nader’s, not the vice president’s). A subsequent search revealed evidence of possible child pornography. A new warrant resulted. A dozen sexually explicit videos were recovered. That led to a sealed indictment. But yesterday was the first chance authorities had to arrest Nader, who works overseas. 

If convicted, Nader – who was convicted on child pornography charges in the Czech Republic in 1991 – faces at least fifteen years in prison.

 

Nader is exactly the type of sleazebag who routinely floats to the top in stories involving Mr. Trump. 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. 

Neither did this blogger. 

This explains why they were perfect for a secret meeting. Nadar was one participant. Kirill Dmitriev, representing Vladimir Putin, was a second. Third was Erik Prince, brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Once the secret meeting was revealed, Prince claimed it was all a matter of chance. He just happened to be vacationing in The Seychelles. And he just happened to run into the Russian guy in a bar. And they just happened to decide to have a friendly chat, of no consequence. 

The Mueller Report proves otherwise. Nader set it all up. Mueller has 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 conclave. This one, in August 2016, had 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. Zamel pitched a plan to “to create fake online identities, to use social media manipulation and to gather intelligence to help defeat Hillary Clinton.” 

Participants in that meeting disagree about what happened next, with almost everyone conveniently denying any such work was ever performed (which would surely have been illegal). 

Oddly enough, Mueller’s team turned up evidence that Nader sent Zamel $2,000,000 after the election.

 

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. That deal was worth as much as $600 million. It was an odd choice, for sure, since Broidy wasn’t the type you’d trust with a contract of that magnitude, or any other contract. He was convicted in 2009 of paying a cool million dollars in bribes to New York State officials. In return, he had scored 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 had an abortion.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (August 2019): We were in error, above. Broidy is not a felon. He plead guilty to a felony, but was later allowed to plead to a misdemeanor after he agreed to cooperate with investigators in the bribery scandal.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE #2 (October 2020): Okay, Broidy is now a felon again. This time he plead guilty to one charge of influence-peddling on behalf of foreign countries, while also having President Trump’s ear. 

In one case, “Foreign National A” handed Broidy what an ordinary person might refer to as a $9 million bribe.

July 8, 2019: Trump Inaugural Committee Figure Under Investigation

 

7/8/19: Believe it or not, Trump’s approval ratings are up, to 45.1 percent (vs. 52.4 percent disapproval). 

That upward tick may not last. CNN reports that previously convicted felon Elliott Broidy, and Trump bosom buddy, is again under investigation. Federal prosecutors have requested information about “contacts with foreign leaders and businesses while working for President Donald Trump’s inauguration.” 

The request comes as part of a probe into whether Broidy, a Los Angeles private investor, sought to sell his influence with the Trump administration.

 

The US attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York in April subpoenaed the President’s Inaugural Committee seeking documents and records relating to Broidy, five companies associated with him and foreign politicians – including the presidents of Angola and the Republic of Congo and two Romanian politicians, the sources said.

 

The grand jury subpoena also requests information about George Nader, a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation who was arrested last month on child pornography charges.

 

CNN notes that a representative of the Inaugural Committee declined to comment for the story. (See: 7/19/19.)

Since I have been editing my blog,

I can jump ahead and post this picture.

 

July 19, 2019: Two Trump Pals Suspected of Committing Felonies

 

7/19/19: George Nader’s legal problems grow. Already locked in the can, with bail denied, the former Trump adviser is charged with sex-trafficking of an underage minor, a 14-year-old boy. 

As the Associated Press notes (and even Fox News picks up the story): 

Nader’s name shows up more than 100 times in [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller’s report. It details his efforts to serve as liaison between a Russian banker close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and members of President Donald Trump’s transition team.

 

Nader also served as an adviser to the United Arab Emirates, a close Saudi ally, and in April 2017 wired $2.5 million to a top Trump fundraiser, Elliott Broidy, through a company in Canada….The goal was to persuade the U.S. to take a hard line against Qatar, a longtime American ally but now an adversary of the UAE. 

Diplomacy for sale.

Good pals!

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (1/16/22): Nader is eventually convicted of sex-trafficking, and then convicted again, for illegally funneling foreign money into U.S. political campaigns, first, Hillary Clinton, second, to Donald J. Trump’s inauguration committee. 

Broidy also gets indicted and pleads guilty in June 2020 – and then, lo and behold, he doth receive a golden pardon from on high! 

With only hours left in office, President Trump granted Broidy an undeserved pardon, just before he slinked away to Mar-a-Lago in a sulk. 

Broidy, by the way, had admitted to taking millions of dollars from foreign interests in return for his fine efforts to lobby the Department of Justice to, how shall we say it, turn a blind eye to criminality.

October 21, 2020: Add another Felon to the Wall of Shame

10/21/20: Day #4 of Character Counts Week! Paul Krause, former president of Blue Bell Creameries, is definitely not going to be held up as an example to children by America’s schoolteachers.

 

____________________

 

Bloated capitalism has a bad day.

____________________

 

 

Rather, Krause proves a liberal maxim. Government regulations are often necessary to curb the excesses of bloated capitalism. Just weeks after his company agreed to pay a $17.5 million fine for price fixing – that is, cheating customers – Krause was indicted on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy.

 

Has “Law & Order” Trump ever talked about attacking white collar crime? Most of his family – but not Barron or Tiffany, and probably not the First Lady – and half his cabinet would go to jail.

 

* 

WE KNOW President Trump likes to lead cheers at almost every rally, where loyal fans chant about locking up Americans who have never been tried and convicted, let alone indicted.

Nader and Trump: buds!

Broidy: Add another felon to the Wall of Shame.

 

Has he ever laid out his feelings toward plea-deal accepting felons? If you missed it, Team Trump added another name to the “Wall of Dishonor.” But first, a little nuance and context. If you are a big fan of this president – and you love to chant, “Lock her up!” Or “Lock him up!” Or “Lock them all up!” you probably haven’t ever considered this point. Since it’s Character Counts Week, and our topic today is bloated capitalism, don’t forget that not so long ago the Chinese offered to bail out Jared Kushner and his family, who were carrying a massive debt on a property at 666 Fifth Avenue, in New York City.

 

If it had been Obama who owned that building, QAnon supporters would have said, “Of course: ‘666,’ the sign of the beast.” 

Anyway, bad publicity ensued – the president’s son-in-law and family getting bailed out by commies. The deal was torpedoed.

 

Jared is always trying to bring peace to the Middle East. So, one day, he met with some folks from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They really wanted the U.S. to support a blockade of rival Qatar. Jared said he’d talk to his father-in-law and see what he could do. Meanwhile, Elliott Broidy, pal of the president, snagged a lucrative contract (worth at least $200 million) from the Emiratis.

 

The Qataris heard the news and got antsy. Would they be odd-country out, in terms of deals with Americans? Suddenly, a Qatari sovereign fund bought up most of the debt on 666 and bailed out the Kushner clan.

 

When the free press broke that story, Qatari fund managers claimed all they saw was a really good investment opportunity. What???? You don’t mean 666 Fifth Avenue is owned by the Kushner family!

 

Boy, were they surprised!

 

Later, George Nader, an ally of President Trump and Mr. Broidy, gets busted for child sex trafficking. He pleads guilty and gets sentenced to ten years in the slammer. (Definitely not a good example during Character Counts Week!) Nader, who helped Broidy snag that $200 million deal with the Emiratis, agrees to cooperate with investigators. Broidy gets investigated next. The feds get the goods. Today he pleads guilty to one act of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Until he was caught, Broidy had been piling up the big bucks, selling access to the White House to sleazeball characters. Take for example, Najib Razak, former Prime Minister of Malaysia. Razak looted his country, got caught, and now finds himself sitting in jail. 

In exchange for leniency, Broidy has also agreed to cooperate with investigators and forfeit $6.6 million. 

Prosecutors are clear: Broidy had been a walking, talking, money-grubbing threat to U.S. security. 

“Elliott Broidy sought to lobby the highest levels of the U.S. government [emphasis added on this blog, unless otherwise noted] to drop one of the largest fraud and money laundering prosecutions ever brought and to deport a critic of the Chinese Communist Party, all the while concealing the foreign interests whose bidding he was doing,” Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers said in a statement.

 

“Such conduct poses a serious threat to our national security and undermines the integrity of our democracy,” added acting assistant attorney general Brian C. Rabbitt. (See: 10/16/20 for more detail on Broidy.)

 

*

 

IN OTHER NEWS, Trump fans are bummed to learn that the “Deep State” has infiltrated the Trump campaign.

 

Members of the Satanic, pedophile, cannibal, liberal cabal convinced organizers of a Trump rally in North Carolina to ban anyone from wearing QAnon gear or waving patriotic, flag-themed “Q” signs. If followers of “Q,” who make up a sizeable lump of the Trump base, wanted to flash their secret sign at Trump rallies, they’d have to do it quick, and not get caught on TV.

 

Well, QAnon fans, take heart!  The “Deep State” can’t stop Marjorie Taylor Greene, GOP candidate for Congress.

 

Greene is a big believer in “Q” and his/her idiot theories and an equally big believer in owning all the guns you can afford. Because we all know, “Only a good guy with a gun can stop a cannibalistic liberal from gnawing off our legs.”

 

Behind the scenes, Trump lawyers have been helping her advance her campaign, which makes one wonder. Did Team Trump ban QAnon gear, because most Americans think the QAnon line is nuts, and they didn’t want to look bad with less than two weeks to go until the election?

 

Or was Team Trump tricking the cannibals?  Did Team Trump have a secret plan to defeat them once and for all?

A Daily Dose of Trump: A Porn Star Sues the President; Another Witness is Cooperating with Mueller

YOU MUST ADMIT.

It’s never dull in Trumpistan.

3/7: At 5:44 a.m., the Emperor is already up and tweeting. We can assume he spent a restless night and slept alone in his bedroom. In case you missed it, the First Lady cannot be amused today. Stormy Daniels, the porn star paid $130,000 in hush money during the 2016 campaign, is now suing Donald J. Trump. She says the non-disclosure agreement she signed just before the election is actually invalid because Trump (alias: “David Dennison” in the document) did not sign it.

"David Dennison" poses with his porn-star friend.

Meanwhile, Gary Cohn, the Emperor’s top economic advisor in the White House, is resigning. Considered by many to be one of the few “grownups” in the building, Cohn apparently couldn’t stomach Trump’s decision to impose steep tariffs on aluminum and steel.

In more bad news for Trump and his closest circle, Sam Nunberg, who pretty much got the entire Trump campaign off the ground in 2015, has agreed to testify before a Grand Jury on Friday. On Monday, Nunberg, who had been subpoenaed as part of the Mueller investigation was threatening to rip up the subpoena on national television. He wasn’t going to “waste 80 hours of his time” complying with a records request and said Mueller would be crazy to arrest him. On sober second thought he decided he would cooperate. Also, he would soon be entering rehab.

The bad news for Trump & Co.? Mueller is seeking documents and electronic records, from November 1, 2015, till the present, involving Nunberg and:

Stephen K. Bannon

Michael D. Cohen

Rick Gates

Hope Hicks

Corey Lewandowski

Paul Manafort

Carter Page

Keith Schiller

Roger Stone

And…..Donald J. Trump!

You can see why this might bother the Emperor and his team. Gates has already pled guilty.  Manafort is under house arrest, awaiting trial. Hicks just quit her White House post after being grilled for nine hours by Mueller’s investigators. Cohen is in the news for arranging the payoff to the porn star and Schiller has admitted he was “on guard” outside Trump’s hotel room in Moscow the night in 2013 when his boss was offered the warm company of several prostitutes to share his bed.

If you missed that story because all you do is binge on Fox News, and fume about Hillary’s emails, Schiller says nothing illicit occurred. Around 2 a.m. he wandered off to his own room for a snooze.

And, I think we can all agree there is nothing whatsoever in the Emperor’s past that would make you ever think he would stoop so low. Prostitutes! No way. Trump is a man of impeccable morals.

Cough, cough.

Last but not least, George Nader, a Lebanese-American gentleman is also cooperating with Mueller’s investigation. Nader often works as an advisor to Crown Prince Mohammed and the United Arab Emirates. Normally, he travels in rarified circles.

On January 17, however, he was stopped by F.B.I agents after landing at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. They handed Nader a subpoena, relieved him of his electronic devices and questioned him for two hours. This meant he missed his next flight to Mar-a-Lago, where he had hoped to help the Emperor celebrate the first year of his reign.

What did the F.B.I. want to know? And what is Mueller now asking Nader about? One possibility is that Nader funneled money from the U.A.E. into the Trump campaign. That would be flatly illegal.

Nader also attended a meeting in the Seychelles Islands (population: 94,677) in January 2017. If you’re like me, you’re going to have to look the islands up to find out where they are. But Nader found them. So did Erik Prince, brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, founder of Blackwater Security, and a man who was then serving as an informal advisor to the Trump transition team. Who else flew to the islands just because it was so convenient to meet there?

Kirill Dmitriev, representing Vladimir Putin!

You can probably guess where this is going. Dmitriev managed a powerful Russian trust fund, sanctioned by President Obama.

According to The New York Times, Nader has since been questioned repeatedly about a variety of meetings, including at least one with Jared Kushner and Stephen K. Bannon at the White House.

Mr. Prince has denied any secret deals might have been involved in this meeting. Oh, no. He just happened to run into Dmitriev and they had a friendly drink.

In the Seychelles.

Pure coincidence!