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These two pictures show how far George Nader has fallen — yesterday a multimillionaire adviser to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, today a guest of the Alexandria sheriff’s department and facing 15 years in jail on charges of possessing child pornography.
Nader is best known as a witness for the inquiry by Robert Mueller, who investigated whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia. Cockburn hears that Nader gave more than two days of grand jury testimony for Mueller’s prosecutors and that he is the main source for the section of Mueller’s report about the notorious meeting in the Seychelles between a Russian banker, and Erik Prince, the private military contractor whose sister is Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s education secretary.
The child pornography charges had been under seal and Nader was unaware of them until Monday when he traveled to New York for medical treatment — he has a heart condition — and was arrested. The charges date from when he entered the US in January 2018 and was held as a witness by FBI agents working for Mueller. Released after an initial round of questioning — about the Seychelles meeting — he fled, panicked, to the Washington embassy of the United Arab Emirates. A source there said he had been ‘hammering on the door’.
The images are of the most distressing kind, according to the indictment. Nader’s defense, apparently, will be that he was set up — that the images were emailed to one of his three iPhones while he was in the air, flying to the US. Nader has previous convictions for possessing child pornography, but assuming his defense is true, who would have a motive for trying to take him out?
Cockburn understands that Mueller’s questions were narrowly focused, about the Seychelles meeting — but that Nader might know more: about Saudi and Emirati attempts to influence the new Trump administration; about money paid to Trump’s inauguration; about sophisticated cyber tools imported to the US to influence voters — no, this isn’t Russia; about offshore money coming onshore into the US political system.
There are two questions, then: will Nader talk? And will the feds want to listen to anything he has to say? Standby; there will be more on this…
