George Nader | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1959-05-15)15 May 1959 (age 66)[1] |
| Citizenship | United States Lebanon United Arab Emirates[2] |
| Alma mater | Cleveland State University |
| Criminal status | Pleaded guilty |
| Convictions | Child pornography infractions Child sexual abuse |
| Criminal penalty | 10 years in prison |
| Details | |
| Country | United States, Czech Republic |
Date apprehended | 1991; 2003; 2019 |
George Aref Nader (Arabic:جورج نادر, born May 15, 1959) is a Lebanese-American consultant,lobbyist, political adviser, and repeatsex offender. He has repeatedly acted as an unofficial liaison between United States politicians and theUnited Arab Emirates andSaudi Arabia and as a lobbyist for private security firmBlackwater.
Nader has served as an adviser to Crown PrinceMohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of theUnited Arab Emirates and as a consultant toBlackwater founderErik Prince. In January 2018, special counselRobert Mueller'sinvestigators questioned Nader in connection to suspicions that theUAE had been involved with PresidentDonald Trump's2016 presidential campaign.[3] In August 2016 Nader met withDonald Trump Jr., Erik Prince, andJoel Zamel, an Israeli entrepreneur and specialist in social media manipulation, to offer help to the Trump team in winning the election. There are conflicting accounts of whether the nearly $2 million Nader paid Zamel after Trump's victory is attributed to that or not.[4] In 2021, Nader pleaded guilty to violating U.S. campaign finance laws by using over $3.5 million to reach out through a front toHillary Clinton's 2016campaign for the U.S. Presidency.[5]
Nader has had several run-ins with the law over the years related tosexual abuse of children. He was convicted in the 1990s of transportingchild pornography publications, and imprisoned in 2003 for sexually abusing ten boys in the Czech Republic.[6] He pleaded guilty in early 2020 to flying a 14-year-old boy from Europe to the US for sex, and transporting pornography depicting child sexual abuse andbestiality.[7][8][9]
Nader was born inLebanon.[10] He is aChristian.[11] As a teenager, he moved to the US, not knowing any English. He went on to attendCleveland State University.[12]
Nader founded theMiddle East Insight magazine,[13] which he was editor of from 1981 through the 1990s;[14] the magazine ceased publication in 2002.[15]
During theGeorge H. W. Bush Administration, he helped to freeAmerican hostages in Lebanon after theIran–Contra affair.[14] During theClinton Administration, Nader tried unsuccessfully to broker an Israeli–Syrian peace agreement, working withEstée Lauder heirRonald Lauder.[14]
In the 2000s, Nader left Washington and spent most of his time in the Middle East, especially in Iraq after the 2003Iraq invasion.[15] During that time, Nader volunteered to act as a "shadow diplomat" connecting U.S. politicians to Middle Eastern officials.[14]Erik Prince, founder of security firmBlackwater, hired Nader to help with contracts with the Iraqi government; in a 2010 deposition, Prince identified Nader as a "business development consultant".[16]
In August 2016, Nader met withDonald Trump Jr. atTrump Tower offering assistance tohis father's presidential campaign.[17] Nader served as an envoy representingSaudi Arabia's Crown Prince and de facto rulerMohammad bin Salman, andMohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of theEmirate of Abu Dhabi. The meeting included Erik Prince andJoel Zamel, an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation[18][17] and owner of intelligence gathering firms includingWikistrat and thePsy-Group, who bragged to have received $2 million from Nader as part of the presidential campaign.[19]
Nader attended a December 2016 meeting in New York between theUnited Arab Emirates officials and president-electDonald Trump's associatesJared Kushner,Michael Flynn, andSteve Bannon.[14] In January 2017 he was at a meeting on theSeychelles islands between the Emiratis and Prince and was present when Prince met with officials from the UAE andKirill Dmitriev, head of state-runRussian Direct Investment Fund.[14]
In 2017, Nader funded a conference criticizingQatar that was hosted by theFoundation for Defense of Democracies.[20] At the time Nader was pushing the White House to remove Secretary of StateRex Tillerson, whom the Saudis and Emiratis viewed as insufficiently tough on Iran and Qatar.[10]
In January 2018, Nader was served a grand jury subpoena,[21] and special counselRobert Mueller'sinvestigators questioned him to elicit if the UAE had tried to influence members of Trump's campaign.[14][22]Kathryn Ruemmler, anObama-era White House counsel, was among the lawyers representing Nader.[1] Nader was grantedimmunity for information for the investigation.[10][23]
In December 2019, court documents were unsealed that showed Nader had been charged in federal court with violating campaign finance laws, and falsifying records.[5] The prosecutors alleged that, using banking industry executive Andy Khawaja as a front to obscure the source, Nader sent over $3.5 million to organizations supportingHillary Clinton's2016 campaign for president, in an attempt to cultivate ties with the candidate.[5] FollowingDonald Trump's election, Khawaja donated $1 million to theinauguration organizers.[5] The documents indicated that Nader continually reported the status of his efforts to an unnamed foreign nation.[5] Nader pleaded guilty in 2021 to "felony conspiracy to defraud the US government" in the case,[24] and he was sentenced in July 2023 to 20 months in prison, to be served at the end of his in-progress sentence for child sexual abuse.[25] (See below.)
Nader has been convicted of multiple crimes (alleged) A 1985 charge of receiving films and magazines from the Netherlands depicting pre- and post-pubescent boys engaged in sexual acts was dismissed due to an invalid search warrant.[26] A federal court in Virginia in 1991 gave him a six-month sentence on a felony charge of transporting pornographic videotapes from Germany of boys about 13 or 14 years old.[26] Prosecutors agreed to put the case under seal "due to the extremely sensitive nature of Mr. Nader's work in the Middle East."[26]
In 2003, he was convicted inPrague,Czech Republic, of sexually abusing ten boys, for which he served one year in prison.[1][26] A spokesperson of the court told press that the crimes occurred between 1999 and 2002. In one case, at his room in the Hilton Prague Hotel, Nader requested oral sex from a 14-year-old boy. After the boy refused, Nader masturbated in front of him and paid him 2,000koruna (about US$60).[1]
In January 2018 he was questioned byFBI agents working on behalf of special counselRobert Mueller, as agents inspected it pursuant to a warrant.[27][28] In June 2019, he was arrested by federal agents and charged with possession of child pornography and images ofbestiality[8] and, for a second time, transportation of child pornography, and held in jail pending trial in Virginia.[29] Also in 2019 he was charged with transporting a 14-year-old Czech boy from Europe for sex at his Washington-area home in February 2000.[9] Nader reached a plea deal with prosecutors in January 2020: he pleaded guilty to charges of possession of child pornography and transportation of a minor,[30] and in June 2020, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.[31] The sentence was reduced to five years for cooperation in the Mueller investigation.[32] On February 6, 2025, Nader was released from prison and left the country after testifying in a deposition. Nader was living in a Baltimore halfway house after back-to-back sentences for his child sex crimes and campaign finance fraud.[33][34]