Mueller witness pleads guilty in illegal scheme to funnel UAE money to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign
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Nader, a Lebanese American lobbyist, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in June 2020 after pleading guilty to bringing an underage teenage boy to the United States for sex and possessing child pornography. What was not publicly known until recently was that he also pleaded guilty to an illegal foreign donation scheme.
The Department of Justice revealed in a December sentencing memo that Nader had pleaded guilty to a single count on July 22, 2020. The court filing says Nader and Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja, a Los Angeles-based chief executive of Allied Wallet, “orchestrated a scheme to funnel over $3.5 million in foreign funds into the 2016 presidential election.” The DOJ added that they “did so to gain direct access to unsuspecting high-level political figures to further their professional endeavors: in the defendant’s case, out of a desire to lobby on behalf and advance the interests of his client, the government of the United Arab Emirates; in Khawaja’s case, in the hopes of securing political appointment in the future.”
Nader was indicted in December 2019 for what prosecutors said was his role in a scheme to conceal large sums of illegal campaign contributions to help Clinton in 2016. He was accused of conspiring with Khawaja to conceal the source of more than $3.5 million in campaign contributions to political committees associated with Clinton.
Khawaja gave more than $4 million to Clinton's campaign and other Democrats during the 2016 cycle but later donated $1 million to former President Donald Trump's inaugural committee after Clinton lost. As he shifted his focus to Republicans after the 2016 election, the Lebanese-born Khawaja met with Trump at a Manhattan fundraiser and got a photo with the president in the Oval Office.
Prosecutors said Nader agreed with them on sentencing guidelines, which would produce a range of 78-97 months behind bars, though the DOJ only asked for a 60-month sentence. The DOJ asked for the sentence to run consecutively to the child sex crime sentence.
The court docket now shows that the statement of offense and the criminal information against Nader were filed under seal in 2020, charging him with one count of “conspiracy to make conduit contributions, cause false statements, and cause false entries in records.” The Justice Department said it “was a purpose of the conspiracy to facilitate unlawful campaign contributions from Nader, through Khawaja, to political committees … in order to gain access to and influence with [Clinton] and others during and following the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.”
Prosecutors pointed last month to a July 2016 message from Nader to a senior UAE official in which he said he was “catching up with key figures in both camps" and "developing a steady, consistent and constructive relationship with both camps!”
Search warrants unsealed in 2019 revealed that the FBI found child pornography in Nader’s possession during the Mueller investigation. The warrants alleged that at least a dozen videos containing child pornography were found on his phones — some involving animals and boys as young as 2 years old.
Nader was also accused of taking a 14-year-old boy from the Czech Republic to his Washington, D.C., home in 2000 and using him for sex. Two years later, Czech authorities arrested Nader amid allegations that he had sex with underage boys in the Czech Republic between 1999 and 2002. He was convicted in May 2003 of molesting children, according to the search warrants.
When law enforcement in the U.S. learned of the 14-year-old boy in 2002, Nader had left the country. The judge ruled in the summer of 2020 that Nader must pay $150,000 in restitution to the victim.
Nader also pleaded guilty to a federal pornography charge in 1991 and was sentenced to six months in prison after he was found with two reels of videotape hidden in candy tins when he arrived at the Washington-Dulles International Airport.
“Minor Victim 1” — who was 14 years old when Nader brought him from the Czech Republic to the U.S., where the victim says Nader repeatedly sexually abused him — told the court in 2020 through a translator that “it was hell for me” as he explained the physical and mental anguish Nader had caused him. Now an adult with a wife and children, he said that the abuse by Nader still has an effect. “I hated myself and was ashamed of myself," he said, adding that Nader “has destroyed practically my entire life, which I am trying to put back together piece by piece.”
The Lebanese American businessman met with officials and associates of Trump’s circle and Russian and Middle Eastern officials in 2016 and 2017. He helped set up a January 2017 meeting in Seychelles between Trump associate and Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian official.
Nader was mentioned more than 100 times in Mueller’s 448-page report on the Russia investigation, and he was interviewed by the special counsel team multiple times, including about possible efforts from the United Arab Emirates to influence members of Trump's campaign. Mueller "did not establish" any criminal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
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Records indicate that Nader visited the White House at least 13 times to meet with Trump’s chief strategist at the time, Steve Bannon.
The FBI claims that it did not discover that his devices contained child pornography until nearly a month after his interviews with the bureau. He was charged in April 2018 for possessing child pornography but wasn’t arrested until June 2019, upon his return to the U.S.
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