ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — George Nader, a key witness in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for bringing a teenage boy to the United States for sex and possessing child pornography.
Nader, a 61-year-old Lebanese American lobbyist, pleaded guilty in January and received 10 years for each charge on Friday. Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia said they could be served concurrently.
The hearing took place in a socially-distanced federal courtroom with yellow X’s on the courtroom benches keeping the scattering of people in the audience spaced out from one another in the mostly empty room.
Search warrants unsealed last year revealed the FBI found child pornography in Nader’s possession during the Russia 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.
Brinkema ruled Friday that Nader must now pay $150,000 in restitution to the victim, who called in to the proceedings and read a statement in Czech, which was repeated in English by a translator.
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.
Both the Justice Department and Nader’s defense team had worked out a plea agreement in which Nader would be sentenced to 10 years for each charge, while allowing the sentences to be served at the same time.
Jay Prabhu, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and the chief of its cybercrime unit, told the judge that Nader has “worked with presidents and princes” and with “the powerful and the infamous.” He talked briefly about Nader’s longtime experience in Middle Eastern politics, but said “that wasn’t his only passion” as he pointed to Nader’s history of possessing child pornography and of abusing underage teenagers. Prabhu said Nader was “persistent and dangerous” and that he had a history of “exploiting troubled teen boys.” The DOJ lawyer said to “make no mistake — Mr. Nader is a repeat, hands-on sexual offender.”
Jonathan Jeffress, Nader’s defense attorney, claimed the child pornography in question was “not sexual” and that it amounted to little more than “dirty jokes” sent to Nader on WhatsApp by his friends in the Middle East. Jeffress also said the judge should look at Nader “as he stands here today” and said his client’s chances of recidivism were “non-existent.”
“Minor Victim 1” — who was 14 years old when Nader brought him from the Czech Republic to the United States, where the victim says Nader repeatedly sexually abused him — told the court through a translator that “it was hell for me” as he explained the physical and mental anguish Nader had caused him. Now an adult who is married 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 President Trump’s circle and Russian and Middle Eastern officials in 2016 and 2017. He helped set up a January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles between Trump associate and Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian official with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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.
As reported by the Washington Examiner, records indicate Nader visited the White House at least 13 times to meet with Trump’s chief strategist at the time, Steve Bannon.
The FBI says it did not discover until nearly a month after his interviews that his devices contained child pornography. He was charged in April 2018 but wasn’t arrested until June 2019, upon his return to the U.S.
Nader, balding with gray hair and glasses, was clad in a green-gray colored, short-sleeved prison shirt and matching pants on Friday. Sitting at a table by himself, his defense attorney sat at a different table. Other members of the defense team were fanned out in the courtroom benches typically used by reporters and observers. The convicted child sex offender spoke briefly near the end of the hearing. He said he was “sincerely and deeply sorry for the pain I have caused.”
The judge said she was “satisfied” that 10 years behind bars “is sufficient but not greater than necessary” for Nader. She also imposed a life-term of supervised release, including requiring him to register as a sex offender when he is released and instructing him to stay away from minors, although she said he would be free to leave the country at the end of his term. She also imposed a $25,000 fine.
Nader was separately indicted by prosecutors in late 2019 for his alleged role in a scheme to conceal large sums of illegal campaign contributions to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
Nader is accused of conspiring with Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja, the Los Angeles-based 48-year-old chief executive of Allied Wallet, to conceal the source of more than $3.5 million in campaign contributions to political committees associated with a presidential candidate to gain influence during and after the 2016 campaign. Nader has pleaded not guilty in that case.
Nader and Khawaja were charged in November as part of a 53-count indictment dealt by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia.
Khawaja gave more than $4 million to Clinton’s campaign and other Democrats during the 2016 cycle but later donated $1 million to 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.
The Justice Department announced last year that Khawaja allegedly conspired with Nader to make $3.5 million in straw donations to boost a presidential candidate from March 2016 to January 2017.
No candidate is mentioned by name, but the indictment and campaign finance records make it clear that the money was directed towards helping Clinton during the 2016 campaign.
Records from the Federal Election Commission show Nader reported giving $595 in donations to Trump’s presidential campaign committee in 2016, as well as $100 to Ben Carson’s campaign, but not to any Democrats that election cycle.
Nader was a business associate of Elliott Broidy, a top Republican fundraiser and deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee who resigned from that position in April 2018 after reports that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen negotiated a $1.6 million settlement in 2017 between Broidy and a former Playboy model who said Broidy impregnated her. Nader and Broidy worked to influence U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East prior to Broidy’s resignation and Nader’s arrest last summer.
