8 People were just indicted by Bill Barr’s Justice Department, as reported by The Washington Post. George Nader, who had already been Nader has previously been convicted in the US of transporting child pornography and pleaded guilty to several crimes in the Czech Republic related to sexual contact with underage boys, apparently has now been charged along with 7 others in a major scandal. He was also a key witness to the Robert Mueller investigation as well. The Washington Post has notated correlations between him and the Trump campaign as well.
Nader was an adviser to the UAE who acted as an intermediary for members of the Trump campaign to forge contacts in the middle east. He was charged, however, with conspiring to make conduit campaign contributions and related offenses in a 53 count indictment that was released today according to prosecutors.
Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja, a Lebanese American businessman was also charged. He was hit with 35 counts related to allegations of conspiracies with George Nader to conceal where $3.5 Million in campaign contributions came from. Those funds were funneled to Democrats according to the Post, $3 million to Democrat candidates and groups, and $1 million to a SuperPac designated to go to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. That PAC was called Priorities USA. $1 million also went to Trump’s inaugural fund apparently, but it is clear who they wanted to win the election based on this.
The Washington Post reported in part:
An attorney for Khawaja could not be reached immediately for comment.
According to a written statement by Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s criminal division and FBI Washington Field Office chief Timothy R. Slater, Nader, 60 and Khawaja, 48, were charged along with Roy Boulos, Rudy Dekermenjian, Mohammad “Moe” Diab, Rani El-Saadi, Stevan Hill and Thayne Whipple. The latter six were charged with conspiring with Khawaja and each other to make conduit campaign contributions and conceal excessive contributions and related offenses, U.S. authorities said.
Khawaja’s donations earned him access to Clinton during the 2016 campaign and a post-election Oval Office visit with Trump, the Associated Press reported in a 2018 investigation. At that time, Khawaja, the payment processing company he founded, Allied Wallet, and top executives had contributed at least $6 million to Democratic and Republican candidates and groups.
According to the indictment, from March 2016 through January 2017, Khawaja conspired with Nader to conceal the source of more than $3.5 million in campaign contributions that appeared in the names of Khawaja, his wife and his company, but that in reality were funded by Nader. As Khawaja and Nader arranged these payments, Nader allegedly reported to an official from a foreign government about his efforts to gain influence, prosecutors said.
The indictment also alleges that, from March 2016 through 2018, Khawaja conspired with the others to conceal his excessive contributions, which totaled more than $1.8 million, to various political committees. Among other things, these contributions allegedly allowed Khawaja to host a private fundraiser for a presidential candidate in 2016 and a private fundraising dinner for an elected official in 2018.
Khawaja was also alleged to have obstructed a grand jury investigation. His company paid $110 Million in May to settle charges of numerous scams and processing money for fraudulent merchants according to the FTC. It was also involved with pornographers, debt collectors, and offshore gamblers. Khawaja has been embroiled in trouble for a long time apparently, as he had millions seized from him and his companies by the FBI in 2010 as well. This scandal seems to be a deep rabbit hole that could lead to more information and possible incriminations of others.
Nader’s connections to Trump are fuzzy but he has met with Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner in recent years as well. Nader left and returned to the country multiple times while he was a Mueller witness and was arrested last June when he returned most recently.
