The 900 Pages of George Nader Testimony the Government Wants to Keep Hidden
Brad Heath spotted this Beryl Howell opinion granting George Nader’s request to get a copy of his own grand jury transcript.
We can be sure it’s Nader because of the details she includes: Someone currently jailed for crime with significant mandatory minimums charged using evidence from a phone seized in the Mueller investigation, awaiting trial early next year. The person provided testimony with immunity on four occasions in February and March 2018.
That all fits Nader and only Nader.
In my continuing interest in tracking the dregs of the Mueller investigation, several details are of interest. Howell describes that his transcript is 900 pages long. Several of the redactions suggest Nader may need the transcripts to craft a defense in potential additional charges, which would more obviously raise a need to consult the transcript and the limits of his immunized testimony. And, the government claims that Nader was asked “questions regarding ongoing investigations.”
That’s not surprising in the least. Nader’s testimony touched on so many crimes it is unsurprising some of them remain active investigations (note the attached picture, which shows Nader with Jared Kushner and Mohammed bin Salman.
The question is how he wants to use this transcript. It’s possible he needs it to argue that potentially pending charges against him are improperly based on immunized testimony (and as such wants to eliminate criminal exposure before making the best plea deal he can). Or it’s possible he wants the transcript to be able to explain the risks any cooperation he’d offer would pose to powerful people.
I’ve been thinking about Nader for the past few days. So, this is interesting. I wonder if we will eventually hear more about the Zamel connection. I think Kushner, Stephen Miller and Don Jr. were in that TT meeting with Nader and Zamel at the beginning of August 2016. Bannon and Prince may have been around at that time too, but I can’t remember if they were at that meeting.
N-A-D-E-R, that 5-letter name redaction from a few days ago..
I’ve got to confess that my first thought was, George who? On further investigation it was, oh that George Nader.
“In the 2000s, Nader left Washington and spent most of his time in the Middle East, especially in Iraq after the 2003 Iraq invasion.[10] Since then, Nader has volunteered with U.S. politicians to act as a “shadow diplomat” connecting them to Middle Eastern officials.[9] Erik Prince, founder of security firm Blackwater, hired Nader to help with contracts with the Iraqi government; in a 2010 deposition, Prince identified Nader as a “business development consultant”.[11]
In August 2016, Nader met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower offering assistance to his father’s presidential campaign.[12] Nader served as an envoy representing Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammad bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The meeting included Erik Prince and Joel Zamel, an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation[13][12] and owner of intelligence gathering firms including Wikistrat and the Psy-Group, who bragged to have received $2 million from Nader as part of the presidential campaign.[14]
Nader attended a December 2016 meeting in New York between the United Arab Emirates officials and president-elect Donald Trump’s associates Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn, and Steve Bannon.[9] In January 2017 he was at a meeting on the Seychelles islands between the Emiratis and Erik Prince, and was present when Prince met with officials from the UAE and Kirill Dmitriev, head of state-run Russian Direct Investment Fund.[9]
Working with Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy in 2017, Nader funded a conference criticizing Qatar that was hosted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.[15] At the time Nader and Broidy were pushing the White House to remove Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whom the Saudis and Emiratis saw as insufficiently tough on Iran and Qatar.[6]
In January 2018, Nader was served a grand-jury subpoena,[16] and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators questioned him to elicit if the UAE had tried to influence members of President Trump’s campaign.[9][17] Kathryn Ruemmler, an Obama-era White House counsel, was among the lawyers representing Nader.[1] Nader was granted immunity for information for the investigation.[6][18] ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Nader_(businessman)
The subjects discussed at the Seychelles meeting included investment by government controlled Russian investment funds in the Midwestern rust belt. I assume that would include their Mitch McConnell investments in Kentucky.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/revealed-what-erik-prince-and-moscows-money-man-discussed-in-that-infamous-seychelles-meeting
Not the George Nader who was the beefcake actor from the 1950s, who was a good friend to Rock Hudson.
This request seems to be in good faith.
It’s hard for me to imagine his attorneys using a hard copy of the transcript as a bargaining tool. Showing that hard copy to someone would basically be handing the other party leverage since such a disclosure is a violation of federal law on the part of the attorney.
Lol, seriously? Why do you think they asked for it???
I,too, remain obsessed with the Mueller investigation and Part One of the report which, IMHO, detailed a bunch of “collusion.” Nader was linked throughout … but more than the Erik Prince thing, I was interested in highlighting the passing connection to Kirill Dmitriev and direct role in the OTHER Trump Tower mtg where he proposed using PsyGroup to Donnie Jr,, with Dmitriev’s investing partner MBZ of the UAE footing the bill: https://newsvandal.com/2019/06/the-deep-state-of-denial-about-trumps-oily-presidency/