Former Cheney Aide Comes Under Scrutiny In Mueller Probe

John Hannah, a top national security aide to then-Vice President Dick Cheney and a member of President-elect Trump’s State Department transition team, is being probed in the special counsel investigation, the Daily Beast reports.

Mueller is reportedly examining Hannah’s “communications and political dealings,” including his contacts with Lebanese-American businessman, “shadow diplomat,” and convicted pedophile George Nader (pictured above), as well as Israeli social media entrepreneur Joel Zamel.

Special counsel prosecutors have interviewed both Zamel and Nader about their contacts with the Trump campaign earlier this year.

The Daily Beast cites two anonymous sources as saying that Hannah is close with both Nader and Zamel.

Nader, known as a broker for diplomatic backchannels to the Middle East, was intercepted by special counsel investigators at Washington’s Dulles airport on his way to Mar-a-lago in January 2018.

Two meetings that Nader had – one at Trump Tower in December 2016 with Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, and UAE Leader Mohammad bin Zayed, and another held in the Seychelles days before Trump’s inauguration with bin Zayed, Erik Prince, and state-owned Russian investment fund director Kirill Dmitriev – sparked investigators’ interest.

It’s unclear what role Hannah may have played in these meetings, if any. He serves on the advisory council of Wikistrat, an open-source intelligence firm owned by Zamel.