George Nader, the Mueller probe witness currently facing child porn and trafficking charges, was publicly accused Tuesday of funneling $3.5 million in fraudulent donations in support of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for president in 2016.
Nader was charged in a sealed November indictment, which the Justice Department announced Tuesday, of conspiring with a shady online payment processor named Andy Khawaja to hide the true source of the donations.
While the money came from Nader, prosecutors alleged, it was donated under the names of Khawaja, Khawaja’s wife and Khawaja’s company. Clinton wasn’t identified by name by prosecutors, but several reports confirmed that she was the beneficiary candidate after analyzing records of Khawaja’s donations.
Six more men were also charged with “conspiring with Khawaja and each other to make conduit campaign contributions and conceal excessive contributions, and related offenses,” according to a DOJ press release.
Khawaja, who was also charged with a laundry list of offenses including obstructing the grand jury’s investigation, is CEO of Allied Wallet, a payment processor that’s counted shady online gambling businesses, porn websites, and payday lenders as customers.
For his part, Nader became a Trump team contact in 2016, eventually acting as a go-between for officials in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and meeting with Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon and others.
The Mueller report noted of Nader that he “developed contacts with both U.S. presidential campaigns during the 2016 election,” and that he kept Kirill Dmitriev, the chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, updated on his contacts.
Nader arranged a meeting between Dmitriev and blackwater founder Erik Prince after Trump’s election in the Seychelles in January 2017.
In 1991 Nader was convicted of transporting child pornography. He’s pleaded not guilty to more recent charges of transporting child porn as well as transporting a 14-year-old boy to the United States in 2000 with intent to engage in sexual activity, and is currently awaiting trial in custody.
An Associated Press investigation last year revealed Khawaja’s support for politicians in both parties including Clinton, and, after the presidential election, Donald Trump. Khawaja even secured an Oval Office photo with the President after donating $1 million to his inaugural committee.
In 2010, Khawaja and Allied Wallet were forced to pay $13 million after an FBI probe of poker websites. And in May, per the AP, Allied Wallet reached a $110 million settlement with the government over accusations that it knowingly processed payments for fraudulent businesses.
