Mueller witness faces child-sex charges
ALEXANDRIA, Va.— A businessman who served as a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation now faces a charge of child sex trafficking in addition to transporting child pornography.
An indictment made public Friday in federal court in Alexandria charges Lebanese-American businessman George Nader, 60, with transporting a 14-year-old boy from Europe to Washington, D.C., in February 2000 and engaging in sex acts with him.
That charge comes on top of child-pornography charges that had been leveled against him when he was arrested last month.
Nader’s name shows up more than 100 times in Mueller’s report. It details his efforts to serve as liaison between a Russian banker close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and members of President Donald Trump’s transition team.
Nader also served as an adviser to the United Arab Emirates, a close Saudi ally, and in April 2017 wired $2.5 million to a top Trump fundraiser, Elliott Broidy, through a company in Canada, in a bid to persuade the U.S. to take a hard line against Qatar.
Nader is jailed as he awaits trial, which is set for Sept. 30.
The current investigation of Nader began last year when images depicting child pornography and bestiality were found on his phone after it was confiscated under a search warrant connected to the Mueller probe.
In 1991, Nader pleaded guilty in Virginia to a charge of transporting child-pornography images. He also was sentenced in 2003 to a year in prison in the Czech Republic after being convicted of sexually abusing minors.
U.S. names election security official
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats named a career intelligence official to a new post in charge of coordinating the government’s response to threats against the U.S. election system.
Coats said Shelby Pierson, who served as his election security crisis manager for the 2018 midterm election, will serve as the executive overseeing election security work across U.S. intelligence agencies and departments.
“Election security is an enduring challenge and a top priority” for the intelligence community, Coats said in a statement. “In order to build on our successful approach to the 2018 elections, the [intelligence community] must properly align its resources to bring the strongest level of support to this critical issue.”
He directed all intelligence agencies to select a single senior executive as a point person on election security issues. They will form a new Election Executive and Leadership Board run by Pierson.
Sentence 9 years in theft of NSA files
BALTIMORE — A former National Security Agency contractor who stored two decades’ worth of classified documents at his Maryland home was sentenced Friday to nine years in prison.
Harold Martin, 54, apologized to the federal judge who sentenced him for a theft that prosecutors have called “breathtaking” in scope.
“My methods were wrong, illegal and highly questionable,” Martin told U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett.
In a plea agreement, Martin pleaded guilty to a single count of willful retention of national defense information. Martin gets credit for the nearly three years he has spent behind bars since his arrest.
A prosecutor and defense attorney both noted there is no evidence that Martin intended to transmit any of the classified information to anyone.
FBI agents conducting a raid in 2016 found a trove of stolen government documents inside his home, car and storage shed.
Prosecutors said he jeopardized national security through habitually taking home secret and classified government documents and carelessly storing them. The information spanned from the mid-1990s to the present and included personal details of government employees and “Top Secret” email chains, handwritten notes describing the NSA’s classified computer infrastructure, and descriptions of classified technical operations.
U.S. citizen held, said to be ISIS sniper
NEW YORK — A U.S. citizen from Kazakhstan facing terrorism charges after he became a sniper and weapons trainer for the Islamic State group once boasted that he supports “the worst terrorist organization in the world,” authorities said as they announced his arrest Friday.
Ruslan Maratovich Asainov, 42, was transferred to FBI custody Wednesday and brought to the United States after his detention overseas by the Syrian Democratic Forces, federal authorities said in a release.
Asainov was detained without bail following an appearance Friday in Brooklyn federal court.
The naturalized U.S. citizen born in Kazakhstan spent from 1998 to 2013 living in Brooklyn before flying to Istanbul in December 2013 and making his way into Syria, where he became a sniper for the organization, a criminal complaint said.
It said he rose through the group’s ranks, becoming an “emir” in charge of training other members in the use of weapons and even helped to establish training camps.
