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Businessman George Nader was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport last month on a child pornography charge. Federal magistrates in New York and Alexandria, Va., denied motions for his release. | C-SPAN via AP Businessman who testified in Mueller probe indicted on child pornography charges

A wealthy Lebanese-American businessman and Middle East expert who was a witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation has been indicted on charges of importing child pornography and traveling with a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity.

George Nader, 60, entered a not guilty plea through his attorney Friday morning in federal court in Alexandria, Va., during a brief arraignment on the new indictment, which was returned July 3 and unsealed Friday.

Nader was involved in various meetings and discussions related to the Trump presidential transition that drew the attention of Mueller investigators, including a meeting that Erik Prince, the founder of private military contractor Blackwater, held with a Russian ally of President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles in January 2017.

Nader also took part in a meeting in Trump Tower the previous month that involved President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, his then-chief strategist Steve Bannon and Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince in the United Arab Emirates.

When Nader flew into Dulles Airport outside Washington in January 2018, he was questioned by agents working for Mueller. A search of three iPhones seized from him that day via a search warrant allegedly turned up child pornography.

Prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Nader over the images in April 2018 but kept the charges under seal and never told his attorneys about them even as he continued to cooperate with Mueller’s probe, lawyers said.

Nader was arrested on the criminal complaint early last month at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as he flew in from overseas. Magistrate judges in New York and Alexandria denied his requests for release.

Nader was wearing an Alexandria jail jumpsuit Friday for the five-minute hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema. She set a trial date of Sept. 30.

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A defense attorney for Nader, Jonathan Jeffress, urged Brinkema to reconsider the earlier orders to detain Nader pending trial.

“This is not a typical child pornography case,” Jeffress told Brinkema, asking that the defendant be released to home detention under armed guard.

However, the judge said she wasn’t inclined to let Nader out.

“I think the decision to detain your client was appropriate,” Brinkema said, noting Nader’s extensive overseas connections, the type of conduct at issue and the potential for a lengthy prison sentence.

Brinkema did say she would look at a written motion the defense submitted seeking Nader’s release, but she told prosecutor Jay Prabhu not to bother filing a response unless she asks for it. She did say she expects motions challenging the charge relating to transporting a minor, which dates to 2000.

The defense’s bail submission stresses Nader’s cooperation with Mueller.

“He testified multiple times under a grant of formal immunity before a grand jury empaneled in the District of Columbia,” Nader’s lawyers said.

His attorneys said the videos that led to the charges are 12 recordings found in WhatsApp on one of Mr. Nader’s phones. Nader’s defense said he didn’t know they were there.

“Neither the volume of the images or the content aligns with a typical federal child pornography (or obscenity) prosecution,” the defense team wrote. “The government is overreaching in this case.”

The defense contended that Nader can’t pose much danger because he was allowed to leave and enter the country numerous times after the videos were discovered.

Nader received a six-month sentence and a $2,000 fine from a federal judge in Northern Virginia in 1991 on a felony charge of transporting sexually explicit materials in foreign commerce, according to the records POLITICO obtained last year.

U.S. District Court Judge Claude Hilton also imposed a $2,000 fine on Nader, the records show.

Details of the Virginia case have not been previously reported, but it was known that Nader faced a similar charge in federal court in Washington in 1985 involving allegations of importing from the Netherlands magazines depicting nude boys. A judge later dismissed those charges.

The Associated Press reported that Nader was convicted in the Czech Republic in 2002 of 10 cases of sexually abusing minors. He received a one-year prison sentence in that case, a court spokeswoman said, according to the news-wire service.

The minor mentioned in the new indictment is also Czech, Prabhu said at the arraignment Friday.