Jewish Bubba: Caught in Mueller's Net: Trump's Friends and Associates ; Tracked and Tried Guilty

Nadene Goldfoot

(Reuters) - Steve Bannon: has been charged with defrauding Trump supporters in a campaign to help build the president’s signature wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, prosecutors said on Thursday.He was one of Trump's advisers. Bannon served as a top adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and later worked as White House chief strategist before leaving the administration in August 2017.
Trump met Bannon in 2010; Bannon first met Trump through David Bossie, the head of conservative group Citizens United, Bannon said in a later interview with then-CBS anchor Charlie Rose.
The count includes senior members of Trump’s campaign staff, including former campaign chair Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates – both snared on financial misdeeds in special counsel Robert Mueller investigation. Trump’s first national security adviser – Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn – pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI – though he has recently moved to retract his plea. His personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is under criminal investigation for his business relationship with two men arrested in an alleged campaign finance scheme, according to sources. Both Giuliani associates have pleaded not guilty.

*Roger Jason Stone: "Trump’s longtime friend and adviser, was convicted of lying under oath to lawmakers investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. an American conservative political consultant, lobbyist, and convicted felon. In November 2019, subsequent to the Mueller report and Special Counsel investigation, he was convicted on seven counts, including witness tampering and lying to investigators. Stone first suggested Trump run for president in early 1998 while he was Trump's casino business lobbyist in Washington. The Netflix documentary film Get Me Roger Stone focuses on Stone's past and his role in Trump's presidential campaign. Since the 1970s, Stone worked on the campaigns of Republican politicians Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump." He had a great resume!

*Paul Manafort: Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty of tax fraud and bank fraud in a jury trial in August 2018. A month later, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges related to money laundering, lobbying violations and witness tampering. On October 27, 2017, Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates were indicted in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on multiple charges arising from his consulting work for the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine before Yanukovych's overthrow in 2014. The indictment came at the request of Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation. In June 2018, additional charges were filed against Manafort for obstruction of justice and witness tampering that are alleged to have occurred while he was under house arrest, and he was ordered to jail.

*Rick Gates: Richard William Gates, III: The former deputy chairman of Trump’s campaign pleaded guilty in February 2018 to conspiracy against the United States and lying to investigators. is an American former political consultant and lobbyist who pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and making false statements in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. He is a longtime business associate of Paul Manafort and served as deputy to Manafort when the latter was campaign manager of the Donald Trump presidential campaign in 2016, and after under Kellyanne Conway. Gates agreed to cooperate with former Special Counsel Robert Mueller and testified as a prosecution witness against Manafort, his former business partner, and Stone. Gates was sentenced in December 2019 to 45 days in jail.

Michael Cohen, lawyer: Cohen joined the Trump Organization in 2006. Trump hired him in part because he was already an admirer of Trump, having read Trump's Art of the Deal twice. He had purchased several Trump properties and convinced his own parents and in-laws, as well as a business partner, to buy condominiums in Trump World Tower. Cohen aided Trump in his struggle with the condominium board at the Trump World Tower, which led Trump to obtain control of the board. Cohen became a close confidant to Trump, maintaining an office near Trump at Trump Tower.Michael Dean Cohen is an American disbarred lawyer who served as an attorney for U.S. President Donald Trump from 2006–2018. Cohen was a vice-president of The Trump Organization, and the personal counsel to Trump, and was often described by media as Trump's "fixer".
He pleaded guilty in August 2018 to crimes including orchestrating ‘hush money’ payments before the 2016 election to women who had said they had sexual encounters with Trump. Trump’s former personal lawyer is serving a three-year prison sentence at home due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Michael Flynn: The retired Army lieutenant general served as Trump’s national security adviser for less than a month in 2017.Michael Thomas Flynn is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who was the 24th National Security Advisor for the first 22 days of the Trump administration until his forced resignation.. He pleaded guilty that year to lying to the FBI about his interactions with Russia’s ambassador to the United States in the weeks before Trump took office.
In December 2017, Flynn formalized a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to plead guilty to a felony count of "willfully and knowingly" making false statements to the FBI, and agreed to cooperate with the Special Counsel's investigation. In January 2020. Flynn moved to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming government vindictiveness and breach of the plea agreement. The United States Department of Justice announced that it intended to drop all charges against Flynn on May 7, 2020. Federal district judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled the matter to be placed on hold.

George Nader: A Lebanese-American businessman who was a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election - a businessman who also helped broker the release of American hostages;  an informal Trump adviser on foreign policy and witness in the Mueller investigation, was sentenced in June to 10 years in prison by a federal judge in Virginia.
George Nader pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography and to bringing a 14-year-old boy from the Czech Republic to engage in sexual activity to the United States for sex. There was another George Nader, also of Lebanese ancestry, an actor and writer who was gay, and who died much earlier.  Nader's name appears more than 100 times in the Mueller report. It details Nader's efforts to serve as liaison between Russians and members of President Donald Trump's transition team.
"He  is an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates and a consultant to Blackwater founder Erik Prince. In January 2018, special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators questioned Nader in connection to suspicions that the UAE had been involved with President Trump's 2016 campaign.
On August 3, 2016 Nader met with Trump Jr., Erik Prince, and Joel Zamel, an Israeli entrepreneur and specialist in social media manipulation, to offer help to the Trump team in winning the elections. There are conflicting accounts of whether the close to 2 million dollars Nader paid Zamel after Trump's victory is attributed to that or not.
In December 2019, Nader was charged in U.S. federal court with violating campaign finance laws by allegedly also using over three and half million dollars to reach out to Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign for the U.S. Presidency, through a front." During the George H. W. Bush Administration he helped to free American hostages in Lebanon after the Iran–Contra affair.^]
During the Clinton Administration, Nader tried unsuccessfully to broker an Israeli–Syrian peace agreement, working with Estée Lauder heir Ronald Lauder.
In August 2016, Nader met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower offering assistance to his father's presidential campaign. 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 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.

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. 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.

George Papadopoulos:  According to court records, Papadopoulos joined Trump's foreign policy adviser team as a volunteer adviser in early March 2016. Sam Clovis, who at the time was national co-chairman of Donald Trump's campaign team, approved him as an unpaid adviser. In his campaign job interview via Skype from London on March 6, Clovis allegedly told Papadopoulos that one of the campaign's foreign policy priorities was to improve U.S.–Russia relations, though Clovis later denied saying that.
George Demetrios Papadopoulos is a former member of the foreign policy advisory panel to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.  Papadopoulos joined candidate Trump as well as Senator Jeff Sessions and other campaign officials for a National Security Meeting at the Trump Hotel, on March 31, 2016. Papadopoulos averred that he could facilitate a foreign policy meeting between candidate Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The former Trump campaign adviser was sentenced in September 2018 to 14 days in prison after pleading guilty in October 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials and a Maltese professor who told him the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton.
  At a breakfast meeting at the Andaz London Liverpool Street hotel on April 26, 2016, Mifsud (While employed at that time with the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP), on March 12, 2016, Papadopoulos was part of an LCILP visiting delegation to the Link Campus University in Rome. There he met Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic who was at the time a teacher at the University of Stirling in Scotland.)  told Papadopoulos that he had information that the Russians have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, "the Russians had emails of Clinton", "they have thousands of emails.  Despite his communications with members of the Trump campaign regarding Russia, the Mueller Report found no evidence that Papadopoulos ever shared information with the Trump campaign regarding Russia having "dirt" on Hilary Clinton or possessing her hacked emails.
Between March and September 2016, Papadopoulos made at least six requests for Trump or representatives of his campaign to meet in Russia with Russian politicians. In May, campaign chairman Paul Manafort forwarded one such request to his deputy Rick Gates, saying "We need someone to communicate that [Trump] is not doing these trips. It should be someone low-level in the campaign so as not to send any signal." Gates delegated the task to the campaign's correspondence coordinator, referring to him as "the person responding to all mail of non-importance.

These men were investigated mostly because of Robert Swan Mueller III, an American lawyer and government official who served as the sixth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2001 to 2013. On May 17, 2017, Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as special counsel overseeing an investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and related matters. He submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019. On April 18, the Department of Justice released it. On May 29, he resigned his post and the Office of the Special Counsel was closed. Mueller and William Barr—the attorney general who supervised the late stage of Mueller's special counsel investigation—have known each other since the 1980s and have been described as good friends. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr's daughters, and their wives attend Bible study together.