briefly interrupted when, in 1985, the twenty-five-year-old budding journalist faces a federal felony charge for transporting sexually explicit materials in foreign commerce—an offense colloquially known as “possession of child pornography”—in Washington, D.C.64 The charges, involving the importation of magazines from the Netherlands depicting “pre- and post-pubescent boys engaged in a variety of sexual acts,” are ultimately dismissed when the search warrant used to effectuate the search of Nader’s home is invalidated.65 During the case it is revealed that Nader “corresponded with several young boys and saved their letters,” and that U.S. Customs inspectors also found in a package Nader had had delivered to his publication, in addition to the single obscene magazine over which he was charged, “two pictures … a film, four magazines, and an advertisement.”66 Nader denies all of the allegations.67
The mid-1980s sees Donald Trump, like Nader, run into some difficulties abroad that will later have repercussions for his life amid the world’s political heavyweights. In 1987, Trump travels to Russia looking for real estate opportunities and finds none. He does, however, according to journalist Craig Unger—author of House of Trump, House of Putin—have an eventful trip nonetheless, with the Kremlin secretly collecting valuable blackmail material (known as kompromat) on the New York City real estate developer. According to Unger, whose information comes directly from former Russian general Oleg Kalugin, once the head of counterintelligence for the KGB, “Trump had lots of fun with lots of women” during his 1987 trip to Moscow, leading Kalugin to be “reasonably sure that the KGB had kompromat from that visit.”68
During the 1990s, as Trump continues to pursue building opportunities in Russia, Nader’s U.S.-based Middle East Insight becomes a bimonthly publication with a website, an internship program, and a circulation of nearly 10,000. It charges $100 for an annual subscription and comes to be considered, according to the Daily Star (Lebanon), as “one of the most authoritative publications on the Middle East” in the world.69 In 1996, according to Israeli media outlet Haaretz, Nader “host[s] [Benjamin] Netanyahu [in Washington] shortly after his first election as prime minister,” later “forg[ing] even closer ties with Netanyahu and his bureau [by] … serv[ing] as Ronald Lauder’s assistant in the cosmetic tycoon’s failed efforts to secure a peace deal between Netanyahu and Syria’s president at the time, Hafez al-Assad. Netanyahu’s advisers have acknowledged their contacts with Nader, who is said to have been especially close to Dore Gold, the prime minister’s aide and former UN ambassador.”70
The Daily Star will write in 2000 that a monograph published by Middle East Insight discussing disputed boundary lines in the Golan Heights not only was quoted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and multiple Israeli newspapers but also was “used by the highest political officials involved in negotiations as the acceptable delineation of the [disputed boundary] line.”71 According to the Lebanese newspaper, and to Nader himself, Middle East Insight is distinguishable in the 2000s from other papers covering the Middle East by “present[ing] the public with pro-Arab and pro-American and pro-Jewish sides.”72 Nader tells the Daily Star in 2000 that his goal is to think about the Middle East “with fairness and from every angle possible.… To get the whole picture.… In the midst of the confusion of the ’80s, the conflicts, the stress and bloodshed, there were too many polemics, too many dogmatic, heated, emotional parties running the publications [covering the Middle East] in the United States. We needed more balance, non-partisanism, an objective viewpoint.”73
The result of Nader’s even-handed ethos, however, is ultimately controversy for Middle East Insight. “Certain pro-Arabs,” reports the Daily Star, “accuse [Nader] of spying and collaborating with ‘the Zionist enemy’ [Israel].”74 The New York Times will later call Middle East Insight an “unusual Washington magazine” and note that Nader uses it as a “platform for Arab, Israeli and Iranian officials to express their views” to policymakers in Washington—making it as much a professional service for American politicians as a rhetorical vehicle for various influential foreigners.75
In 1991, just as Middle East Insight is gaining a significant reputation among D.C. politicos, the then thirty-one-year-old Nader pleads guilty to another federal charge of transporting sexually explicit materials in foreign commerce; he serves six months at a halfway house.76 The child pornography had been found in his luggage at Washington’s Dulles International Airport upon his return from a trip to Germany.77 As the charge to which Nader pleads guilty carries a penalty of up to ten years in prison, being allowed to serve time in a halfway