Exclusive: Spanish judge seeks Sheldon Adelson security chief in Assange spying case
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EDITED AND HOSTED BY THE GREANVILLE POST
By Max Blumenthal
A Spanish judge’s request to probe a Las Vegas Sands staffer’s apparent role in a criminal spying operation against Julian Assange indicates the investigation is homing in on US intelligence. Tellingly, the Department of Justice is stonewalling the application.
The Spanish judge presiding over the trial of a security firm owner apparently hired to spy on jailed Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange has sent a request to the US Department of Justice for an interview with Zohar Lahav, the Israeli-American vice president for executive protection at Las Vegas Sands.
Sands is owned by the ultra-Zionist casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, one of the single largest donors to Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns and the Republican Party.
All major politicians in the US rely on the shady billionaire class for support, but Trump, as usual, is among the most blatant. One of his megadonors is casino operator Sheldon Adelson, a rabid Zionist and personal Netanyahu supporter.
According to court documents reviewed by The Grayzone, the judge seeks to probe Lahav’s relationship with disgraced UC Global CEO David Morales, who was indicted for an array of crimes after allegedly presiding over a spying operation targeting Assange while he was confined within Ecuador’s embassy in London.
This request follows a previous attempt at securing witness interviews that was effectively blocked by the US Department of Justice.
The judge outlined four objectives for the interview with Lahav:
Determine Lahav’s relationship with Morales
Determine the occasions when Morales and Lahav met in the United States and Spain
Determine if Lahav had communications and meetings with Morales regarding the alleged illegally obtained information under investigation
Determine if Lahav or his superiors in Las Vegas Sands, Sheldon Adelson and Brian Nagel, had access to the alleged illegally obtained information under investigation.
The judge’s interest in Nagel indicates that the Spanish investigation is now probing the suspected role of US intelligence as the guiding hand behind UC Global’s criminal spying operation.
Before he was hired as Adelson’s director of global security, Nagel serving as the top cyber-crime investigator for the US Secret Service – a role which earned him a medal of commendation from the CIA. Together with Lahav, he was likely to have played a central role in coordinating between Sands, UC Global, and US intelligence.
Morales has fervently denied being a double agent, maintaining that UC Global was contracted exclusively by the Ecuadorian security service known as SENAIN to protect Assange while he was trapped in Ecuador’s embassy in London.
Fernando Garcia, the lawyer defending Morales in the Spanish case, insisted to The Grayzone in a garbled email, “David Morales never spied [on] anybody, never sent any legal information [to] anybody but helped Assange [stay] safe and comfortable [in the] Ecuador Embassy with NO[T] ONE incident under their protection.”
But as The Grayzone first reported in May, witnesses in the Spanish case testified that Lahav recruited UC Global’s Morales when the Spanish mercenary visited a security fair hosted at Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Convention Center. The two became fast friends, with Lahav communicating constantly with Morales as the operation escalated from snooping to theft, fraud, and assassination plots, according to testimony by several witnesses.
Emails obtained by the Spanish court and reviewed by The Grayzone contained IP addresses revealing that Morales sent spying instructions to his employees while he was staying at Adelson’s Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.
The Grayzone has now learned that Lahav and Morales have been identified together in at least one US-allied South American country since the operation at the embassy ended. Further, a Spanish police document seen by this reporter placed Morales on Adelson’s Queen Miri luxury yacht in July 2019.
Private communications by Morales and testimony by his former employees strongly suggested that Adelson’s Sands was functioning as a front for the CIA.
According to a former UC Global business partner, Morales boasted that he was “working for the dark side” after returning from his first trip to Las Vegas and explicitly stated he had been contracted by US intelligence, describing the CIA alternately as his “American friends” and “the American client.”
In a text message obtained by The Grayzone, Morales told an employee that his company had been hired to spy on Assange by “the agency of the stars and stripes.”
By seeking an interview with Lahav and information about Nagel, the Spanish judge presiding over the criminal trial of Morales is effectively investigating the role of Adelson’s security team as a channel between the CIA and UC Global.
However, in an email reviewed by The Grayzone, DOJ trial attorney Susan Park Hunter attempted to stall the investigation with vague and frivolous requests for “additional information,” including the “factual basis to suspect [David] Morales Guillen of bribery and money laundering.”
Hunter’s language indicates that the US government recognizes the gravity of the judge’s request, and given the consequence of allowing a figure like Lahav to testify, has resolved to do whatever is necessary to avoid compliance.
Instagram posts by Morales’ wife, Noelia Paez, posted while in Las Vegas on January 20, 2017
The CIA’s men in Vegas?
Family ties to Trump Inc.’s favorite self-help guru
Zohar Lahav’s status as director of executive protection for Adelson, perhaps the largest individual donor to the president, is not his only connection to Trump Inc. The Israeli-American is married to a motivational speaker, Loren Slocum Lahav, who has worked closely with Tony Robbins, facilitating 160 workshops for the wealthy self-help guru over the past 14 years, according to her bio.
Robbins happens to have been a business partner of Trump during his brief and abortive campaign for president in 2000. During Robbins’ Results 2000 speaking tour, he reportedly paid Trump $1 million to deliver 10 speeches at seminars where participants were charged $229 each for entry. Candidate Trump’s exploratory committee described the appearances as campaign events. “Trump is making money running for president,” an advisor told the press at the time.
Coverage of Trump’s ethically questionable business relationship with Robbins surfaced during the 2016 campaign when Wikileaks published an email by a Democratic National Committee employee disseminating opposition research on the rival candidate.
When Trump entered the Oval Office in January 2017, the UC Global spying campaign against Assange began. Initiated under the apparent watch of then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who labeled Wikileaks a “hostile non-state intelligence agency,” the operation appears to have been managed by Lahav from its inception.
Sworn testimony by Lahav in a Spanish court might provide the final confirmation of his suspected role as a liaison between US intelligence and Trump’s most influential donor in an illegal spying operation that violated the rights of Assange, his lawyers, and associates while he was trapped in Ecuador’s embassy in the UK.
As The Grayzone reported, former employees of Morales have publicized a rumor that Lahav was fired by Las Vegas Sands. When Morales was asked during a court appearance this February if the rumor was true, he confirmed it, stating that Lahav was terminated because of the “mess” he helped create.
Further evidence demonstrating the CIA’s hand in a campaign of sabotage, surveillance, and assassination plots would be certain to reverberate in the Old Bailey courtroom in London, where lawyers for Assange are battling a US demand for the journalist’s extradition and prosecution under the Espionage Act. Perhaps it is no wonder that the Department of Justice is stonewalling the request for Lahav.