The New York Times reported that during a night of heavy drinking at a London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser working for the Donald Trump presidential campaign, told Australia’s top diplomat in Britain that Russia had damaging information on Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic presidential opponent.
Two months later the leaked Clinton emails began appearing online, The Times reported.
Australian officials told their American counterparts what Papadopoulos said during the night of heavy drinking, the newspaper reported.
The FBI investigated the hacking and release of emails and whether the Trump campaign may have had what the Times called “inside information” that motivated the “F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired.”
The investigation was led by special counsel Robert Mueller, a former FBI director.
The Times, writing in December 2017, described Papadopoulos as “the improbable match that set off a blaze that has consumed the first year of the Trump administration, his saga is also a tale of the Trump campaign in miniature,” the article said. “He was brash, boastful and underqualified, yet he exceeded expectations. And, like the campaign itself, he proved to be a tantalizing target for a Russian influence operation.”
Papadopoulos pled guilty to lying to the FBI in its investigation into Russia interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Papadopoulos, who cooperated with the investigation, was sentenced to 14 days in federal prison. The judge said that the sentence was necessary because Papadopoulos had hindered the investigation by lying to the FBI.
Papadopoulos’ attorney Thomas Breen, however, argued that the president himself was more responsible than his client, Politico reported.
Trump “hindered this investigation more than George Papadopoulos ever could” by referring to the FBI’s Russia inquiry as a “witch hunt” and casting doubt on credible allegations of wrongdoing by his associates, Breen said.
Papadopoulos was living in London working for GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson in late 2015. He then joined Trump’s campaign. In March 2016, in an interview with the Washington Post, Trump praised the foreign policy staff he had hired for his campaign.
Trump then read from a list of hires, referring to Papadopoulos as an expert in foreign policy: “He’s an oil and energy consultant, excellent guy.”
This was, it appears, an exaggeration of Papadopoulos’s credentials.
And it was Trump’s – and no one else’s – exaggeration.
Michael Caputo, a Trump campaign adviser, dismissed Papadopoulos’ contributions after he had pled guilty to lying to the FBI.
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/31/politics/caputo-papadopoulos-coffee-boy-cnntv/index.html
“He was the coffee boy,” Caputo said. “You might have called him a foreign policy analyst, but if he was going to wear a wire, all we would have known now is whether he prefers a caramel macchiato over a regular American coffee in conversations with his barista.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/31/politics/caputo-papadopoulos-coffee-boy-cnntv/index.html
But The Times said that Papadopoulos had an influential role with the Trump campaign.
The newspaper said that Papadopoulos organized a meeting before the 2016 election between Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. He also made contacts with Russian officials and told Trump he could arrange a meeting between the candidate and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
But it was, according to The Times, Papadopoulos’s revelation that Russia had damaging information on Clinton that made him a central character is what became the Mueller investigation.
“The information that Mr. Papadopoulos gave to the Australians answers one of the lingering mysteries of the past year: What so alarmed American officials to provoke the F.B.I. to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign months before the presidential election?” The Times reported.
After Papadopoulos pled guilty, Trump derided him on Twitter.
“Few people knew the young, low-level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar,” Trump said.
….came to the campaign. Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017
But Trump wasn’t telling the truth, was he?
Well, no.
Trump had of course earlier praised Papadopoulos and appeared to be aware of his talents:
“He’s an oil and energy consultant, excellent guy.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also repeated Trump’s claim that Papadopoulos was a volunteer and had an “extremely limited” role with the campaign.
https://www.factcheck.org/2017/10/papadopoulos-low-level-volunteer/
Fact checkers with CNN, The Associated Press, Fact-Check Org., and other media organizations investigated whether Papadopoulos was a “low-level volunteer” who had little or no contact with the Trump campaign.
They all reported that Trump and Sanders had falsely categorized Papadopoulos’s role with the administration.
In other words, Trump was lying to discredit a government witness.
And Sanders was lying to protect Trump.
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/31/politics/trump-fact-check-george-papadopoulos/index.html
https://www.factcheck.org/2017/10/papadopoulos-low-level-volunteer/
“Interviews and documents show that Papadopoulos was in regular contact with the Trump campaign’s most senior officials and held himself out as a Trump surrogate as he traveled the world to meet with foreign officials and reporters,” the Washington Post reported.
“Papadopoulos sat at the elbow of one of Trump’s top campaign advisers, then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, during a dinner for campaign advisers weeks before the Republican National Convention,” the newspaper added.
In late December 2020, after Trump had lost the presidential election but before he left office, he issued a full pardon for Papadopoulos who had been released after serving 12 days of his 14-day sentence.
“Today’s pardon helps correct the wrong that Mueller’s team inflicted on so many people,” the White House said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-pardons-idUSKBN28X00R
