Question Du Jour: Who Is George Papadopoulos?

Comrade Papadopoulos proactively reaches inside to adjust his wire

Thumbnail: Papadopoulos was a Trump foreign policy adviser and the first of the Trumpanzee bandits to plead guilty in the Putin-Gate investigation. Now 30, he worked for the kooky right-wing think tank, the Hudson Institute from 2011 'til 2015 and then joined the Ben Carson presidential campaign. After Trump drove Dr. Ben out of the race, Papadopoulos, a pro-Putin operative, went to work for Trump. Currently the Trump Regime is describing him as "a hanger on" rather than as an actual member of the campaign. Everyone is eager to hear the tapes he made by wearing a wire for the FBI. Earlier, he had tried, unsuccessfully, setting up at least one meeting between candidate Trumpanzee and Czar Vladimir. Yesterday the Washington Post reported that "Papadopoulos pleaded guilty earlier this month to making a false statement to FBI investigators who asked about his contacts with a foreigner who claimed to have high-level Russian connections. The agreement was unsealed Monday. Court documents described extensive efforts Papadopoulos made to try to broker connections with Russian officials and arrange a meeting between them and the Trump campaign, though some emails show his offers were rebuffed." Here's the full court document that was unsealed yesterday.

Papadopoulos ultimately admitted to lying to the FBI about his interactions with people he thought had connections with the Russian government. He has been cooperating with investigators for months-- having been first arrested and charged in July after landing at Dulles International Airport on a flight from Germany-- and has met with the government on “numerous occasions to provide information and answer questions,” according to a court filing.

...Papadopoulos’s case appears directly related to the investigation of possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

In a January 2017 interview with the FBI, Papadopoulos told the agency that a London-based professor claimed to him he had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, including “thousands of emails.” But Papadopoulos said initially he viewed the professor as a “nothing.”

In reality, according to his plea, Papadopoulos understood the man had connections to Russian government officials, and he had treated him very seriously as he tried to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

After a March 2016 meeting with the man, who was not identified in court records, Papadopoulos emailed a campaign supervisor and other members of the campaign’s foreign policy team and claimed the professor had introduced him to “Putin’s niece” and the Russian ambassador in London.

Papadopoulos, a low-level member of the Trump campaign and a former intern and researcher at the conservative Hudson Institute, claimed the purpose was “to arrange a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss U.S.-Russia ties under President Trump.”

The government noted, in fact, the woman was not Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s niece, and while Papadopoulos expected the professor would introduce him to the Russian ambassador, that never happened. But in the months that followed, Papadopoulos continued to correspond with the woman and the professor about a possible meeting between the Trump campaign, possibly including Trump himself, and Russian officials.

“The Russian government has an open invitation by Putin for Mr. Trump to meet him when he is ready,” Papadopoulos wrote to a senior policy adviser for the campaign on April 25. Two days later, he emailed another high-ranking campaign official wanting “to discuss Russia’s interest in hosting Mr. Trump.”

The campaign officials were not identified in court records. Papadopoulos’s effort continued into the summer of 2016, and in August 2016 a campaign supervisor told Papadopoulos and another foreign policy adviser they should take a trip to Russia. That ultimately did not take place, according to the plea.

Was Papadopoulos the only "low level volunteer" and "coffee" boy at this table of Trump's top advisors?

NY Times reporter Matt Apuzzo explained that Papadopoulos' guilty plea "represents the most explicit evidence that the Trump campaign was aware that the Russian government was trying to help Mr. Trump and that the campaign was eager to accept that help. As part of that effort, the Russian government hacked Democratic accounts and released a trove of embarrassing emails related to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. The Trump campaign has repeatedly denied any inside knowledge about that... The documents released on Monday said that several senior campaign officials knew about some of Mr. Papadopoulos’s interactions with the Russians." Unnamed, the "senior campaign officials" are presumed to include Manafort, Flynn, Kushner-in-law and Trumpanzee, Jr.

In January, Papadopoulos told the FBI that the mysterious professor was "a nothing" but has since admitted that he knew the professor had "substantial connections to Russian government officials." He also lied to the FBI by telling them in January, when they first interviewed him, that he began communicating with the professor and the bogus Putin niece before he became a Trump foreign policy adviser but has now confessed that he was trying to mislead the FBI and that the meetings took place after he was working for Trump.

“The professor only took interest in defendant Papadopoulos because of his status with the campaign; and the professor told defendant Papadopoulos about the ‘thousands of emails’ on or about April 26, 2016, when defendant Papadopoulos had been a foreign policy adviser to the campaign for over a month,” according to the documents.

In February, Mr. Papadopoulos deleted his Facebook account, which included his communications with the Russians. Later that month, he began using a new cellphone number.

The documents say that Mr. Papadopoulos knew that the professor had met with senior officials in Moscow to discuss Mrs. Clinton’s email.

Mr. Papadopoulos alerted his supervisor and several members of the foreign policy team about his contacts, referring to his “good friend” the professor and a woman he called Mr. Putin’s niece. The campaign supervisor-- who was not identified in the documents-- said in response that he would “work it through the campaign” and added “Great work.”

The Justice Department said that Mr. Papadopoulos had hurt their investigation.

“Through his false statements and omissions, defendant Papadopoulos impeded the F.B.I.’s ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the Campaign and the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election,” the documents said.