Papadopoulos admitted lying about contact with Kremlin-linked professor who said Russians had ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton
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| George Papadopoulos. The White House said last year Papadopoulos, 31, had ‘a minimal role, if one at all’ in the campaign. |
George Papadopoulos, a former adviser to the Donald Trump campaign, was sentenced to 14 days in prison in district court for the District of Columbia on Friday after he pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents investigating ties between Russian operatives and the campaign.
The sentence was significantly less than prosecutors’ recommendation of six months. Lawyers for Papadopoulos had requested probation, saying he lied not to impede investigation but “to preserve a perhaps misguided loyalty to his master”.
“The president of the United States hindered this investigation more than George Papadopoulos ever did,” Papadopoulos lawyer Thomas Breen said in court Friday.
Papadopoulos acknowledged that he had lied to investigators about contacts with a Kremlin-linked professor who informed him in April 2016 that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton and “thousands of emails”. Papadopoulos had told investigators that the conversation happened before he became a Trump campaign adviser, when in fact he had worked for the campaign for more than a month at the time.
He also received a year of supervision, 200 hours of community service, and a $9,500 fine. The judge in the case, Randolph Moss, said he wished to send a message about the seriousness of lying to the FBI. Papadopoulos acknowledged a “dreadful mistake” and apologized.
“People point and snicker and I am terribly depressed,” he said in court, according to CNN. “This investigation has global implications and the truth matters.”
Papadopoulos became the second person to be sentenced to prison in a prosecution brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. The Dutch lawyer Alex van der Zwaan was sentenced to 30 days in prison for lying to investigators about his conversations with former Trump aide Rick Gates, who last month testified in court against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted on fraud charges but has not yet been sentenced.
The White House did not immediately issue a statement on the sentencing. Press secretary Sarah Sanders said last year that Papadopoulos, 31, had “a minimal role, if one at all” in the campaign.
Papadopoulos’s main role in the campaign appears to have been a middleman for invitations from Russian operatives for Trump to visit Moscow and possibly meet with President Vladimir Putin.
Papadopoulos brought the idea up at a campaign meeting with Trump and future Attorney General Jeff Sessions, with Sessions later testifying before Congress that he had “pushed back” against the idea.
Lawyers for Papadopoulos contradicted that assertion. “While some in the room rebuffed George’s offer, Mr Trump nodded with approval and deferred to Mr Sessions, who appeared to like the idea and stated that the campaign should look into it,” they said in a sentencing memorandum, which requested probation for Papadopoulos.
The memo went on to say that Papadopoulos was “ashamed and remorseful”, but he did not always seem that way on social media.
“Been a hell of a year. Decisions,” Papadopoulos tweeted late last month, apparently in reference to the possibility that he might rescind his guilty plea. Last week he tweeted, cryptically, “It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver – Machiavelli.”
In his time with the Trump campaign, the delicacy of Papadopoulos’s mission to broker a meeting between Trump and Putin was not always reflected in his conduct. Told by the professor, Joseph Mifsud, that a Russian operative was “Putin’s niece,” Papadopoulos credulously repeated that assertion in an email to Trump campaign officials, prosecutors said. Putin does not have a niece.
Later, in what reports described as “a night of heavy drinking” with an Australian diplomat at the Kensington Wine Rooms in London, Papadopoulos described his conversation with Mifsud about the Russians having “dirt” on Clinton. The diplomat reported the conversation to the FBI.
This year Papadopoulos, who earned a master’s degree in security studies at Kings College, London, in 2010, married Simona Mangiante, an Italian who had previously met Mifsud and who told the Guardian that she met Papadopoulos on LinkedIn. Mangiante has denied being a Russian operative and is an outspoken defender of her husband.
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage,” Mangiante tweeted late Thursday. “It’s with courage and strength that we look after tomorrow.”
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