Posted on 08/18/2018 5:31:50 PM PDT by MaxistheBest
Special Counsel Robert Mueller is asking a federal judge to sentence George Papadopoulos to up to six months in jail and is accusing the former Trump campaign adviser of impeding the government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election by lying to the FBI during an interview in early 2017.
“The defendant’s crime was serious and caused damage to the government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election,” Mueller wrote in a court filing submitted late Friday to a judge in Washington, D.C.
“The government respectfully submits that a sentence of incarceration, within the applicable Guidelines range of 0 to 6 months’ imprisonment, and a $9,500 fine are warranted and appropriate,” the document reads.
Papadopoulos, 30, pleaded guilty on Oct. 5, 2017 to lying to the FBI about the timing and extent of his contacts with a Maltese professor and two Russian nationals while he worked on the Trump campaign. According to Mueller, Papadopoulos lied more than a dozen times about the contacts with the professor, Joseph Mifsud.
Papadopoulos told FBI agents during a Jan. 27, 2017 interview that Mifsud claimed during an April 27, 2016 meeting in London that Russian government officials had relayed to him that they had “dirt” on then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands” of her emails.
Papadopoulos learned in early March 2016 that he would join the Trump campaign. He first met Mifsud in Italy on March 14, 2016, and the pair remained in contact over the next several months. But Papadopoulos told FBI agents that the encounters were a “coincidence” and occurred before he joined the Trump team. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Papadopoulos’s Wife Says He Should Scrap Plea Deal With Mueller’s Office)
Mueller contends that Papadopoulos’s statements “substantially hindered” investigators’ ability to “effectively question” Mifsud when he traveled to Washington, D.C., two weeks after the first Papadopoulos interview, Friday’s filing said.
Papadopoulos, an energy consultant based in Chicago, was arrested on July 27, 2017 at the Washington Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C. He will be sentenced on Sept. 7.
While Trump critics are likely to jump on the new Mueller filing, the document does not assert that Papadopoulos attempted to obtain Clinton dirt on behalf of the Trump campaign. He is not accused of conspiracy and a charge of lying to federal investigators is the lightest charge in the federal criminal code.
The FBI at one point thought that Papadopoulos held the keys to the collusion conspiracy between the campaign and Kremlin. The Russia investigation, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, was opened on July 31, 2016, after the FBI received information about Papadopoulos that originated with Alexander Downer, who then served as the Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. (RELATED: A Meeting In London Aroused George Papadopoulos’s Suspicions)
Downer and an assistant met with Papadopoulos in London on May 10, 2016, just two weeks after Papadopoulos met with Mifsud. Downer claims that Papadopoulos brought up Russians having negative information on Clinton. The claim slowly made its way through the Department of State and to the FBI.
In September 2016, the FBI used an informant named Stefan Halper to make contact with Papadopoulos. A former University of Cambridge professor, Halper flew Papadopoulos to London and paid him $3,000 to write a policy paper about international energy issues. Papadopoulos has told associates that Halper randomly asked him what he knew about Russian hacking of Democrats’ emails.
Papadopoulos’s wife, Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos, insists that her husband did not collude with Russia.
“The campaign never attempted to collude with Russia through George,” she told The Daily Caller News Foundation in response to the Mueller filing.
Mueller’s filing also quashes widespread speculation that Papadopoulos had information that would implicate others in the Trump campaign in collusion.
In the document, Mueller states that Papadopoulos did not provide “substantial assistance” to investigators.
After being arrested at Dulles in July 2017, Papadopoulos agreed to meet with investigators to answer questions. Mueller’s filing says that Papadopoulos sat for interviews with investigators over the course of four days in August and September 2017.
Mueller claims that Papadopoulos coughed up information only after investigators confronted him with his own emails, text messages and information obtained through search warrants and subpoenas.
Investigators attempted to meet with Papadopoulos in December 2017, but canceled the meeting after learning that Papadopoulos had given an interview to a national news publication.
“The whole document is fluff,” Mangiante Papadopoulos tells TheDCNF. “It seems Mueller wasn’t happy with the result of [Papadopoulos’] cooperation because he didn’t get the information he wished to get from George, for the simple reason that this information doesn’t exist.”
Mangiante Papadopoulos, who this week told TheDCNF that she believes her husband should withdraw his plea agreement, questioned Mueller and his team’s claim that Papadopoulos’ statements to the FBI hindered investigators’ ability to effectively question Mifsud.
She also argues that Mueller failed to disclose the reason that Papadopoulos was in contact with Mifsud.
She said that the interactions were “oriented to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin, none of them mentioning any dirt to be used for electoral purposes.”
Campaign emails show that Papadopoulos attempted to set up meetings between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials. A document Mueller filed last year states that the meetings did not occur.
Papdopoulos would be the second person involved in the Russia investigation to be sentenced to jail. Alex van der Zwaan, an attorney who worked with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, was sentenced to 30 days in jail in April for lying to the FBI.
Yep, h/t deserved for Dan Bongino!
Those are all the right reactions you had there. It should all be reveled soon. If we see Papadopoulos reject the plea and demand discovery.
But that may be a stretch, given the way out is so easy: a couple months in jail at no more legal cost. George P’s wife seems onboard though.
And if he’s successful, the Russia story is over.
"Did you meet with them on May 15th?"
"I think so, yes."
"HA! Liar! It was the 16th. Arrest this man!"
I found the fact that Mifsud met with Papadopoulos on March 14th interesting from this aspect:
1. From the article, Papadopoulos found out he was going to be a campaign advisor in early March. The first meeting with Mifsud occured on March 14th one week before Trump announced his foreign affairs campaign advisors on March 21st. How did Mifsud know the Papadopoulos was on the campaign or even existed for that matter?
2. In the FISA recertification filing there was a finding that the FBI abused the NSA minimization procedures by allowing private contractors to collect raw intelligence from “about queries” from the NSA database. The FBI ended this access on April 18th, 2016.
3. On April 19th, Glenn Simpson’s wife visited the Whitehouse. Immediately thereafter, the DNC hired Fusion GPS to engage in opposition research against the Trump campaign
So my supposition is that these private contractors that were collecting raw intelligence product was passing that info to the intelligence/FBI/Obama White House political staff and perhaps the Hillary campaign. And I also bet that Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson provided those contractors.
If this is correct then the FBI began spying on the Trump campaign and perhaps the other campaigns much earlier than what the FBI claims that it started on July 31st.
It was all a set up.
I found the fact that Mifsud met with Papadopoulos on March 14th interesting from this aspect:
1. From the article, Papadopoulos found out he was going to be a campaign advisor in early March. The first meeting with Mifsud occured on March 14th one week before Trump announced his foreign affairs campaign advisors on March 21st. How did Mifsud know the Papadopoulos was on the campaign or even existed for that matter?
2. In the FISA recertification filing there was a finding that the FBI abused the NSA minimization procedures by allowing private contractors to collect raw intelligence from “about queries” from the NSA database. The FBI ended this access on April 18th, 2016.
3. On April 19th, Glenn Simpson’s wife visited the Whitehouse. Immediately thereafter, the DNC hired Fusion GPS to engage in opposition research against the Trump campaign
So my supposition is that these private contractors that were collecting raw intelligence product was passing that info to the intelligence/FBI/Obama White House political staff and perhaps the Hillary campaign. And I also bet that Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson provided those contractors.
If this is correct then the FBI began spying on the Trump campaign and perhaps the other campaigns much earlier than what the FBI claims that it started on July 31st.
It was all a set up.
Not a fan of the Tick-Tocks, but this came from George P himself, yesterday:
https://mobile.twitter.com/GeorgePapa19/status/1030893933537251329
He took a plea deal. Pled guilty for a lower sentence.
Isn’t he their dupe? Mueller is going to prosecute their dupe?
So if the FBI decides to investigate if we store ammo upright or laying down in a locked box, when we tell them to screw, we are obstructing justice. If they are not investigating a crime, there is no justice to obstruct. What are we in, France?
ITEM——Hillary Clinton ran in the 2008 and 2016 democratic primaries----and in the 2016 general election.
ITEM——S/C Mueller “uncovered” that the "Russian collusion scheme" apparently "materialized sometime in 2014.
Now, here’s the $64,000 question not addressed———
Why didn’t the CIA or the NSA or the FBI pick this up?
Were Obama’s PDB’s falsified? Probably---Brennan knew the Halfrican was too stupid to catch on.
Brennan got outed as calculatedly working the phony "pee dossier" into Obama's PDB.
Dates are important b/c Snowden’s’ revelations indicate Obama’s government spying apparatus began capturing all electronic data on Americans in 2001.
The Obama police state had a lot of help---govt mastered the capture of all keystrokes, telephone calls and digital traffic by 2005.
This we know:
<><>(A) traffic travels through FBI computers, and,
<><> (B) the CIA keeps constant tabs on Russian spies in Russia....... and elsewhere.
Again. Why didn’t the CIA or the NSA or the FBI pick this up?
Did the FBI disclose it’s use of paid spies to set up Papadap?
Whole thing stinks.
Did the FBI disclose it’s use of paid spies to set up Papadap?
Whole thing stinks.
Make that creating a crime when there was no underlying crime to investigate.
Their
There
They’re
Contraction They are.....
Overtime I see the word russia I run to the toilet
There has been, and is, an ongoing effort to destroy a presidency which the states, and the people of the states, duly elected in accordance with normal political procedure.And that isn’t even the worst scandal now ongoing.
The central scandal is that our “free and independent press” is at the core of the effort.
Seems like the Russians via Steele was colluding with DNC/FBI/DOJ. Mueller is just their attack dog.
Thank God for Judge/Jury/Executioner Mueller getting this dangerous felon off the streets it is sooo helpful.
Parking tickets or Jaywalking can get you six months. How many millions was spent on this travesty?
One would think that, since P’s wife is talking about withdrawing the plea, he is saying “this will go away if you keep quiet, as this trivial sentence shows.”
Give me some more information on Mifsud, he has escaped my consciousness at the moment.
Exactly. Papa-D was set up. He was relatively young and inexperienced. He was set up in Europe by Stefan Halper and Joseph Mifsud. They fed the phony Russian collusion information into Papa-D and then Papa-D blurted it out while drinking with Alexander Downer.
All down outside the US. Because the CIA is not allowed to operated in the US. Though often violated.
Dan Bongino lays it all out the best. BUT his information is not much written text on the internet, is in his podcasts.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/03/25/george-papadopoulos-london-emails/
Dan Bongino lays it all out. He has the best analysis of what happened between Papa-D and >>>
Alexander Downer, Stephan Halper and Joeseph Mifsud.
No one know where Mifsud is these days. Halper and Mifsud are US and or UK or European intelligence assets who at least here were working with American anti-Trump forces.
If you listen to Bongino podcasts then you know how it all really went down for Papa-D and Carter Page.
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