Ex-Trump campaign adviser gets 14 days
George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign adviser who triggered the Russia investigation, was sentenced to 14 days in prison Friday by a judge who said he had placed his own interests above those of the country.
Papadopoulos, the first campaign aide sentenced in special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation, said he was “deeply embarrassed and ashamed” for having lied to FBI agents during an interview last year and acknowledged that his actions could have hindered their work.
“I made a dreadful mistake, but I am a good man who is eager for redemption,” Papadopoulos said.
The punishment was far less than the maximum six-month sentence sought by the government but also more than the probation that Papadopoulos and his lawyers had asked for.
Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump’s campaign, has been a central figure in the Russia investigation dating back before Mueller’s May 2017 appointment. He was the first to plead guilty in Mueller’s probe and is now the first Trump campaign adviser to be sentenced. His case was also the first to detail a member of the Trump campaign having knowledge of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election while it was ongoing.
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss said that Papadopoulos’ deception was “not a noble lie” and that he had lied because he wanted a job in the Trump administration and didn’t want to jeopardize that possibility by being tied to the Russia investigation.
“In some ways it constitutes a calculated exercise of self interest over the national interest,” the judge said.
Memos authored by House Republicans and Democrats, now declassified, also show that information about Papadopoulos’ contacts with Russian intermediaries triggered the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation in July 2016 into potential co-ordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. That probe was later taken over by Mueller.
According to a sweeping indictment handed up this summer, Russian intelligence had stolen emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other Democratic groups by April 2016, the same month Papadopoulos was told by a professor that Russian officials had told him they had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”
Papadopoulos later used his connections with the Maltese professor, Joseph Mifsud, and other Russian nationals in an attempt to broker a meeting between thencandidate Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He admitted last year to lying to the FBI about those contacts. In court papers filed ahead of the sentencing, prosecutors say those lies caused irreparable harm to the investigation during its early months.
Defence lawyer Thomas Breen said his client was affected by Trump’s cries of “fake news” ahead of the interview and was torn between wanting to cooperate with investigators and wanting to remain loyal to the president.