Ex-Trump campaign adviser sentenced to 14 days in prison
George Papadopoulos lied during Mueller probe, now first to be jailed
WASHINGTON — 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.
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.
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss said Papadopoulos 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’s contacts with Russian intermediaries triggered the FBI’s counter-intelligence 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 Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud 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 professor and other Russian nationals to broker a meeting between then-candidate 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.