Unsealed court papers hint at future troubles for Trump
WASHINGTON— U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed George Papadopoulos on Tuesday as a “liar” and a mere campaign volunteer, but newly unsealed court papers outline the former adviser’s frequent contacts with senior officials and with foreign nationals who promised access to the highest levels of the Russian government.
They also hint at more headaches for the White House and former campaign officials. Papadopoulos is now co-operating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller as he investigates possible co-ordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 White House campaign.
Papadopoulos also made a significant claim in an email: Top Trump campaign officials agreed to a preelection meeting with representatives of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The message, if true, would bolster claims that Trump’s campaign attempted to collude with Russian interests. But it’s unclear whether Papadopoulos was merely boasting when he sent the July 14, 2016, email to a Kremlin-linked contact. There’s also no indication such a meeting ever occurred.
The email is cited in an FBI agent’s affidavit supporting criminal charges against Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy volunteer on Trump’s campaign. But it’s not included in court documents that detailed his secret guilty plea and his co-operation with Mueller.
Records made public Monday in Papadopoulos’s case list a gaggle of people who were in touch with him during the campaign but only with such identifiers as “Campaign Supervisor,” “Senior Policy Advisor” and “High-Ranking Campaign Official.” Two of the unnamed campaign officials referenced are in fact former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates. Both were charged with financial crimes in an indictment unsealed Monday.
The conversations described in charging documents reflect Papadopoulos’s efforts to arrange meetings between Trump aides and Russian government intermediaries and show how he learned the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”
Though the contacts may not by themselves have been illegal, the oblique but telling references to unnamed people — including “Professor” and “Female Russian National” — make clear that Mueller’s team has identified multiple people who had knowledge of back-and-forth outreach efforts between Russians and associates of the Trump election effort.
It’s a reality that challenges the administration’s portrait of Papadopoulos as a backbench operator within the campaign, an argument repeated Tuesday by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who dismissed him as a “volunteer” with a minimal role.
In charging the 30-year-old Papadopoulos with lying to the FBI, Mueller’s team is warning of a similar fate for anyone whose statements deviate from the facts.
“I think everyone to whom Mueller and his team wanted to send a message heard loud and clear the message,” said Jacob Frenkel, a Washington defence lawyer.
There are clear indications prosecutors used Papadopoulos to gather more information about the campaign as they probe possible criminal activity.
He was arrested in July, but the case was not unsealed until Monday, giving prosecutors weeks to debrief him for information and use him to get deeper into the campaign. With files from Bloomberg