Trump adviser’s lies draw jail time

WASHINGTON — George Papadopoulos, President Donald Trump’s campaign adviser who triggered the Russia investigation, was sentenced Friday to 14 days in prison by a judge who said he had placed his own interests above those of the country.

Papadopoulos in October became the first person to plead guilty in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He’s the second defendant to be sentenced, after lawyer Alex van der Zwaan got 30 days behind bars.

Papadopoulos 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 wanted.

In addition to the two weeks’ jail term, Papadopoulos was given a year of probation and ordered to serve 200 hours of community service and fined $9,500.

Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign-policy

adviser to Trump’s campaign, has been a central figure in the Russia investigation dating back before Mueller’s appointment in May 2017. His case was 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 while Papadopoulos lied for selfish reasons and did real harm to the government’s efforts to carry out its investigation of Russian meddling, he was moved by what he called the defendant’s “genuine remorse about what he did.” Though he added, “I don’t feel I can go so far as to not impose a sentence of incarceration at all.”

Memos written by House Republicans and Democrats, now declassified, show that information about Papadopoulos’ contacts with Russian intermediaries triggered the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation in July 2016 into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. That investigation 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 citizens in an attempt to broker a meeting between 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.

Prosecutors wrote that those false statements, made during a January 2017 interview with federal investigators, caused the FBI to miss an opportunity to interview Mifsud while he was in the United States. “The defendant’s lies undermined investigators’ ability to challenge the Professor or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States,” they wrote, noting that Mifsud left the U.S. in February 2017 and hasn’t returned.

In court Friday, prosecutor Andrew Goldstein said Papadopoulos’ cooperation “didn’t come close to the standard of substantial assistance.”

“It was at best begrudging efforts to cooperate and we don’t think they were substantial or significant in any regard,” he said.

He said Papadopoulos’ deception required investigators to scour more than 100,000 emails and gigabytes of data to reconstruct the timeline of his contacts with Russians and Russian intermediaries.

Papadopoulos’s 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.

“The president of the United States hindered this investigation more than George Papadopoulos ever could,” Breen said.

Even after his arrest and plea agreement last year, prosecutors say Papadopoulos continued to be difficult with investigators, providing information only after being confronted with documents such as emails and text messages. In response, Papadopoulos’ attorneys have acknowledged his offense was “unquestionably serious,” but they downplayed any damage he caused. His attorneys, Breen and Robert Stanley, said their client lied to save his career and to “preserve a perhaps misguided loyalty to his master,” a reference that is not fully explained in court papers.

Stanley and Breen also argued that their client “cooperated fully.” He participated in four sessions, they said, and “was willing to answer any questions posed.”

“His arrest and prosecution served as notice to all involved that this was a serious investigation,” the attorneys wrote. “He was the first domino, and many have fallen in behind.”

Three other campaign officials — chairman Paul Manafort, deputy campaign manager Rick Gates and national security adviser Michael Flynn — either have pleaded guilty or been convicted of various crimes but none of the trio has yet been sentenced. Gates testified against Manafort who was recently convicted in Virginia on bank and tax-fraud charges filed by Mueller’s team.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday ahead of the sentencing, Trump played down his relationship with Papadopoulos.

“I see Papadopoulos today, I don’t know Papadopoulos, I don’t know. I saw him sitting in one picture at a table with me — that’s the only thing I know about him,” he said, apparently a reference to a March 31, 2016, campaign meeting that Papadopoulos and Trump attended.

After the sentence was handed down, Trump tweeted about the length and made an apparent reference to the cost of Mueller’s investigation: “14 days for $28 MILLION - $2 MILLION a day, No Collusion. A great day for America!”

Papadopoulos’ mother, Kiki Papadopoulos, told reporters she believed the sentence was “very fair.” She also said that when FBI agents showed up in January 2017 seeking an interview, she advised her son to call a lawyer. “So everybody said if you only listened to your mother none of this would have happened,” she said. “I think about it still. I think he learned his lesson.”

GIULIANI ADAMANT

Separately, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, said the president will not answer federal

investigators’ questions, in writing or in person, about whether he tried to block the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Giuliani said questions about obstruction of justice were a “no-go.” Giuliani’s statement was the most definitive rejection yet of Mueller’s efforts to interview the president about any efforts to obstruct the investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and Russians.

It signals the Trump’s lawyers are committed to protecting the president from answering questions about actions the president took in office.

It’s unclear if Giuliani’s public position has been endorsed by Trump, who has said he wants to answer questions under oath. Negotiations about the scope and format of an interview are still ongoing.

If the legal team holds its stance, it could force Mueller to try to subpoena the president, likely triggering a standoff that would lead to the Supreme Court.

Mueller’s office has previously sought to interview the president about the obstruction issue, including his firing last year of former FBI Director James Comey and his public attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Trump’s legal team has argued that the president has the power to hire and fire appointees and the special counsel does not have the authority to ask him to explain those decisions. Giuliani said Thursday that the team was steadfast in that position.

“That’s a no-go. That is not going to happen,” Giuliani said. “There will be no questions at all on obstruction.”

In a letter last week, Mueller’s team said it would accept written responses from Trump on questions related to Russian election interference.

Giuliani suggested Thursday that Trump’s lawyers had agreed to those terms but wanted to prohibit investigators from asking follow-up questions.

“It would be in written form and if you want to follow up on our answers, justify it,” Giuliani said. “Show us why you didn’t get there the first time.”

He said he was not categorically ruling out answering a second round of questions but the entire matter of whether there would be follow-up inquiries should be settled before the president answers anything at all.

“We aren’t going to let them spring it on us,” said Giuliani, who has served as lawyer-spokesman for the president’s personal legal team, using television interviews and public comments as a tactic in the negotiations.

In subsequent interviews late Thursday, Giuliani backtracked slightly, saying that talks over answering obstruction questions were ongoing.

Trump, in a Fox News interview taped ahead of a Thursday night rally in Montana, was noncommittal when asked about a possible Mueller

interview.

In the latest letter to the legal team, Mueller’s office didn’t address obstruction questions, indicating investigators would later assess what additional information it needs from the president after receiving a response about the written submissions, according to a person familiar with the document.

The person familiar with the letter spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss the negotiations.

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