‘Low level volunteer’ sought high profile as Trump adviser

President Donald Trump on Tuesday belittled former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty this week to lying to federal agents investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, tweeting that “few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar.”

But interviews and documents show that Papadopoulos was in regular contact with the Trump campaign’s most senior officials and held himself out as a Trump surrogate as he traveled the world to meet with foreign officials and reporters.

Papadopoulos sat at the elbow of one of Trump’s top campaign advisers, then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, during a dinner for campaign advisers weeks before the Republican National Convention, according to an individual who attended the meeting.

He met in London in September 2016 with a midlevel representative of the British Foreign Office, where he said he had contacts at the senior level of the Russian government.

And he conferred at one point with the foreign minister of Greece at a meeting in New York.

While some top campaign aides appeared to rebuff Papadopoulos’ persistent offers to broker a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, there is no sign they told him directly to cease his activities or sought to end his affiliation with the campaign.

Emails included in court documents released Monday show that Papadopoulos repeatedly told Trump campaign officials about his contacts with people he believed were representing the Russian government.

The court documents do not answer a key question: whether Papadopoulos also told his superiors that he had met a Londonbased professor who claimed to know that the Russians had “dirt” on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, including thousands of her emails.

An FBI agent told the court in July that Papadopoulos lied in an interview with federal agents, saying he did not tell anyone on the campaign about the “dirt” because he thought the professor was a “nothing.”

At 29, Papadopoulos had scant experience that qualified him to advise a presidential candidate. He had entered the Trump campaign after a six-week stint working for the campaign of Trump’s rival for the Republican nomination, neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

Carson’s campaign manager, Barry Bennett, recalled that Papadopoulos was hired after sending him an unsolicited message via LinkedIn seeking a job.

At the time, Carson’s campaign was desperate to show it had policy experts advising his campaign, given that most leading Republican foreign policy thinkers had been snapped up by other candidates.

Bennett said his only vetting was to ask a friend at the Washington, D.C.-based Hudson Institute, where Papadopoulos’ résumé indicated he had worked as a researcher, whether Papadopoulos was “an OK guy.”

For six weeks of work, Bennett said, Papadopoulos was paid $8,500, before he was let go from the campaign at the end of January 2016 as it shed staff.

By March 2016, Trump’s campaign, like Carson’s before it, was eagerly searching for foreign policy expertise. As Trump rose in the polls and won Republican primaries, the former reality TV host was under pressure to announce a group of advisers with whom he was consulting on foreign policy issues.

The scrutiny intensified early that month after 70 conservative national security experts signed an open letter opposing Trump’s candidacy. In mid-March, Trump was asked on the MSNBC show Morning Joe to name people with whom he spoke about foreign affairs.

“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain,” Trump responded, prompting more calls for a list of formal advisers.

To come up with names, the campaign turned to Sam Clovis, a former Iowa radio host who served as national campaign co-chairman, an attorney for Clovis confirmed Tuesday.

Clovis’ attorney did not address how Papadopoulos ended up on the list. Bennett said he was not consulted and would not have recommended his former employee if he had been asked because he found him unimpressive.

On March 21, Trump included Papadopoulos among five men he announced were advising him on matters of national security in a meeting with The Washington Post editorial board. “An energy and oil consultant. Excellent guy,” Trump said.

It soon became public that much of Papadopoulos’ already-slim résumé was either exaggerated or false, but he remained a part of the Trump advisory panel and soon began urging campaign aides to let him set up a meeting between Trump and Russian officials.

In the months leading up to the election, Papadopoulos began appearing more frequently in the foreign press, and the campaign took notice. J.D. Gordon, a former Pentagon spokesman and Trump national security adviser, said Papadopoulos was counseled that he should clear future media appearances with campaign staff and keep a low profile.

And yet, Papadopoulos continued to be invited to campaign events, and he continued to hold himself out as a Trump adviser, even after the election.

While the president now seems to have left Papadopoulos behind, Papadopoulos has continued to highlight the tie. On LinkedIn, he indicates he was a Trump adviser through January 2017 and includes the experience as the first line of his description about himself.

“President Trump recommendation about me: ‘George is an oil and gas consultant; excellent guy,’ ” Papadopoulos wrote.