Papadopoulos data sparked FBI probe
Though President Donald Trump and his allies hope that the controversial release of a GOP-written memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI will tarnish the legitimacy of the entire Russia probe, that argument may be undercut by a single sentence buried near the end of the four-page document.
It confirms for the first time that the event that set the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation in motion was not the surveillance of Trump adviser Carter Page — a subject upon which most of the memo dwells — but rather that it was opened as the result of information the bureau had received about George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy consultant who in October became the first person associated with the campaign to plead guilty in the special counsel’s investigation. He is now reported to be a cooperating witness.
“The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok,” the memo noted in its final paragraph.
Democrats quickly seized on that sentence to assert that the Russia investigation would be underway with or without the surveillance of Page, and — more critically — even if the government had never seen a dossier of information about Trump that was compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British spy.