PAPA’S BEER BLAB LED TO PROBE
Aide let Russia-link info slip in his boozy boast
THE “COFFEE boy” spilled the beans.
The federal investigation into Russian election interference and possible connections to the Trump campaign was sparked by a campaign adviser’s beersoaked boasts about dirt on Hillary Clinton.
George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to President Trump’s campaign who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, allegedly revealed to Australia’s top diplomat in London that Russian officials were shopping information related to Clinton during a drunken night out in May 2016, according to The New York Times.
When hacked Democratic National Committee emails began leaking two months later, the Australians told the FBI about Papadopoulos’ claims, the Times reported, citing four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the contact.
The revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about the hack was the driving factor behind the FBI’s Russia investigation — not, as Trump and his supporters have alleged, a salacious dossier compiled by a former British spy.
The U.S. intelligence community has determined that Moscow meddled in the presidential election. Trump has called the federal probe a “witch hunt.”
Trump, his surrogates and even White House officials have dismissed Papadopoulos as a low-level volunteer and a “coffee boy.”
But The Times revealed that his role may have been downplayed and that he was central to arranging a New York meeting between Trump and president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt. He also edited a draft of a foreign policy speech that Trump gave. Papadopoulos has since become a centerpiece of the ongoing probe, now run by special counsel Robert Mueller. He was arrested in July and appears to have been cooperating with investigators up until his guilty plea in October. Court papers unsealed at the time revealed that the 30-year-old copped to lying to the FBI about his contacts with people who claimed close ties to the Kremlin, including a professor linked to the Kremlin who promised “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails” and a woman claiming to be Russian president Vladimir Putin’s niece.
Trump officials have said the President only met Papadopoulos one time, at a March 2016 meeting.
At that sitdown, Papadopoulos proposed a face-to-face between Trump and Putin, according to court documents.
Papadopoulos spent the following months emailing campaign staff about a Russia meeting, including several notes to a “high-ranking campaign official.”
Mueller has filed charges against four people so far in his probe.
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates have pleaded not guilty to federal charges that include money laundering.
Along with Papadopoulos, disgraced Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn has also pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is cooperating with investigators. VLADIMIR PUTIN made getting along better with the U.S. one of his New Year’s resolutions. In a telegram to President Trump, the Russian president pushed for “pragmatic cooperation” that allows Washington and the Kremlin to work together in 2018. Relations between the countries have cooled during Trump’s tenure despite his professed desire to develop stronger bonds with his Russian counterpart. Trump’s presidency has been haunted by a federal probe into possible connections between his campaign and Moscow as well as Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election. While Trump has pined for “a great relationship with Putin and Russia,” Secretary of State Tillerson has been more cautious in his assessment of the former Soviet Union. Tillerson said in an editorial this week that the U.S. has a “poor relationship with a resurgent Russia that has invaded its neighbors Georgia and Ukraine in the last decade and undermined the sovereignty of Western nations by meddling in our election and others.” Putin noted that “the development [of] a constructive RussianU.S. dialogue is particularly important for strengthening strategic stability in the world.”