Posted on 08/18/2018 5:31:50 PM PDT by MaxistheBest
Special Counsel Robert Mueller is asking a federal judge to sentence George Papadopoulos to up to six months in jail and is accusing the former Trump campaign adviser of impeding the government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election by lying to the FBI during an interview in early 2017.
“The defendant’s crime was serious and caused damage to the government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election,” Mueller wrote in a court filing submitted late Friday to a judge in Washington, D.C.
“The government respectfully submits that a sentence of incarceration, within the applicable Guidelines range of 0 to 6 months’ imprisonment, and a $9,500 fine are warranted and appropriate,” the document reads.
Papadopoulos, 30, pleaded guilty on Oct. 5, 2017 to lying to the FBI about the timing and extent of his contacts with a Maltese professor and two Russian nationals while he worked on the Trump campaign. According to Mueller, Papadopoulos lied more than a dozen times about the contacts with the professor, Joseph Mifsud.
Papadopoulos told FBI agents during a Jan. 27, 2017 interview that Mifsud claimed during an April 27, 2016 meeting in London that Russian government officials had relayed to him that they had “dirt” on then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands” of her emails.
Papadopoulos learned in early March 2016 that he would join the Trump campaign. He first met Mifsud in Italy on March 14, 2016, and the pair remained in contact over the next several months. But Papadopoulos told FBI agents that the encounters were a “coincidence” and occurred before he joined the Trump team. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Papadopoulos’s Wife Says He Should Scrap Plea Deal With Mueller’s Office)
Mueller contends that Papadopoulos’s statements “substantially hindered” investigators’ ability to “effectively question” Mifsud when he traveled to Washington, D.C., two weeks after the first Papadopoulos interview, Friday’s filing said.
Papadopoulos, an energy consultant based in Chicago, was arrested on July 27, 2017 at the Washington Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C. He will be sentenced on Sept. 7.
While Trump critics are likely to jump on the new Mueller filing, the document does not assert that Papadopoulos attempted to obtain Clinton dirt on behalf of the Trump campaign. He is not accused of conspiracy and a charge of lying to federal investigators is the lightest charge in the federal criminal code.
The FBI at one point thought that Papadopoulos held the keys to the collusion conspiracy between the campaign and Kremlin. The Russia investigation, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, was opened on July 31, 2016, after the FBI received information about Papadopoulos that originated with Alexander Downer, who then served as the Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. (RELATED: A Meeting In London Aroused George Papadopoulos’s Suspicions)
Downer and an assistant met with Papadopoulos in London on May 10, 2016, just two weeks after Papadopoulos met with Mifsud. Downer claims that Papadopoulos brought up Russians having negative information on Clinton. The claim slowly made its way through the Department of State and to the FBI.
In September 2016, the FBI used an informant named Stefan Halper to make contact with Papadopoulos. A former University of Cambridge professor, Halper flew Papadopoulos to London and paid him $3,000 to write a policy paper about international energy issues. Papadopoulos has told associates that Halper randomly asked him what he knew about Russian hacking of Democrats’ emails.
Papadopoulos’s wife, Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos, insists that her husband did not collude with Russia.
“The campaign never attempted to collude with Russia through George,” she told The Daily Caller News Foundation in response to the Mueller filing.
Mueller’s filing also quashes widespread speculation that Papadopoulos had information that would implicate others in the Trump campaign in collusion.
In the document, Mueller states that Papadopoulos did not provide “substantial assistance” to investigators.
After being arrested at Dulles in July 2017, Papadopoulos agreed to meet with investigators to answer questions. Mueller’s filing says that Papadopoulos sat for interviews with investigators over the course of four days in August and September 2017.
Mueller claims that Papadopoulos coughed up information only after investigators confronted him with his own emails, text messages and information obtained through search warrants and subpoenas.
Investigators attempted to meet with Papadopoulos in December 2017, but canceled the meeting after learning that Papadopoulos had given an interview to a national news publication.
“The whole document is fluff,” Mangiante Papadopoulos tells TheDCNF. “It seems Mueller wasn’t happy with the result of [Papadopoulos’] cooperation because he didn’t get the information he wished to get from George, for the simple reason that this information doesn’t exist.”
Mangiante Papadopoulos, who this week told TheDCNF that she believes her husband should withdraw his plea agreement, questioned Mueller and his team’s claim that Papadopoulos’ statements to the FBI hindered investigators’ ability to effectively question Mifsud.
She also argues that Mueller failed to disclose the reason that Papadopoulos was in contact with Mifsud.
She said that the interactions were “oriented to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin, none of them mentioning any dirt to be used for electoral purposes.”
Campaign emails show that Papadopoulos attempted to set up meetings between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials. A document Mueller filed last year states that the meetings did not occur.
Papdopoulos would be the second person involved in the Russia investigation to be sentenced to jail. Alex van der Zwaan, an attorney who worked with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, was sentenced to 30 days in jail in April for lying to the FBI.
Mueller best start reading the Tea Leaves if he wants to remain outside an iron barred environment or a loosely knotted rope.
Sessions may actually have to wake up one of these months for a minute or 2 and do his damned job, his sand is about to run out.
It was a sting. Mifsud planted the information, Halper tried to reap it. When that failed, they set up the meeting with the Aussie.
They tried to make it out to be a crime that he repeated what Mifsud told him. It was phony, Mifsud was working for the FBI. But Pap didn’t know it was phony...
Of course, there is no crime in repeating what an undercover told him. And there is no crime in trying to set up a meeting with the Russians, as Mifsud evidently had asked him to do. In any event, he failed to attract any interest on the part of the Campaign. So it all went no where.
No collusion. No interest in colluding. Had there been interest, even that would not have been a crime. If it was, Hillary would be behind bars.
Another one from Chicago - imagine that. This guy also worked in the State Dept. during HRC's tenure.
I seemed to also remember that the wife had said that George was going to blow the lid off the Russia Investigation. Her agenda and rightfully so is get George the least amount of time that he can get. Mueller didn’t let him off the hook as much as she thought so now she will come out publicly the other way. Either way it’s funny how liberals thought this was going to a path to get Trump and it came up a complete dead end.
I agree with everything that you say with regard to this being a sting where bad information was fed by mifsud to Papa. What I do not understand is how Papa got caught in lies. He must be and have been quite naive to think that he would get away with Miss statements to the FBI.
This is intentionally misleading by the corrupt Mueller/DOJ/FBI.
The FBI could have spoken with him in Italy anytime they wanted with simply a request to the Italian authorities. As I recall Mifsud is close to the Italian intelligence service and was laying low in Italy for a while at the recommendation of the intel chief there. The FBI had no problem interviewing Steele in the UK, and an FBI agent stationed in Rome flew to the UK to do this.
Mifsud is the clearest key to unraveling the coup attempt. He seems obviously to be a western intelligence asset.
But I suspect he is not a direct CIA asset. Probably a direct asset of MI6 and may have been known to GCHQ former head Hannigan who unexpectedly stepped down when Trump was inaugurated.
The British and other euro intel agencies are strongly anti-Brexit, pro-EU, pro-open borders, pro-refugee, pro-socialist and anti-self government for the legacy nation-states of Europe.
Expect a huge cover-up trying to get the info out of Britain as to what the relationship between British government agencies and Mifsud was. But Halper probably has information on this relationship, as likely Brennan as well.
That is the information Papadopoulos needs. Note that in the legal papers Mueller is always careful to write that Papadopoulos believed Mifsud to be something in the nature of a Russian agent, but Mueller never on behalf of the US government himself makes that assertion.
Papadopoulos should demand the deposition of Halper, Brennan and anyone else who might have information on the relationship with Mifsud. If they perjure themselves, as is likely, then it's on to find a whistleblower or find records within the US intel community on this to put these corrupt enemies of the US Constitution in prison.
IOW, he didn’t make up what Mueller wanted him to make up.
What about McCabe? He lied to his fellow FBI agents.
Dossier is a HOAX
... makes ...
Mueller is a FRAUD
... therefore ...
Mueller is the Enemy of the People.
Has then neverending fishing expedition passed $20 million yet? How many millions does Mulehead get?
He got caught in lies in a sting? - Mifsud was a Western asset?
Deeper questions are: If he was an asset, the sting was perpetrated on a rival political campaign based on what? What was the probable cause? They can’t even say it was the Steele Dossier, because didn’t this meeting occur even before the dossier BS was concocted?
What if Papa-D withdrew his plea and demanded discovery?...
Mueller is a real piece of Cr@p!
This revelation should make Omarosa happy.....
That precise scenario is very well laid out in Dan bongino latest podcast which you can view on YouTube, and speed up to cut the listening time.
It is kind of a matter of what you are willing to believe, I suppose. Bongino lays out the case that mifsud, who has been portrayed as potentially a Russian asset, is actually a US asset. That is a big smelly deal, a crucial distinction. It appears the whole “Got dirt on Hillary” story was seeded By mifsud, who has apparently disappeared off the face of the Earth. Did he just make that story up, or was he induced, shall we say, by Brennan.
I of course have no special powers to tell anyone what to believe or not to believe. I believe that the evidence supporting the notion that the dossier and the efforts to discredit Trump we’re fed to these lower-level players, Papadopoulos and Paige, with the purpose of getting them to talk about them. Both of these guys had prior connections to the CIA and it was undoubtedly easy for CIA leadership to obtain surveillance warrants against them, which include the “hop” Theory which allows surveillance of whom they talk to and whomever they talked to on the same ticket.
So I can’t sit here and say this is what happened, I can only weigh evidence which largely anecdotal and try to discern the coherence of the overall story. I find nothing whatsoever difficult to believe about the top people at the FBI getting the idea that it would be good to sabotage Trump. Perhaps I’m biased. But the evidence is stacking up in quite the smelly pile.
If this amateur political guy Papa “hindered” the great FBI of Mueller/Comey in their fake investigations, it shows just how much of a Rinky-Dinky organization they had, how incompetent they were, and what a bunch of treasonous bastards their leaders were.
If Mifsud was a CIA or FBI operative, then he “entrapped” Papa, plain and simple.
If Halper was either FBI or CIA, then he entrapped Page. Plain and simply.
Don’t forget Ms. Veselsnitskaya etc. Wanna bet she worked for the KGB/SVR or GRU? Nobody in Russia does anything that would benefit Putin and his criminal/Marxist thugs without their being directed to do so, by word, letter or sign-language.
The whole FBI “sting” operation was a fraud from the start since Comey/Strzok, etc never investigated the “Russian connections” to Steele.
That is a damning sign of incompetence or coverup, or just plain treason in attempting to frame the Pres. of the United States for a non-existent crime, “Collusion”.
If “collusion” was real for anyone, it was for Hillary, her Foundation, all involved with the UraniumOne scandal, and Russian contacts with and by Fusion GPS, the DNC, Steele, etc.
I never thought the FBI would get this corrupted but the Obama cabal was stronger and more invidious than imaged.
Time for a couple new grand jury investigations.
By the way, 6 months is a “Misdemeanor” sentence unless it could have been over one year and one day.
Mueller and his mafia have given birth to a Minnow, not a Whale. Now that is some stinking fish story to investigate, isn’t it?
You may need to add GCHQ or MI6, but yes.
If Halper was either FBI or CIA, then he entrapped Page. Plain and simply.
Absolutely.
Don’t forget Ms. Veselsnitskaya etc.
The Trump Tower meeting was also an (albeit feeble) attempt at entrapment.
I'm thinking John Brennan, working for the Muslim Traitor, will turn out to be ringmaster of SpyGate / RussiaGate. Brennan's strategy was to feed "evidence" of collusion through CIA assets to the Trump campaign, then use the FBI to "find" it, then use the FBI's "leads" to get fraudulent FISA warrants to spy on the campaign. When Trump unexpectedly won the election, their priority suddenly shifted to covering up. Covering up and diverting attention from Obama Regime misdeeds is the real purpose of the Mueller probe.
MUELLER NEEDS TO BE IN JAIL
Obstruction of justice where it was obvious no crime existed? How about the crime of a Presidential coup? Mueller should hang.
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