Posted on 09/09/2018 7:41:53 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos said Sunday that he does not believe he incriminated President Trump in cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference.
Papadopoulos said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that he was "taken off guard" by the investigation because he didn't "understand the nature of what was going on."
"At the time of my interview with the FBI, I think around three or four days before that, I was at the inauguration attending parties with senior level transition officials," Papadopoulos said.
"I understood that there was an incipient investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and I found myself as somebody who worked incredibly hard over the past year with the campaign to have … candidate Trump be elected. And then I found myself pinned between the Department of Justice and the sitting president and having probing questions that I thought might incriminate the president," he continued.
Asked if he was trying to "protect the president" the former Trump campaign adviser replied, "Of course."
"I didn't understand the nature of what was going on," Papadopoulos said. "Of course I'm remorseful, I'm contrite and I did lie [to the FBI] but you know you're just taken off guard, I guess, in such a momentous occasion where you're potentially sitting there incriminating the president. Even though, of course, I don't think I did."
"That was probably in the back of my mind, of what exactly am I doing here talking about Russian hacking or election interference with a candidate that I just worked for," he added.
Papadopoulos on Friday was sentenced to 14 days in federal prison and one year supervised release for lying to FBI investigators about his Russia contacts during the 2016 election. Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty in October to lying to FBI agents, is the first Trump campaign official to be sentenced as part of Mueller's probe.
Asked if he thought the conclusion of Mueller's investigation would demonstrate that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, Papadopoulos said he had "no idea," but that his testimony might yield evidence against Trump advisers.
"I have no idea, all I can say is that my testimony might have helped moving something towards that. But I have no idea."
All these guys were playing way out of their league, using their limited connections to the campaign for their own future benefit.
He wouldn’t have said that with Mueller’s permission. I think it’s a trap to get a Trump ally to ask him about his testimony.
How do such incredibly stupid egotistcal naive braggarts ever even get access to people like Trump
I seriously think Trump needs to rethink who he trusts around him, even to the point of posing for a picture much less in OUR WH
Please. Just stop.
No more Omarsorsas.
Mueller and his gang are evil.
He was set up for a perjury trap.
The first time they talk to you it’s totally informal, no big deal, could you help us out by answering a few questions.
The second time they take you into a room and grill you.
When one of your answers doesn’t quite mesh with the first time they interviewed you, you are guilty of “lying to the FBI.”
MORAL: Never talk to the police.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
As part of its investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the FBI used Halper, a former University of Cambridge professor, to make contact with Papadopoulos and Carter Page, another Trump campaign adviser targeted in the collusion probe.
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PAPADOPOULOS DETAILS HIS INTERACTIONS WITH ‘SPYGATE’ FIGURE AND STEELE DOSSIER SOURCE
12:41 PM 09/08/2018
Chuck Ross | Reporter
457
In his first interview since being sentenced to 14 days in jail, former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos opened up about his contact during the 2016 presidential campaign with Stefan Halper and Sergei Millian
Halper is the FBI informant tasked with spying on the Trump campaign
Millian is alleged to be a major source for the Steele dossier
Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos discussed on the record for the first time his interactions during the 2016 presidential campaign with both an FBI informant and an alleged source for the Steele dossier.
Papadopoulos went into detail about the encounters with the informant, Stefan Halper, and the alleged dossier source, Sergei Millian, during an interview that aired Friday night on CNN.
Papadopoulos was sentenced earlier in the day to 14 days in jail for lying to the FBI about his encounters with a European professor who claimed to have information that Russia had “thousands” of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails. (RELATED: Papadopoulos Stint In Jail Will Be A Lot Less Than Expected — And A Lot Less Than Mueller Wanted)
The FBI opened an investigation on July 31, 2016 based on information about Papadopoulos’s encounter with an Australian diplomat two months earlier.
Several days before the investigation was opened, Millian approached Papadopoulos on LinkedIn. The pair met several days later and through the course of the campaign.
As part of its investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the FBI used Halper, a former University of Cambridge professor, to make contact with Papadopoulos and Carter Page, another Trump campaign adviser targeted in the collusion probe.
Halper first met Page on July 11, 2016 at an event at Cambridge, The Daily Caller News Foundation has previously reported. The pair maintained contact through September 2017.
Halper reached out to Papadopoulos on Sept. 2, 2016 with an offer to fly the young campaign aide to London and to write an academic paper on energy issues in Cyprus, Turkey and Israel.
“I receive an unsolicited email from Stefan Halper who I thought was a Cambridge professor inviting me,” Papadopoulos said to CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“So he reached out to me and he said, ‘I want you to write a paper for me on your expertise,’ which is gas discoveries in Israel and Turkey and Cyprus. I said ‘of course,’ you know I have no issue with that. It was a nice honorarium of $3,000, a free flight to London, a five-star hotel for two or three days of work,” he said, adding:
I joined him about a week later over drinks in London where all of a sudden he pulls out his phone, everyone has phones when they meet with me, and he places in the front of him and he begins to tell me, “So George, hacking is in the interest of your campaign. Of course the Russians are helping you.” These open-ended questions, and “of course you’re probably involved in it, too. That’s correct, right, George?”
“I told him, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ because of course I had nothing to do with Russian interference or hacking, whatsoever,” he said. “So then he began to sweat, his demeanor changed, he became quite aggressive in his questioning.”
Halper, who served in four Republican administrations, was revealed in May to be a longtime FBI and CIA source
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PAPADOPOULOS DETAILS HIS INTERACTIONS WITH ‘SPYGATE’ FIGURE AND STEELE DOSSIER SOURCE
12:41 PM 09/08/2018
Chuck Ross | Reporter
457
In his first interview since being sentenced to 14 days in jail, former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos opened up about his contact during the 2016 presidential campaign with Stefan Halper and Sergei Millian
Halper is the FBI informant tasked with spying on the Trump campaign
Millian is alleged to be a major source for the Steele dossier
Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos discussed on the record for the first time his interactions during the 2016 presidential campaign with both an FBI informant and an alleged source for the Steele dossier.
Papadopoulos went into detail about the encounters with the informant, Stefan Halper, and the alleged dossier source, Sergei Millian, during an interview that aired Friday night on CNN.
Papadopoulos was sentenced earlier in the day to 14 days in jail for lying to the FBI about his encounters with a European professor who claimed to have information that Russia had “thousands” of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails. (RELATED: Papadopoulos Stint In Jail Will Be A Lot Less Than Expected — And A Lot Less Than Mueller Wanted)
The FBI opened an investigation on July 31, 2016 based on information about Papadopoulos’s encounter with an Australian diplomat two months earlier.
Several days before the investigation was opened, Millian approached Papadopoulos on LinkedIn. The pair met several days later and through the course of the campaign.
As part of its investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the FBI used Halper, a former University of Cambridge professor, to make contact with Papadopoulos and Carter Page, another Trump campaign adviser targeted in the collusion probe.
Halper first met Page on July 11, 2016 at an event at Cambridge, The Daily Caller News Foundation has previously reported. The pair maintained contact through September 2017.
Halper reached out to Papadopoulos on Sept. 2, 2016 with an offer to fly the young campaign aide to London and to write an academic paper on energy issues in Cyprus, Turkey and Israel.
“I receive an unsolicited email from Stefan Halper who I thought was a Cambridge professor inviting me,” Papadopoulos said to CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“So he reached out to me and he said, ‘I want you to write a paper for me on your expertise,’ which is gas discoveries in Israel and Turkey and Cyprus. I said ‘of course,’ you know I have no issue with that. It was a nice honorarium of $3,000, a free flight to London, a five-star hotel for two or three days of work,” he said, adding:
I joined him about a week later over drinks in London where all of a sudden he pulls out his phone, everyone has phones when they meet with me, and he places in the front of him and he begins to tell me, “So George, hacking is in the interest of your campaign. Of course the Russians are helping you.” These open-ended questions, and “of course you’re probably involved in it, too. That’s correct, right, George?”
“I told him, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ because of course I had nothing to do with Russian interference or hacking, whatsoever,” he said. “So then he began to sweat, his demeanor changed, he became quite aggressive in his questioning.”
Halper, who served in four Republican administrations, was revealed in May to be a longtime FBI and CIA source. President Donald Trump and his allies have used the term “Spygate” to refer to the FBI’s use of an informant to make contact with campaign aides.
WATCH:
Play Video
Papadopoulos also provided new details about Millian, a Belarusian-American businessman who runs an obscure trade group called the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce.
“He reached out to me out of the blue on LinkedIn where he stated in quite confident terms he was working for Trump real estate projects, he was promoting real estate endeavors of Trump,” Papadopoulos told Tapper.
“He presented some sort of shady business proposal to me, which I rejected flat out about, ‘Work for me for $30,000 a month’ as some sort of PR consultant for an energy firm in Russia, which I never understood who it was, where the money was coming from and why me, except the qualifier was that I had to work for Trump at the same time,” he said.
“I just rejected it flat out, and I started to be suspicious,” said Papadopoulos.
https://dailycaller.com/2018/09/08/papadopoulos-discusses-halper-dossier/
“Patsy? Pawn? Player? “
More like a useless piece of $hit who managed to muck up the Presidency. His drunken big mouth didn’t help Trump at all.
The Trump Administration should make this video mandatory viewing by all current and new hires into the administration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
Never talk to the police.
Pardoned January 19, 2024...
I don't think I incriminated TrumpIf you did you'd have to be lying.
“he was “taken off guard” by the investigation because he didn’t “understand the nature of what was going on.” “
That pretty much says it all.
Patsy? Pawn? Player?
Seems like a bit of all three. Papadopoulos was a wannabe Big Time player; and, was used as an FBI/CIA pawn to create compromising optics against Trump. Mueller used P. as a patsy so he can claim a Russian collusion conviction, without any actual Russian collusion involved. It’s no accident that Mueller avoided a trial, in which a defendant would show that the whole thing was an entrapment op.
I blame Trump for ginning up a campaign without planning, which led to associating himself with untried lightweights. I blame P for being a fool whose thirst to be somebody has helped to harm Trump’s presidency and the country. Smart, experienced people don’t fall in with shady characters and pursue dodgy ends way over their heads. They would smell a rat when “professors” introduce them to “Putin’s niece”, or when Australia’s “High Commissioner” they’ve never met asks them, through a female intermediary, to meet for a drink, or a random Israeli pays them $10,000 for doing relatively nothing. Overall, P looks to have been a witless stooge, but he could have been somewhat in on it. (If P. was working for the swamp wittingly, would they have gilded the lily with the money trap?)
Who in their right mind would volunteer to talk with CNN?
$28 million yields 14 days and no Russian collusion.
Wow, Mueller! The US taxpayers are so grateful for your efforts!
He talked to Tapper and CNN friday and Stephenapolis this morning. If he was on Trump’s side he would have gone to FOX. He is willingly allowing the enemies of the President to set the narrative to gain sympathy for himself. Sums up his entire existence. Once again the Trump team has failed miserably in optics/communication. It should be very easy to explain what a bot player this volunteer was and the ludicrous proposition you open an unheard of investigation of a Presidential campaign using this lightweight hack.
As part of its investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the FBI used Halper, a former University of Cambridge professor, to make contact with Papadopoulos and Carter Page, another Trump campaign adviser targeted in the collusion probe.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
smells like entrapment to me?
if FiBBer spook Halper had never engaged papadopoulos, the FiBBers would have never had the opportunity to charge him with purjury to the FiBBers.
what a set up.
“Will my testimony lead to incrimination of anyone in the administration? Hey, I told Mr Mueller and his investigation exactly what they scripted me to tell them so that I could get my but out of trouble. So of course it will!!”
Welcome to the USSA where Soviet justice is in style. Tell us what we need to hear or we will jail you for lying to the KGB about not remembering what what what you had for breakfast on your birthday ten years ago.
Trump trusts Trump. I do not think we have ever had a President who provides more counsel to himself than this one. He has an inner circle like everyone, but the idea that the assistant to the assistant Secretary has much input with him is difficult for me to believe.
I think this trait is what alienates (and even irritates) the intelligence community who have grown used to telling the President (with great gravitas) what they should do in foreign policy.
Just my .02 from the cheap seats.
If he tells the truth, (hey, it’s possible), and Trump is innocent, then he won’t be incriminated. If Trump is guilty, he should be incriminated. And that’s the problem. The truth is twisted too often enough as we have it now. Just get to the facts, if you’ve got any, and roll the dice. We’ll see who craps out.
rwood
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