Posted on 12/30/2017 9:24:50 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
The FBI reportedly decided to open its investigation into the Trump campaign after George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser for the Trump team, drunkenly admitted to an Australian diplomat the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton, an admission that came weeks before WikiLeaks began publishing its tranche of hacked emails.
Papadopoulos made the revelation in May 2016 to Alexander Downer, the top Australian diplomat in Britain, while he was drinking at the Kensington Wine Rooms in London. Three weeks earlier, a professor with ties to the Russian government told Papadopoulos the Russians had emails that would be damaging to Clinton, according to the New York Times.
Australian officials notified American officials about Papadopoulos’s statements two months later when WikiLeaks began publishing the hacked emails from Democratic officials, American and foreign officials told the New York Times.
According to the New York Times, it was Papadopoulos’s revelation to the Australian diplomat, as well as the hacked emails, that served as the catalysts for the FBI’s probe into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, and Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI earlier this year and is said to be cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller, who was tapped to take over the investigation in May.
President Trump and his allies, though, have suggested it was a dossier containing salacious details about Trump that was funded in part by the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign and drafted by a former British spy that led the FBI to open its investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016.
The White House and former Trump campaign officials have tried to downplay Papadopoulos’s role in the campaign, suggesting he was a “low-level" volunteer and a “coffee boy.”
But emails obtained by the New York Times indicate Papadopoulos continuously tried to set up a meeting with Russian officials in an attempt to eventually broker a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Jeff Sessions had previously decided not to have Papadopoulos orchestrate the gathering. Papadopoulos also allegedly notified top campaign officials of his continued attempts.
Sessions led the campaign’s foreign policy team and went on to become attorney general.
Papadopoulos also set up a meeting between Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in New York before the election.
Additionally, he edited an outline of then-candidate Trump’s first speech on foreign policy in April 2016.
According to the New York Times, Papadopoulos notified his Russian contacts of Trump’s speech, during which he spoke of improving relations with Russia. The address, he told Ivan Timofeev, a program director for the Valdai Discussion Club, should be interpreted as “the signal to meet,” Papadopoulos told him.
Papadopoulos and Timofeev had previously been communicating about connecting the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
During discussions Papadopoulos had with professor Joseph Mifsud, who had ties to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mifsud suggested serving as a surrogate for the Trump campaign, according to the New York Times. In one email, Mifsud said he could pen op-eds as a “neutral” observer and attend campaign rallies as a reporter.
Mifsud also suggested he receive campaign briefings.
It was Mifsud, the New York Times reported, who told Papadopoulos in late April the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton. The professor said he heard from top Russian officials that Moscow had “thousands of emails,” according to court documents.
It is unknown whether Papadopoulos told anyone in the campaign about the emails. He did, however, tell Downer, the Australian diplomat.
I guess this is what the FBI is going to use as an excuse to spy on the Trump campaign instead of the dossier.
How many versions of the “source” have we been fed?
What? You mean to tell me that foreign governments spy on high profile politicians in other countries????? No!! That would be.....I dunno, mean and bad and stuff.
One has to read very carefully to discern that the facts end with P drinking some wine and saying the Russians had some dirt on Hilary. All the rest, like editing a speech and setting up a meeting with Egyptians, are noise.
“I have dirt on Clinton,”
FBI: “We better spy on Trump”
Good summary!
>>an admission that came weeks before WikiLeaks began publishing its tranche of hacked emails.
Wikileaks had emails hacked from Hillary Rotten Clinton’s servers?
I thought their emails came from the DNC servers that the FBI was prohibited from investigating forensically.
....maybe it’s the ruskies that have
“the video” of Hilda engaged in unsavory activities...... just saying
Just like the Russian lawyer babe that met with Trump Jr., and just like the Russian diplomat that was in the same room as Sessions at a couple of events, this guy was just a plant to keep the Russian narrative rolling.
and leaked, not hacked.
He was a nobody to the Trump campaign. I am not 100% sure he was really a Trump supporter. He was an opportunist at best.
Fair correction.
The media is willfully ignorant in saying that the messages came from Russia when the publisher says otherwise.
And all of this while a retelling of the publication of the Pentagon Papers is in theaters. The media said, “don’t read those emails, they could be fakes, and they need to be sifted by professional journalists” and even “those were private, not government documents”.
It’s ridiculous that the Daily Mail and NY Post use this fakenews for headlines.
“The FBI reportedly decided to open its investigation into the Trump campaign after George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser for the Trump team, drunkenly admitted to an Australian diplomat the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton”
While they ignored real evidence of Hillary’s email crimes around the same time.
The same thing the lady Russian lawyer said to Trump Jr in order to get a meeting with him. Nothing but a big yawner. A big so what.
Let me get this straight. Papadopoulos has infor Hillary is compromised and blackmailed by Russians, doing their bidding, and the FBI attacks him for warning about it!?
Some fracking paper pushing bureaucrat idiots at the FBI seem to have had for mission to protect illegals voting for Hillary instead of others “interfering” with that.
Despite the hysteria this article created today, it’s important to note that the events in question STILL did not precede the existence of the dossier, or more importantly, even the delivery of the dossier to the FBI, if you believe they didn’t know about it since it’s original conception. Therefore, the NYT attempt to claim that this new info somehow predates the dossier, is actually a failure.
Per the NYT article today:
“The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired.”
Now, compare that to Byron York’s article from last month, which has been considered the most complete piece regarding the dossier timeline:
“Steele told the left-leaning publication Mother Jones that he took the first part of his dossier to the FBI “near the start of July.” James Comey, when he was FBI director, told members of the House Intelligence Committee the Trump-Russia investigation began “in late July.” So the timeline is: The first dossier report was June 20, Steele approached the FBI near the start of July, and the FBI began its investigation in late July.”
Anybody with a couple of shots of booze in him could have “drunkenly admitted” that the Russians had dirt on democrats. We’ve suspected that for years. They’re just trying to change their story why they were spying on Trump. I just hope there isn’t another round of mass shootings to distract from the shxx they’re in.
The CIA and the FBI had/have dirt on Hillary.
Huma’s emails show the emails WikiLeaks put out weren’t hacked.
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