(VANITY) Who are the people that were run by the Governmen at George Papadopoulos?

I don't know much about George Papadopoulos. I don't know if he is a good person or a bad person. But it is clear in following this scandal of Trump being spied on by his own country in an election, that Papadopoulos is a key player in this scandal.

I wanted to put all that I can see on this aspect of it in one place to make it easier to follow.

He is Mueller's Cat's Paw against Donald Trump, the patsy they were looking for to find a way into the campaign, entrap the campaign, and eventually, to crucify the Trump administration upon.

In my opinion, he doesn't come across as particularly sharp. He is likely intelligent, but as a crack in the Trump Team to put a lever into as a way of breaking it open, he lacked commonsense and good judgment.

Since Papadopoulos has come to be such a pivotal figure, it is hard to miss the fact that he seemed to have people constantly run against him from the outside to either give him things both wanted and unwanted, put him into compromising situations, or serve as a tool to set up the Trump team.

This long post below focuses on four people, all with known "friendly" intelligence connections who made unsolicited approaches to George Papadopoulos between March 2016 and July 2017:

All of these people have reported ties to various Western Intelligence entities, both socially and professionally.

This is a long, but may serve many as a good reference for events and time frames, and may serve us to have a better idea on how this central piece in this scandal fits into the whole picture. Please feel free to correct any factual errors I have made, I would appreciate it.

INTRODUCTION

George Papadopoulos was a low level foreign policy functionary hired on to the Trump campaign, because to be honest, at that point, all the other better known foreign policy experts had been hired by the plethora of GOP candidates in the running, and there were a lot of them. Wikipedia says there were a total of 17 valid candidates including those who withdrew during the primaries so there were a lot.

TIMELINE
Here are some key dates, and these are important because they factor into the charges against him for lying to the FBI:

March 6, 2016: Papadopoulos recruited to the Trump Campaign by Sam Clovis.
March 14, 2016: Papadopoulos meets Joseph Mifsud at a conference in Italy
March 21, 2016: Formal announcement by Trump that Papadopoulos was on his team as a foreign policy advisor.
March 24, 2016: Papadopoulos meets Joseph Mifsud in London with a Russian woman Olga Polonskaya who identifies herself as “Putin’s niece” (she wasn’t)
April 26, 2016: Papadopoulos meets Joseph Mifsud in London and is told by Mifsud that he has been told by high level Russian officials have told him that they have “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails”. (It is important to note that the DNC “hack” was not public knowledge at this time)
May 10, 2016: Papadopoulos meets Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in London and Papadopoulos tells Downer that the Russians have something that could be “damaging to her” in Downer’s words in an interview with the Australian press. No mention of “dirt” or “emails”.
September 2, 2016: Halper contacts Papadopoulos offering to pay him to write a paper about oil fields in the Mediterranean and inviting him to London. Papadopoulos does so later that month, receiving $3,000 in payment.
September 15, 2016: While in London, Papadopoulos has drinks with a woman who identifies herself as Halper’s assistant. He meets Halper at the Traveler’s Club. According to the New York Times, Halper asked if Papadopoulos knew about any interference efforts, which Papadopoulos denied.
January 27, 2017: Papadopoulos interviewed by the FBI and tells them he met Mifsud before he was on the Trump team. He was already technically onboard the week before, and this is his false statement he was prosecuted for.
February 16, 2017: 2nd Interview with the FBI.
February 17, 2017: Papadopoulos deactivates Facebook account and opens new one which did not contain his communications with Mifsud and an unspecified “Russian Connection”. He also deactivated his cell phone and got a new one.
July 2017 (Exact date not specified): Charles Tawil introduced to Papadopoulos by Israeli David Ha’ivri. Tawil gives Papadopoulos a $10,000 initial consulting fee, which Papadopoulos gives to an attorney in Greece to retain.
July 27,2017: Papadopoulos returns to the USA, and is arrested by the FBI as soon as he exited the plane.

NOTE: It is well to keep in mind that, In nearly all of the encounters described below (except for the last one in Greece days before he was arrested upon returning home) whenever one of these meetings came up, there was always a young attractive woman involved in the meetings. (Joseph Mifsud…brought Olga Polonskaya who identified herself as “Putin’s Niece”. Alexander Downer…who brought Erika Thompson. Stefan Halper had an attractive woman named Azra Turk with him. Charles Tawil, the last person to run at him, did not invite a woman to the meeting, likely because Papadopoulos had his fiance with him. I find this pattern interesting, because it indicates that Papadopoulos had a weakness to be exploited by pretty women, maybe he wanted to impress them, was distracted by them, or talked too freely in their presence. But this would seem to be a standard ploy by intelligence to increase the possible yield of a target, as Papadopoulos clearly was.)

JOSEPH MIFSUD
Joseph Mifsud was the first to be thrown at Papadopoulos.

Mifsud has been portrayed as having ties to the Putin regime. However, according to everyone who knows him, his ties were to Western intelligence, not Russian.

In the excellent article by Lee Smith at RealClear Investigations: The Maltese Phantom of Russiagate he has the incisive segment that highlights why the media’s characterization of him is suspect:

If Joseph Mifsud truly is a Russian agent, it is odd that neither the Western intelligence agencies he snookered nor the U.S. government is acting as if he is.

For instance, the FBI interviewed Mifsud in Washington, D.C., between Feb. 8-12, 2017, less than two weeks after its first interview with Papadopoulos, on Jan. 27, when he admitted to meeting Mifsud and talking about Hilary Clinton emails.

Mifsud was in Washington to speak at the large annual conference for Global Ties U.S., an organization that has been a partner of the U.S. State Department for over 50 years. Several State Department officials also spoke at the conference. France’s ambassador to Washington, Gerard Araud, was one of several foreign envoys to the United States who lectured at the 2017 event.

So why did the FBI not arrest Mifsud? The State Department declined to comment when RCI emailed to ask why it did not prevent its officials from appearing at an event with a “Kremlin-linked” figure who was key to Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election.

If Mifsud was a Russian spy, it’s unclear why after Papadopoulos’ July 27, 2017 arrest that no U.S. intelligence officials warned their European partners that they were hosting a foreign agent on their territory.

Bottom line, if he was connected to the Russians by any more than acquaintance, he wasn’t being treated like it.

SUMMARY: Mifsud was likely connected to Western intelligence, not Russian intelligence. Was he connected to British Intelligence? If so, what was his role in taking an unsolicited interest in Papadopoulos when he first met him? There are many who feel that Joseph Mifsud is ONE of the keys to this entire scandal. I feel that former CIA Director Brennan was involved in this. The key concept is his involvement in pushing the information into the Trump campaign so that it could later be extracted by Alexander Downer, (who also has ties to British Intelligence with an accompanying role in all this)

ALEXANDER DOWNER

The next “Person of Interest” to be thrown George Papadopoulos was Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat with ties to British Intelligence. (See this well researched and written article from The Markets Work by Jeff Carlson: The Alexander Downer Conversation

Here is an excerpt on the article on Alexander Downer’s Intelligence Connections:
”…Downer’s background appears somewhat unusual for an Australian diplomat. Downer has long-standing ties to UK intelligence firm Hakluyt, having served on the advisory board of Hakluyt’s parent company Holdingham from 2008 to 2014. Hakluyt’s top officials come from MI6. Several board members, like Sir Iain Lobben, come from GCHQ—the UK equivalent to the National Security Agency. Former MI6 head Richard Dearlove has a number of ties to Hakluyt as well.

Downer was forced to resign from Hakluyt’s advisory board when he became Australian ambassador to the UK in 2014. But Downer reportedly maintained contact with Hakluyt officials.

“Australian High Commissioner to the UK Alexander Downer had been on the advisory board of the London-headquartered firm since 2008 when he was a UN special envoy but was forced to give up the position when he was appointed to head the Australian diplomatic post in London in 2014,” News Corp. reported on Jan. 18, 2016…”

Downer, according to the article, had still been attending client conferences and gatherings of the group.

Downer also arranged one of the largest foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation: $25 million from the Australian government…”

As for the meeting, it was not a “random” “drunken” meeting, as it is often portrayed in the media, it was set up via an Israeli embassy official in London named Christian Cantor introduced Papadopoulos, who he previously knew, to Erika Thompson, a counselor to Downer who serves in the Australia’s London embassy.

And a key piece in this article is that Downer either lied or misstated how he handled the information. He initially said he gave it to his embassy and that was where he left it.

“…However, according to a May 31, 2018, article published in The Wall Street Journal, it was Downer who conveyed his information directly to the U.S. Embassy in London: “The Downer details landed with the embassy’s then-chargé d’affaires, Elizabeth Dibble, who previously served as a principal deputy assistant secretary in Mrs. Clinton’s State Department,” the article states. Where the information went from there remains unknown…”

This is crucial, as the entire FISA warrant request (which is predicated on the Wood’s Procedure to validate the reasons for the the requested warrant) bypassed the”Five Eyes” validation and took a murky path instead.

SUMMARY ON ALEXANDER DOWNER: It is my opinion that Ex-CIA Director Brennan and the US State Department (Elizabeth Dibble) had a hand in “routing” this information so that it would end up in the hands of the FBI and not the CIA (who cannot open an investigation on American citizens) and that Alexander Downer was actively enlisted to play a role in this “routing” of information.

STEFAN HALPER
After Alexander Downer, we next see Stefan Halper taking a run at George Papadopoulos.

Stefan Halper is the very definition of a “Swamp Creature” in the Washington environment. His father in law is well known in CIA circles for his role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it is now public record that Halper was employed by the FBI as a paid informant on the Trump Campaign and records show that FBI ‘informant’ Stefan Halper was paid $282,000 in 2016 and $129,280 in 2017 for spying on Trump according to The Daily Wire (Article: Chuck Ross: EXCLUSIVE: A LONDON MEETING BEFORE THE ELECTION AROUSED GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS’S SUSPICIONS (excerpt below):

”…Out of the blue, on September 2, 2016, Papadopoulos received an unsolicited and unexpected offer from Stefan Halper who would grant him an all expenses paid trip to a conference in London, and $3000 for a paper he would write about energy policy in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Papadopoulos accepted, and he and Halper met several times during the London trip, including at the Connaught Hotel and the Travellers Club — a classic 19th century club foreign diplomats and politicians frequent. Halper’s research assistant — a Turkish woman named Azra Turk - also met with Papadopoulos. The Connaught Hotel meeting was scheduled for Sept. 13, 2016, and the Travellers Club conclave was two days later.

While discussing the policy paper Papadopoulos was to write, Halper made an out-of-left-field reference to Russians and hacked emails, according to a source with direct knowledge of Papadopoulos’s version of events. (NOTE: it was during this meeting where Halper said unexpectedly ““George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?”

Turk contacted Papadopoulos to thank him for attending after the meeting. Papadopoulos delivered the paper through email Oct. 2…”

SUMMARY ON STEFAN HALPER: It is now public record that Halper was hired by the FBI as a source and pushed repeatedly at various members of the Trump Team (notably Carter Page). It is clear he was attempting to get Papadopoulos to entrap himself by saying something incriminating, but he never did. By this time, it was clear the FBI/DOJ cabal behind the FISA warrant requests were getting extremely nervous. They had fully expected to have incriminating information on their hands at this point to add to the next FISA warrant request to get it approved (and apparently make all the spying done up to that point valid via a FISA process which would be retroactive) since the first FISA Warrant application was denied in June 2016, and the first of three approvals wouldn’t take place until October 21, 2016.

CHARLES TAWIL
The last person who appeared to try to set a trap for George Papadopoulos was a man by the name of Charles Tawil, who was sent Papadopoulos’ way by an Israeli political analyst named David Ha’ivri. This is relatively new information, and is featured in the article by Chuck Ross at The Daily Caller: PAPADOPOULOS TOLD FEDS HE RECEIVED $10,000 FROM FOREIGN NATIONAL HE BELIEVED WAS A SPY

In this account, Papadopoulos and his then fiancé/girlfriend were in Greece, and were met by Charles Tawil, who invited the couple back to Israel, but only Papadopoulos went and his wife stayed behind. (This is the only known time Papadopoulos was approached by one of these people who took unusual and generous interest in him, but didn’t show up to the meeting with an attractive young woman, likely because his fiancé was with him.)

There appears to be little known about Charles Tawil, but according to this article at The Conservative Treehouse Anatomy of a Sting: Robert Mueller Likely Used FBI and Foreign Intel to Set-Up George Papadopoulos in July 2018 Charles Tawil was a CIA and FBI Intelligence Asset:

”…Since initially posting the set-up for the July, 2017, FBI sting operation against George Papadopoulos a few more important research details have surfaced. Charles Tawil, the guy who reached out to Papadopoulos in Greece; and who ultimately gave Papadopoulos $10,000 in cash; was a previous intelligence asset of the CIA and FBI. SEE WIKILEAKS Cables (circa 2006): Paragraph #8, note:

“…These undisclosed sources told Zuma that American citizens (not connected with the U.S. Government) were involved. This in part, coincides with another Embassy contact, Charles Tawil (protect), who told our Economic Counselor on November 29 that Zuma had received information from the mother of the King of Swaziland about CIA attempts to kill Zuma using poisoned clothes from the FBI” (link)…”

Who was the FBI Director in 2006? Why, Robert Mueller of course…”

“That company agreed to give a retainer of $10,000 a month,” Ha’ivri told TheDCNF…”

According to the linked article, Papadopoulos and Tawil went to Israel, consummated a deal, and Papadopoulous flew back to Greece with exactly $10,000 cash in hand, to be with his fiancé (It doesn’t explicitly say that he flew back, but I deduce that from the chain of events):

Before leaving Greece, Papadopoulos gave the wad of money to an attorney there to keep for him, finished his vacation, and flew home.

Upon arriving at Dulles, he was arrested as soon as he got off the plane and before he even hit Customs.

Of all the things that have befallen George Papadopoulos, this seems the most curious, and the most egregious example of government malevolence towards him.

According to Dan Bongino, who has firsthand experience in these matters, Papadopoulos was subjected by FBI agents to what is known as a “PC” arrest (PC stands for “Probable Cause”) as soon as he gets off the plane.

PC arrests are the most common thing at the non-Federal level, because that is what Law Enforcement largely does. They watch or get called to a scene, see a crime in progress, and arrest a person right there. Then they gather up information, interview witnesses, get an indictment, and everything proceeds from there. Happens all the time, thousands of times a day, all across the length and breadth of the country. However, at the Federal level, Bongino says this type of thing is so rare (PC arrest) as to be a Unicorn (in his words). In over a decade of being involved in investigations and arrests at the Federal level, he never once in all those years saw a “PC” arrest. Never. Never heard of one. (Obviously, this excludes Federal-level jobs like the Capitol Police and such, who likely do PC arrests quite often)

At the Federal level for FBI and Secret Service agents, the process works exactly the other way. Someone reports a crime, and an investigation by Federal agents begins if the complaint is both serious and credible. Evidence is gathered, a case built, and a warrant for arrest is requested from an appropriate judge who handles things like this at the Federal Level. If granted, the Federal agents (Secret Service, FBI, etc) with arrest warrant in hand go out and arrest someone.

This is highly unusual. So it begs the question…why? One interesting theory Dan Bongino posited is that they knew (or thought they knew) he was coming into the country with $10,000 in cash from his “manna-from-heaven” consulting job that he wasn’t going to declare. They thought they might nab him with that little blue card you fill out for customs, and it wouldn’t be on there, and they would have him.

The other important thing that happened that exact same day, July 27, 2017? IG Horowitz notified Mueller and Rosenstein that he saw evidence of bias in those communications between Strzok and Page which meant the hammer was going to drop on Strzok at an time, so Mueller may have felt a need to nail Papadopoulos on something and put pressure on him.

In any case, when Papadopoulos was arrested prosecutors had no warrant for him and no indictment or criminal complaint. FBI agents were disappointed to find Papadopoulos did not carry the “$10,000 bait” back into the United States, so a charge of "lying to the FBI" was hastily arranged.

It also makes one highly suspicious of the nice, round, $10,000 number in cash given to Papadopoulos from a virtual stranger. It begs the question as to who Charles Tawil was REALLY working with, and who arranged to have him meet with Papadopoulous and offer him the “consulting job” with a big wad of handy cash.

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