A former Trump campaign adviser struck a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, secretly pleading guilty three weeks ago to lying to federal agents about his contacts with Kremlin-connected Russians.
The bombshell announcement about Papadopoulos came shortly after indictments against former campaign Paul Manafort and Manafort associate Rick Gates were unsealed, alleging financial crimes that pre-dated Trump’s candidacy.
“Through his false statements and omissions, defendant … impeded the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the Campaign and the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election,” Mueller’s team wrote.
Court documents unsealed Monday in the Papadopoulos case outline how foreign nationals with ties to the Russian government were seeking to establish a relationship with at least one campaign official and that they offered “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
Papadopoulos, 30, claimed in his first interview with the FBI that he made the contacts before he joined the Trump team in March 2016 as an energy and foreign policy expert, when he actually began communicating with them afterward.
He also downplayed the importance of their communications, telling the FBI that a professor living in London was “a nothing,” while a Russian woman was just emailing him to say, “Hi, how are you?”
In fact, the professor had told Papadopoulos that Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. “They have thousands of emails,” the professor said, according to the documents.
The Russian woman and the professor also tried to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials, the documents say.
Papadopoulos, 30, communicated with a “campaign supervisor” about his attempts to broker a meeting with the Russians to discuss U.S.-Russia ties during a Trump presidency, the court papers say.
“Great work,” the supervisor, who was not named in the documents, told him in an email.
Papadopoulos was arrested in July 2017 and pleaded guilty on Oct. 5. His plea agreement says the government will inform the sentencing judge of his “efforts to cooperate with the Government, on the condition that your client continues to respond and provide information regarding any and all matters as to which the Government deems relevant.”
Papadopoulos’ attorneys said in a statement that the firm would have no comment.
“We will have the opportunity to comment on George’s involvement when called upon by the Court at a later date,” the statement said. “We look forward to presenting all the facts that led to the events that resulted in this charge.”