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A two-week prison sentence was the culmination of the criminal case against the man that allegedly prompted the launch of an FBI inquiry into Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.
George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaigner, was sentenced to 14 days in jail, a $ 9,500 fine, and a community service for lying to the FBI. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to the charge almost a year ago, but agreed to postpone his conviction several times.
Papadopoulos lied about the timing and extent of his contacts with Maltese academic Joseph Mifsud and two Russians whom Mifsud presented to him.
Mifsud told Papadopoulos on April 26, 2016 that the "Russians" had thousands of emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to Papadopoulos' guilty plea, the Prosecution memoranda and the recent Papadopoulos interview. .
According to the official FBI account, Mifsud's claim led to the launch of the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into alleged connections between Trump and Russia.
The investigation was the Bureau's justification for a large spying operation against the Trump campaign.
Young man in politics
In the summer of 2015, Papadopoulos, just 28 years old, tried to get a job with the Trump campaign, but failed. He has instead joined the team of Ben Carson, currently housing secretary.
While Carson ended his failed presidential candidacy in January 2016, Mr. Papadopoulos landed a job that would significantly strengthen his resume – Director of the International Center for Energy and Natural Resources, Law and Security at the London Center of International Law Practice (LCILP). Mifsud has been appointed advisor to the center's board of directors and, since July 2016, director of international strategic development. LCILP seems to have since removed its staff page from its website.
Papadopoulos again tried to join the Trump campaign and, after an interview in early March 2016, landed the position of adviser.
On March 14, 2016, Papadopoulos was traveling to Rome with the LCILP. There he met with Mifsud, who showed interest in joining the Trump team.
Mifsud later told La Repubblica that he had offered to offer contacts in the Persian Gulf, Latin America, Russia and the European Council.
Papadopoulos knew that Trump wanted to improve his relations with Russia, just as Obama and Clinton had done before him. He wanted to strengthen his profile with the campaign by organizing a meeting with senior Russian officials, "mainly for a photo shoot," he told CNN.
Mifsud promised to help.
Empty promises
On March 24, 2016, Papadopoulos met with Mifsud in London and Mifsud introduced him to Olga Polonskaya.
Mifsud claimed that she was a relative of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Papadopoulos said.
The young woman worked for an alcohol wholesaler in St. Petersburg and then studied at Link Campus University in Rome, according to Russian journalist Alexander Kalinin, who did research in her community. Mifsud taught Link and in a mini bio 2013 was called his director of international relations.
"Mifsud and Olga have led George to believe that they have the means to organize a meeting between the Trump campaign and the Russian government officials," said Papadopoulos's defense team.
On March 31, 2016, Papadopoulos attended the "National Security Meeting" at the Trump Hotel. He introduced to Trump, then Senator Jeff Sessions, and other campaign officials the offer of Mifsud.
Some opposed the idea. Trump gave him a nod and went back to the sessions. The sessions "seemed to like the idea and said the campaign should look into this idea," the defense said. The November 14 meetings testified before Congress that he had rejected Papadopoulos' proposal and told him that he was not allowed to represent the campaign with a foreign government.
In mid-April, Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to Ivan Timofeev, a public relations specialist in academia for the Russian Foreign Ministry.
"George in a hurry [Timofeev] via emails and Skype calls about setting up a potential meeting, "said the defense. "He felt that such a meeting would be a boon for the campaign because Mr. Trump had not yet organized major foreign policy events with officials from other countries."
Clinton Emails
On April 26, 2016, Papadopoulos met with Mifsud in London in the hope of defining plans for the meeting. That's when Mifsud dropped a bomb on him.
"I have information that Russians have thousands of Clinton emails," Mifsud said Papadopoulos told CNN.
At the time, the FBI was investigating Clinton's private messaging server for mismanaging classified information. The FBI was also investigating whether the poorly secured server was compromised by foreign opponents.
In this context, Mr Papadopoulos said that Mifsud "only repeated rumors and gossip".
Mifsud did not promise or offer anything. "I do not know why he told me this information in London," Papadopoulos told CNN.
The promised meeting with the Russians never took place.
That would have been the end of the story, if not for Alexander Downer, the most senior Australian diplomat in Britain at the time.
Official history
May 6, three days after Trump secured Gop's candidacy, Downer's advisor Erika Thompson, contacted Papadopoulos and asked him to meet Downer, The Daily Caller reported.
Thompson had already been introduced to Papadopoulos by their common knowledge, Christian Cantor, an official of the Israeli Embassy in London. But Papadopoulos told CNN that he found "strange" that Downer contacted him, a man with no experience with American-Australian relations.
As the official story goes, Papadopoulos told Downer, after a few drinks, the story of Mifsud about Russians having Clinton emails. When, on July 22, 2016, Wikileaks began broadcasting emails that were reported by the National Democratic Committee (DNC), the Australian government told the FBI what Downer had learned from Papadopoulos. The FBI then concluded that the Clinton emails referred to were the same as the emails from the DNC and that Papadopoulos must therefore have had prior knowledge of the emails.
Since Crowdstrike, a company hired by the DNC, has provided data indicating that DNC emails have been hacked by Russians, the FBI has argued that Papadopoulos and perhaps the Trump campaign could be agents of the United States. foreign influence. used by a foreign opponent – to influence the elections of 2016. This was enough to launch a counterintelligence operation on July 31, 2016, which justified the spying operation against the Trump campaign. The investigation is still ongoing, now under the direction of Special Adviser Robert Mueller, but it has still not confirmed the fundamental allegation of Trump-Russia collusion.
Holes Holes
Papadopoulos, however, denied talking to Downer about Clinton emails.
"I do not remember saying that to that person," he told CNN.
Downer denied hearing about Papadopoulos emails.
"He said material that could hurt him. No, he said it would be harmful. He did not say what it was, "Downer told The Australian.
Clinton emails are different from DNC emails. "I never heard the word" DNC, "Papadopoulos told CNN about his interview with Mifsud.
Papadopoulos said he sent something about Clinton's e-mails to Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias at the end of May when Papadopoulos was sent to Greece by the Trump campaign. But nothing indicates that Kotzias ever did anything with this information.
Catch papadopoulos
Papadopoulos finally mentioned the emails to the FBI himself in January 2017, when agents asked him for an interview.
The agents already seemed to know what Papadopoulos had to tell them.
"Coming back to WikiLeaks and maybe Russian piracy and all that, have you ever been made aware that the Russians were planning to divulge information in advance?", Did they request. "So before it becomes public? Has anyone ever told you that the Russian government planned to publish information, as to tell the Trump team in advance, that this was going to happen?
"No," he replied.
"No?" The agents asked with skepticism, according to the memorandum of the prosecution.
"No, not on, not the Trump [campaign]but I will tell you something, "said Papadopoulos following the story of Mifsud. However, he lied, saying that Mifsud shared the claim before joining the Trump campaign, when in fact it was after. He told CNN it was because he wanted a job at the White House and therefore tried to put a distance between Mifsud's claim and the campaign.
The FBI obtained search warrants and subpoenas for obtaining emails, text messages, Internet search history and other information from Papadopoulos, which they later used to lie to him.
Mifsud Free
On or about February 8, 2017, the FBI interviewed Mifsud, who was in Washington to speak at the Global Ties Conference (pdf) sponsored by the State Department's International Visitors Bureau.
Prosecutors have blamed Papadopoulos' lie for their inability to "effectively interrogate" Mifsud and "detain or arrest him."
But the defense disagreed, saying that "it was still obvious, despite George's lie, that Professor Mifsud had communicated this information [about Clinton emails] to George before the stolen emails are made public.
There is nothing to indicate that the FBI has tried to reinterview Mifsud, even though the Italian La Repubblica managed to interview MIfsud in October 2017, while attending a conference on cybersecurity intelligence at Link campus.
Mifsud seemed to contradict the testimony of the Papadopoulos newspaper.
"I strongly deny any discussion about me regarding secrets about Hillary Clinton," he said. "I swear on my daughter."
The ties of Mifsud
While Mifsud has been portrayed in the media as an obscure character, most of his antecedents connect to a single point, the Bonding Campus.
The picturesque Link campus, one kilometer from the Vatican City, is headed by Vincenzo Scotti, former Italian Minister of the Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mifsud helped launch the school in 1999 and, through his other efforts, helped students access it.
Link offers degrees in performing arts, fashion design, economics and digital communication. But until 2016, she also offered a master's degree in intelligence and security as well as a master's degree in behavioral analysis and applied sciences in the fields of intelligence and homeland security. These two courses subsequently disappeared from Link's website.
The CIA and the FBI sent their officers to Link. In 2004, the CIA and Link organized a conference in Rome that "brought together intelligence and police representatives from nearly 30 countries," said the Washington Post, deputy director of intelligence at the CIA. # 39; era. Former CIA analyst Stephen Marrin gave at least one conference to Link in 2015. The US Embassy in Rome sent FBI Special Agent Preston Ackerman to Link in September 2016, according to an investigation by columnist Lee Smith.
In 2017, Link was appointed coordinator of two NATO research projects related to urban warfare. One is the integration of surveillance and the other on the management of several drones supporting counter-terrorism missions.
One of Mifsud's associates was Gianni Pittella, former first vice-president of the European Parliament.
Mifsud has known Pittella since at least 2011 and the two have maintained a close relationship, with Pittella becoming the leader of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, the second largest ruling bloc in the European Parliament. Pittella gave a lecture with Mifsud at a Link forum on terrorism in 2015.
"Joseph is a dear friend," said Pittella, according to the Italian online newspaper L'Occidentale.
Pittella has been presented at the National Democratic Convention 2016 in Philadelphia. "I took the unprecedented decision to support and campaign for Hillary Clinton because Donald Trump's risk is too high," he told Time. "I think it is in the interest of the European Union and Italy that Hillary Clinton is in office. A Trump victory could be a disaster for the relationship between the United States and Italy. "
Pittella resigned from her post in the European Parliament in 2017 after winning a seat in the Italian Senate.
Mifsud has not been seen since the end of 2017. His partner, the German-Swiss lawyer Stephan Roh, said that the chief of the liaison, Scotti, had told Mifsud not to say anything.
Theory of stings
According to former FBI agent Mark Wauck, the way Mifsud and others approached Papadopoulos and other Trump campaign associates looks like a burst operation.
"What seems to have been repeated attempts to involve the Trump campaign, in a sort of counterpart agreement with the Russians who claimed to have" dirt "on Hillary [Clinton], look like efforts to fabricate evidence against members of the Trump campaign or create excuses to investigate this issue, "he told RealClearInvestigations.
In this scenario, it could also be that a third party trapped the campaign and passed on the information obtained to the FBI, said former FBI agent and Epoch Times contributor Marc Ruskin.
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