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His lawyers have barely written that he was barely qualified for his role as foreign policy advisor in a campaign to improve relations with Russia. A meeting that he suggested between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin during the campaign never took place. And he never realized the seriousness of a mysterious European professor telling him that Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.
Even when FBI agents approached him for the first time at his mother's home last January, Papadopoulos did not realize that the conversation would turn to Russian interference in the presidential elections.
Papadopoulos should be sentenced Friday afternoon by Judge Randolph Moss to the DC District Court for lying to investigators about his contacts with people related to Russia as they continued their interactions with the campaign. With the phrase, the young man that Trump administration officials called a "coffee boy" and whose family members were caught in a spying plot will become the first affiliate to the campaign Trump.
Papadopoulos asked the judge for extreme indulgence. He hopes to be released from probation immediately after the conviction because of the last 13 months since his arrest, said his memo.
"George told the agents that he had no knowledge of the campaign with the Russians and that it would not have been in anyone's interest to undermine the democratic process," his lawyers wrote in the memo. last weekend. "While his offense was serious, Mr. Papadopoulos did not intend to derail the federal investigation."
Papadopoulos' mother and his wife, Simona Mangiante, met via LinkedIn during the 2016 campaign, have been his advocates since his plea. However, he did not submit to the judge letters from friends and family who spoke about his personal character or supported his request.
The attorneys of the special advocate 's office want a heavier sentence and have asked the judge a jail sentence of up to six months, which would correspond to the court' s directions regarding his crime. They say Papadopoulos foiled an ongoing national security investigation and helped them lose track of Joseph Mifsud, the professor who knew Clinton's "filth," before he could effectively question him. And, adds the prosecutor, Papadopoulos has been difficult to manage since his arrest in July 2017.
"The accused did not provide" substantial assistance "," wrote the prosecutor to the judge, "and much of the information provided by the accused came in only after the government confronted it ".
"The sentence imposed here must reflect the fact that lying to federal investigators has real consequences, particularly when the accused has lied to investigators on critical facts, in an investigation of national significance, after being explicitly warned that lying to the FBI was a federal offense, "prosecutors added.
A week before his conviction, the Papadopoulos legal team made a last shot at the administration. He publicly contradicted, when filed in court, the testimony of Attorney General Jeff Sessions in Congress on Sessions' response to the Putin-Trump meeting proposal.
Only one other criminal accused of Russia was sentenced. It was Alex Van Der Zwaan, a London-based Dutch lawyer who worked for the law firm Skadden Arps and who helped Paul Manafort and Rick Gates deploy a public relations effort for Ukrainian politicians for whom they worked. Van Der Zwaan pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in February and admitted to hiding his communications with the 2016 Manafort team of federal investigators. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and $ 20,000 fine. Van Der Zwaan was deported after spending time in a low-security facility in Pennsylvania.
Van der Zwaan had asked Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson not to be imprisoned and the government had asked for at least one jail sentence. Jackson, when sentenced, emphasized Van Der Zwaan's responsibility as a lawyer, the seriousness of the crime and his education that allowed him to understand the good of the bad.
