Papadopoulos: I've been "stuck" in an interview with the FBI

George Papadopoulos, Trump's former campaign assistant, said on Sunday that he felt "stuck" in his fateful interview with FBI officers in January 2017, and that he lied to investigators in an attempt to protect President Donald Trump.

On Friday, Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days in federal prison for making false statements to the FBI at the start of the Justice Department's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. he was interviewed on ABC "This Week".

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"At the time of my interview with the FBI, I think that three or four days ago, I was at the inauguration to attend parties with senior officials of the transition," Papadopoulos said. George Stephanopoulos. "I understood that there was a nascent investigation into the Russian interference in the 2016 elections".

"And I found myself as someone who has worked incredibly hard over the past year with the campaign for the Trump candidate to be elected," he said. "And then I found myself stuck between the Department of Justice and the President-in-Office and having probing questions that I thought could incriminate the incumbent president."

Various reports indicated that Papadopoulos' statements to an Australian official in May 2016 had triggered the initial investigation into Russian interference in the elections.

Papadopoulos said Sunday that he thought he had not incriminated Trump in his 2017 negotiations with the police.

"I did not really understand the nature of what was going on," he said. "Of course I'm full of remorse, I'm contrite, and I've been lying, but you know, you're just caught off guard, I guess, in such an important situation where you're potentially sitting there, incriminating the President, although of course I do not think I did it. "

He added: "You know, it was probably in my head, of what I'm doing exactly here when talking about Russian piracy or electoral interference with the candidate I just worked for."

The former foreign policy advisor pleaded guilty in October to having lied to the FBI about his meetings in London with a Maltese professor, Joseph Mifsud – making Papadopoulos the first person to admit Robert Mueller's guilt in the country's vast investigation. special advisor.

"Basically, he introduced himself as this well connected and well connected former diplomat who could basically connect me to the campaign with Russian officials and other leaders around the world," Papadopoulos said of Mifsud.

Mifsud told Papadopoulos in the spring of 2016 that he got "dirt" on Hillary Clinton and claimed to have accumulated a lot of emails related to the Clinton campaign, according to Mueller's attorneys.

"He sat me down and he was really stunned," Papadopoulos said. "And he said to me," I know the Russians have thousands of emails from Hillary Clinton. "

A month before this meeting, the emails from Clinton campaign president John Podesta were stolen in a data breach. In July, Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence agents in relation to the crime, as well as accusations of cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee and other liberal targets.

Papadopoulos claimed that he had not been informed of the piracy attacks on Podesta or the DNC, and testified that he had not spoken to any Trump campaigner about his conversation with Mifsud about Clinton's emails.

Papadopoulos said he chose to keep the professor's request secret because Paul Manafort – soon after becoming the chairman of the Trump campaign in May 2016 – canceled the idea of ​​a possible summit between the Russian candidate Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. try to broker.

"As far as I can remember, it did not seem like Paul Manafort wanted to continue this meeting," Papadopoulos said Sunday. "So, as far as I can remember, why on earth would I have, after being shut up in one, I suppose in a formal way, after a lot of vacillations between the countryside, could I then say to the countryside something like that?"

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the Senate's top Senate Democrat, said Sunday that Papadopoulos was unlikely to have spoken to other members of the Trump campaign about his talks with Mifsud. .

"One thing is pretty clear: he's an ambitious man who wants to play a role in the Trump campaign," Warner told Papadopoulos about CNN's "State of the Union."

"Trump had chosen him as part of his foreign policy team," Warner said. "I think it extends the credibility of most people: if Papadopoulos had this knowledge and he wanted to try to fit better into the campaign, he would not have shared that with anyone in the campaign ".

Papadopoulos also stated that he had "no opinion on" and "no knowledge" of Trump's alleged attempts to impede Mueller's investigation, and could not say whether the special council would be able to demonstrate coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

"I have no idea," he said Sunday. "All I can say is that my testimony could have helped move things forward, but I have no idea."