Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos said in an interview that aired Thursday on Hill.TV’s “Rising” that his image was damaged by a “false narrative” tying him to Russia.
“For me, it was a sad day to see that that was not presented to the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court,” Papadopoulos told Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton.
“My entire image has been characterized by this false narrative that I am some sort of patient zero about a Russian conspiracy and a Russian collusion conspiracy, when in fact I have absolutely no Russian contacts whatsoever,” he continued. “I’ve never traveled to Russia. I don’t speak Russian, I don’t even have Russian-American friends in this country.”
“When I found myself at the epicenter of this conspiracy as somebody who has no Russian contacts, something just did not smell right at all to me,” he said.
As a campaign adviser, Papadopoulos was unsuccessful his attempt to set up a meeting between President Trump’s campaign and Moscow. He has pointed to Joseph Mifsud, a London-based professor who told him in 2016 that Russia had “dirt” on then-Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton, before WikiLeaks began releasing troves of hacked Democratic emails.
Papadopoulos pleaded guilty last October to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Mifsud and other Russia-linked individuals, agreeing to cooperate in Mueller’s investigation. He was sentenced last month to 14 days in prison for lying to FBI agents about his Russia contacts and has since become more vocal about his case.
He said earlier this week he was set up by the FBI, and used as a “patsy for a Russia conspiracy.”
Americans are not morons. You couldn’t expect a guy (me) who was linked into western diplomatic circles,and never knowingly met a Russian official, to all of a sudden be a patsy for a “Russia” conspiracy. My set up was carefully orchestrated. @jsolomonReports begins to unfold it.
— George Papadopoulos (@GeorgePapa19) October 23, 2018
Papadopoulos’s interactions with Mifsud, which he reportedly recounted to an Australian diplomat in a London bar, helped trigger the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Russian election interference.
Trump’s allies in the House have said the FBI based its probe on a controversial dossier compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele.
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said in a tweet this week that Papadopoulos told the FBI there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and that information was left out of a FISA warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
George Papadopoulos, the supposed key informant, told the FBI there was no collusion BEFORE the FISA warrant–and the FBI omitted that exculpatory information from the application anyway
With all we’ve learned about FISA abuses, this is deeply troubling https://t.co/tftUHDDOU1
— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) October 24, 2018
Papadopoulos said he would be telling members of two congressional panels he’s set to meet with on Thursday that he was targeted by western intelligence agencies. The former aide did say which intelligence agencies he believed had set him up, or whether they were American.
— Julia Manchester
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