Former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos sentenced to 14 days in plea deal with Mueller probe
By Spencer S. Hsu and Rosalind S. Helderman, Washington Post
September 7 at 5:26 PM
A once low-profile foreign policy campaign adviser whose offhand remark in a London bar in May 2016 helped trigger an FBI counterintelligence investigation into President Trump’s campaign was sentenced to 14 days incarceration Friday by a federal judge in Washington.
George Papadopoulos, 31, pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about key details of his conversations with a London-based professor who had told him the Russians held dirt, in the form of thousands of emails, on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Papadopoulos tried futilely for months to arrange a meeting between top campaign aides and Russian officials.
In asking the court for leniency, Papadopoulos said he made “a terrible mistake, for which I have paid a terrible price, and am deeply ashamed,” and that he was motivated to lie to the FBI try to “create distance between the issue, myself, and the president.”
In hindsight, he said in court, he recognizes that was wrong and “might have harmed the investigation.”
Papadopoulos’s attorney, Thomas M. Breen, went further, saying “the President of the United States hindered this investigation more than George Papadopoulos ever could,” by calling the investigation fake news and a witch hunt.
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Papadopoulos, a young oil and gas consultant, was the first Trump official to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.He now is the first campaign adviser sentenced. Three others have pleaded guilty or were convicted of felonies and are awaiting sentencing.
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Federal sentencing guidelines under Papadopoulos’s plea deal called for a penalty between probation and six months in prison.Moss said he had planned to give Papadopoulos a 30-day term but was persuaded by his courtroom expression of remorse to reduce the sentence.
But he said incarceration was necessary because Papadopoulos had lied on a matter of grave national interest and the public needed to understand that lying to the FBI is a serious matter.
Moss described Papadopoulos’s behavior as a “calculated act of self interest over national interest,” and noted it took him six months to correct his statements and he did “in the face of proof he lied.”
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Prosecutors did not recommend a sentence for Papadopoulos, but said up to six months’ jail time was appropriate saying he had lied repeatedly to federal investigators and had not provided substantial cooperation to them.They said Papadopoulos’s initial lies hindered investigators’ ability to effectively question, challenge or detain Joseph Mifsud, the London professor who had contacted him. Mifsud left the United States and not returned, after the FBI found him in the U.S. on Feb. 11, 2017, about two weeks after Papadopoulos’s first interview.
They said Papadopoulos’s initial lies hindered investigators’ ability to effectively question, challenge or detain Joseph Mifsud, the London professor who had contacted him. Mifsud left the United States and not returned, after the FBI found him in the U.S. on Feb. 11, 2017, about two weeks after Papadopoulos’s first interview.
Prosecutor Andrew Goldstein said Friday in court that Papadopoulos “deliberately and repeatedly lied to FBI agents pursuing a highly significant federal investigation,” making a calculated decision “to advance his personal interests” to try to land a high-level administration post.
He ultimately cooperated but, Goldstein added, “ee didn’t come close to the standard of substantial assistance.”
Papadopoulos’s attorneys had asked for probation for their client and said in court filings that Papadopoulos misled investigators to try to save his professional ambitions and out of a “perhaps misguided loyalty to his master” but not for more sinister reasons.
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As part of his sentence, Papadopoulos also will have one year of court supervision, 200 hours of community service and was fined $9,500.