https://thefederalist.com/2018/08/20/papers-saying-papadopoulos-lied-fbi-fbi-shows-either-also-lying-incompetent/
By Margot Cleveland
AUGUST 20, 2018
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office filed a sentencing memorandum Friday in its pending criminal case against George Papadopoulos, the former Donald Trump campaign advisor who pled guilty in October 2017 to making false statements to the FBI. Papadopoulos is scheduled to be sentenced next month.
Mueller’s team provided the court a detailed background of Papadopoulos’ criminal offense in the sentencing memorandum and suggested Papadopoulos’ lies justified a sentence of 0 to 6 months of incarceration. While much of the ten-page memorandum merely rehashes facts previously known, one passage includes a significant new admission that proves the FBI is either incompetent, or incompetent at lying.
Let’s Run Through the Context First
Before we get to why, a quick refresher. In early March 2016, Papadopoulos learned he would serve as a foreign policy advisor to the Trump presidential campaign. Later that month, Papadopoulos met a professor while traveling in Italy, Joseph Mifsud.
According to court filings, Mifsud seemed uninterested in him until after Papadopoulos told the professor he was joining Trump’s campaign team, at which point Mifsud took a great interest in Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos stated in the same filing that in late April, Mifsud, after purportedly returning from a trip to Moscow, told him the Russians had obtained “dirt” on then-candidate Clinton.
Papadopoulos reportedly repeated that claim to an Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, in May over drinks in a London bar. Then, following the WikiLeaks release of the hacked Democratic National Committee emails, the FBI launched Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016, to investigate any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.