Papadopoulos Disputes Key Claim in Mueller Report

Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos disputed a key claim in the final report by special counsel Robert Mueller about the origin of the FBI probe into Trump-Russia connections in 2016.

The report claims Papadopoulos talked to a certain foreign official four days earlier than he says he did—a seemingly small discrepancy that has significant implications and appears to be an effort to boost the credibility of the official story, which has been buckling under the weight of contradicting evidence.

As the official story goes, Papadopoulos was invited to meet Alexander Downer, Australia’s ambassador to London, in an upscale London bar in May 2016. …

The report, however, makes a crucial claim: Papadopoulos spoke to the “representative of a foreign government” on May 6, 2016.

This is false, according to Papadopoulos, who spoke to The Epoch Times via direct message on Twitter.

Papadopoulos acknowledged he received information about Russians having “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” He told the FBI that a Maltese academic named Joseph Mifsud told him this in London on April 26, 2016. Papadopoulos was later sentenced to two weeks in prison for downplaying his contacts with Mifsud when questioned by the FBI.

Papadopoulos denies a recollection of telling Downer the Mifsud story, but said if he ever did, it was on May 10, 2016. “I just looked through my records,” he said. “Yes, the Alexander downer [sic] meeting was on the 10th. Just double checked.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/papadopoulos-disputes-key-claim-in-mueller-report_2890361.html

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The difference is important, because, on May 9, 2016, former Judge Andrew Napolitano aired a rumor on Fox News that “there’s a debate going on in the Kremlin” on whether they should release 20,000 Clinton emails the Russians allegedly hacked.

If the meeting took place on May 10, Papadopoulos could have, for all Downer knew, just been repeating what he heard on Fox News the night before. How could that be the reason for opening a counterintelligence investigation into a presidential campaign—one of the most sensitive operations in FBI’s history?

The problem is, Downer didn’t suggest the release of the information was supposed to have anything to do with the Trump campaign.

“By the way, nothing he said in that conversation indicated Trump himself had been conspiring with the Russians to collect information on Hillary Clinton,” he said. “It was just that this guy clearly knew that the Russians did have material on Hillary Clinton—but whether Trump knew or not? He didn’t say Trump knew or that Trump was in any way involved in this. He said it was about Russians and Hillary Clinton; it wasn’t about Trump.”

Papadopoulos confirmed there was no way he spoke about any “damaging” info on Clinton with any “representative of a foreign government” on May 6. Not Downer, nor any other. The meeting with Downer was organized by his then-counselor, Erika Thompson, and the communications with her did take place on or around May 6. But it was done via email, he said. If he “suggested” anything to her then, she would have had a record of it. There’s no indication she provided any such record to the FBI.

So what basis did the FBI have to start investigating the Trump campaign? Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who spearheaded the congressional inquiry into the origin of the FBI probe, indicated that the Obama administration needed to legitimize its spying on the Trump campaign.

“In late 2015, early 2016, spying began on the Trump campaign,” he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on April 11.

“That information leaked; that led to what they consider to be ‘legal spying’ that began, that they’ve acknowledged that they’d started doing, at the end of July.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/papadopoulos-disputes-key-claim-in-mueller-report_2890361.html