Volume V, Part 5, George Papadopoulos

 

Part 5 of Volume V, pages 464-526 (62 pages) concerns George Papadopoulos, the minor advisor whose unguarded comments about his contacts with the Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud started the FBI investigation in the first place.  George Papadopoulos was a young up-and-comer (29 at the age of the campaign) who appears to have had some ties in Europe, particularly Greece (as his name suggests, Papadopoulos is Greek-American and appears to have active ties to his ancestral country).  He ended up marrying one of his contacts -- an Italian attorney who (for what it is worth) also knew Mifsud (p 470).  

He also appears to have been young and inexperienced, but highly ambitious, and eager to have a larger role and greater influence than he had the experience to handle. This made him vulnerable to getting in over his head and being manipulated by more experienced operators.  The Committee certainly did not find that Papadopoulos every wittingly served Russians interests, but they regarded him as a useful idiot for the Russians (p. 467).  He appears to have wanted to be the campaign conduit for various high-ranking foreign contacts, conveying information between his contacts and the campaign, but never putting the parties into direct contact, lest he undermine his own importance.  The Committee did not have to opportunity to interview Papadopoulos or many of his foreign contacts directly, but they did have access to his e-mails and also interviewed his contacts with the campaign.

George Papadopoulos

Papadopoulos reported to Sam Clovis, Team Trump's senior policy advisor.  He got the job largely because Team Trump had a dearth of policy advisors and could not afford to be too demanding.  In March, 2016, about the time he joined Team Trump, Papadopoulos met Joseph Mifsud, a British-Maltese professor believed to have significant ties to the Russian government and Russian intelligence services.  Mifsud seemed initially uninterested in Papadopoulos until he learned that the later was a member of the Trump campaign, at which point he became interested.  Mifsud introduce Papadopoulos to Olga Polonskaya, a Russian national whose exact role the Committee was unable to determine.  Mifsud, however, appears to have greatly exaggerated Polonskaya's role and led Papadopoulos to believe that she was Putin's niece.  She appears to have served as an intermediary between the two men.  In April, Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to another intermediary -- Ivan Timofeev, Director of Programs at the Russian International Affairs Council (whatever that is, p. 481).  Mifsud also sought to arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin, which Papadopoulos eagerly pitched to the Trump Campaign, but was regularly rebuffed.

On April 26, 2016, after returning from a conference in Moscow, Mifsud told Papadopoulos that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, in the form of "thousands" of e-mails. When Papadopoulos asked Mifsud how he knew, Mifsud answered, "They told me."

What are we to make of that?  First, this was just two weeks after Fancy Bear's first breach of the DNC server.  This would have been quite recent news at the time.*  At this time neither Papadopoulos nor any other member of the Trump campaign (with the possible exception of Manafort) knew about the DNC or Podesta hacks.  They did know about the deleted e-mails from Hillary's server. Since Mifsud did not specify which e-mails, it seems most likely that Papadopoulos assumed that he was referring to the deleted e-mails and not the suspected hack. Indeed, it is not even clear that Mifsud knew the source of the e-mails.  It seems mind-boggling to think that the Russians would have let a foreigner in on such sensitive information.  

Second, this looks very much like an attempt to set up the kind of back channel of communications that so many people suspected. A foreign national with ties to Russian intelligence is reaching out to a low-level campaign staffer operating outside the US with highly sensitive information.  Indeed, Mifsud even offered to be the campaign's liaison to Europe and/or Russia (p. 495).  While it is far from clear what is going on here, it certainly looks like an attempt to set up a back channel of clandestine communication that would be too obscure to attract attention.  Third, it that was what was being attempted, it failed.  And fourth, if this was an attempt that failed, it seems odd that no further attempt was made to set up a back channel.  Yet there is no evidence of any further such attempt.**

Sam Clovis

Interestingly, if this was a failed attempt to set up a back channel of communications, it appears to have failed for two reasons.  One is that Papadopoulos does not appear ever to have informed the campaign of the lead he received.  The other is that the campaign in general, and Paul Manafort in particular, rebuffed all attempts to set up a meeting with Putin.

Famously, Papadopoulos did tell the Australian Ambassador to Britain about this communication.  (Meeting described in tedious detail, with about three paragraphs redacted).  It was this conversation that ultimately led to the investigation.  Papadopoulos also continued to attempt, unsuccessfully, to set up a meeting between Russian leadership and the Trump campaign. He also mentioned the emails to the Greek Foreign Minister who (according to Papadopoulos) seemed strangely unsurprised, as if he already knew (pp. 497-498).  The Committee found no evidence that Papadopoulos ever passed on this information to the campaign (p. 498).

This seems very strange.  It fairly boggles the mind that Papadopoulos would tell two foreign diplomats about the extraordinary tip, yet never pass the news on to his superiors in the campaign.  Yet no such evidence was ever found.  No e-mails or texts ever conveyed this information to the campaign.  Granted, Papadopoulos may have recognized that such sensitive materials should not be committed to writing.  (And yet he blurted them out to two foreign diplomats?).  But no one with the campaign appears to remember such a conversation either.  And yes, granted, campaign members had motives to lie.  But remember the danger of the conspiratorial mindset.  If there is evidence of such communications, that is proof that they took place.  If there is not evidence, that shows how well it was hidden.  That way lies madness.  The fact that nothing -- for better or worse -- ever came of such an imagined communication, is strong reason to believe they never took place.***

Manafort in particular seems to have opposed any meeting between the Campaign and the Russian government.  This appears to be a pattern.  It was Manafort who warned the Trump campaign not to contact Wikileaks directly, but to go through Roger Stone.  It was Manafort who warned Junior and Jared not to expect too much to come of the meeting with Russians.  And now Manafort is working to quash any effort by Papadopoulos to set up a meeting with the Russians.  Given that even as he was doing these things, Manafort was also secretly sending campaign date to a Russian spy, it seems safe to assume that he did not have any legal or moral objections to any of these things.  What is going on here?

I can see two possible explanations.  One is that Manafort was loyal to the campaign, even if he was not loyal to his country, and believed that Russian contacts were best left to a professional, like himself, and that involving amateurs was dangerous.  The other was that he was pursuing his own, self-serving agenda and feared being found out if the campaign opened any other Russia contacts.  I have no idea which is more plausible.

Nothing else in the report seems significant.  After Manafort departed, the campaign seems to have seen Papadopoulos as a dangerous loose cannon and told him not to make public statements without clearing them first.  Pages 509-511 are mostly redacted, but are a rare case in which it is easy to tell what is under the redaction. This section appears to be about the conversation with an FBI informant that was detailed in the Inspector General's Report.  Finally, the section on Papadopoulos (pp. 524-526) addresses counter-intelligence concerns about his activities.  The Committee clearly has such concerns.  However, those concerns are redacted, except for one paragraph addressing Papadopoulos' lies to the FBI and one that Mifsud departed the US on February 11, 2017 and has not returned.

NEXT:  Carter Page

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*Recall also that Russia's civilian intelligence service, a/k/a Cozy Bear, had broken into the DNC server months earlier, but never used the information to sway the campaign.

**Except, of course, for Paul Manafort secretly channeling polling data and perhaps other information to a Russian spy, and the campaign encouraging Roger Stone to pass on information about Wikileaks.

***At one point Papadopoulos apparently told the FBI that he told Clovis about the e-mails and Clovis was "upset."   However, he also said he was not sure the memory was accurate.  (P. 486, footnote 3159.  Main text giving context to the footnote is redacted).