…….
George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty on October 5 to making “a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and representation” to the FBI in January of this year regarding the “timing, extent, and nature of his relationship and interactions with certain foreign nationals whom he understood to have close connections with senior Russian government officials.”
Among these was a certain unnamed “Professor” based in London who, Papadopoulos understood, had serious connections with members of Vladimir Putin’s government. In a separate affidavit in support of the criminal complaint, FBI Special Agent Robert M. Gibbs further described the Professor as a “citizen of a country in the Mediterranean and an associate of several Russian nationals.”
One of the latter, according to Gibbs, the Professor even introduced to Papadopoulos as a “niece” of Putin. (She isn’t related to the Russian president at all, according to a footnote in the complaint.)
The affidavit further states that the supposed contact of this Mediterranean academic was the Russian ambassador to Britain, who, as Papadopoulos emailed other campaign officials, “also acts as the Deputy Foreign Minister.” The ambassador, unnamed in the complaint, is Alexander Yakovenko, who is indeed an extremely influential diplomat because the rezidentura, or foreign spy station, run out of the London Embassy is one of the most important for Moscow and has been ever since the Cold War.
Gibbs is quite right to stress in his affidavit that using “nongovernmental intermediaries,” such as academics and think tankers, is one way Russian intelligence advances the Kremlin’s interests overseas. And there’s recent precedence for this in London, as I’ve documented elsewhere.
The complaint contains a convenient timeline of the Professor’s interaction with Papadopoulos. They first met when the latter was traveling in Italy in mid-March 2016, not long after he assumed his role as foreign policy adviser to the campaign, according to the US government complaint.
The Professor was initially dismissive of the American until Papadopoulos brandished his campaign credentials. The feeling was mutual because Papadopoulos believed that developing a relationship with the Professor would boost his relevance within the campaign, given that a stated foreign policy objective of candidate Trump was improving US-Russian relations.
The two discussed the prospect of arranging a meeting between the Trump campaign and the Russian leadership, a contingency first indulged by Papadopoulos’ “Campaign Supervisor,” whose identity in the complaint is not disclosed.
The Professor then introduced Papadopoulos to another unnamed party in Moscow, cited in the complaint as someone well connected to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Shortly thereafter, Papadopoulos emailed a senior policy adviser in the campaign, saying, “The Russian government has an open invitation by Putin for Mr. Trump to meet him when he is ready.” That hypothetical encounter was to take place in London, a “neutral” city, where the Russian embassy was “very much aware” of it, according to Gibbs’ affidavit.
…….
But “[o]n or about” April 26, 2016, Papadopoulous again met with the Professor in a London hotel. The complaint reads that the Professor told him he had “just returned from a trip to Moscow where he had met with high-level Russian government officials” where he learned that the Russians “have dirt” on Hillary Clinton; “the Russians had emails of Clinton” — “they have thousands of emails.”
This date is important because The Washington Post only first reported on June 14, 2016, that the hackers working for the Kremlin had penetrated the servers of the Democratic National Committee. And while this correspondence, first published by WikiLeaks in late July, days before the Democratic National Convention, was distinct from Clinton’s personal emails and those she turned over to the FBI as part of the investigation into her use of a personal server to conduct government business while she was secretary of state, it nonetheless caused a scandal within the Democratic Party.
…….
- Discussion
-
More good stuff from our friend @michaeldweiss https://t.co/w1aHi9STpO
— John Schindler (@20committee) October 30, 2017
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.