George Papadopoulos To Face Congress Later This Month
Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos will appear before Congress for closed-door testimony later this month, his wife confirmed to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Papadopoulos will appear before members of the House Judiciary and House Oversight & Government Reform Committees on Oct. 25. And according to CNN, Papadopoulos is also in discussions to meet with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.
Unlike most witnesses in the numerous congressional investigations into Russian meddling, Papadopoulos has asked lawmakers to invite him to provide testimony. He has said he wants to discuss what he says were a series of suspicious contacts he had with foreign nationals while he worked on the Trump campaign.
Papadopoulos has suggested that Western spy agencies illegally targeted him. At least one Western intelligence asset approached the former Trump aide. An FBI informant named Stefan Halper contacted Papadopoulos in September 2016 with an offer to fly him to London to discuss writing a report on Mediterranean energy issues. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: A London Meeting Before The Election Aroused George Papadopouloss Suspicions)
Papadopoulos accepted the offer and met with Halper in London. Unbeknownst to Papadopoulos, Halper had already struck up a relationship with Carter Page, another Trump campaign aide.
Papadopoulos has been identified as the catalyst for the FBIs collusion probe, which formally began on July 31, 2016. Despite the early focus on the Trump aide, he appears not to be the key to collusion that the FBI initially suspected.
Papadopoulos has been sentenced to 14 days in jail in the government investigation, which is being led by special counsel Robert Mueller. But the charges against him stemmed from false statements he made to the FBI rather than conspiracy with Russians during the campaign.
He pleaded guilty on Oct. 5, 2017, to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor who told Papadopoulos during a meeting in London in April 2016 that Russians possessed “thousands” of Hillary Clinton emails.
Two weeks after that meeting, Papadopoulos met in London with Alexander Downer, the top Australian diplomat to the U.K.
The conversation would later lead the FBI to open its investigation of the Trump campaign. Downer told others in the Australian government that Papadopoulos mentioned that Russia had derogatory information on Clinton.
Papadopoulos has speculated that the activities of Mifsud, Downer and Halper were all part of the same operation. He has also claimed that two officials at the U.S. embassy in London approached him under suspicious circumstances at around the same time as his meetings with Mifsud and Downer.
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