Details here. Still somewhat unclear, as the indictment doesn’t describe the reaction of the Trump people to all these meetings Papadopolous was trying to set up. (None of them seem to have actually come off.)
Trump is grossly incompetent in all sorts of ways. Not exactly a big revelation there. Anyone who takes Trump being grossly incompetent as a revelation from the Manafort indictment has clearly not been following politics in the last couple of years.
It’s the attempt, not the success that counts.
It’s hard to keep this all straight without spending lots of time on it. But didn’t Kushner’s infamous meeting with Russian agents happen after the stuff described in this plea?
From Papadopolous’ perspective, yes. (He’s not being charged with trying to set anything up anyway - he’s charged with lying about it.) But if the question is about to what extent other Trump people were complicit in it, then the issue is what their reaction was.
I believe so. But based on both this document and the reports about that meeting, it appears that that was not connected to Papadopolous’ efforts.
Doesn’t look that way to me. Much depends on what Papadopolous told people about what he had heard. Based on the indictment, seems likely that folks who attended the later Russia meeting knew what had been dangled for Papadopolous.
Podesta emails were hacked in March 19th (Wiki). Papadopoulous met with an unnamed London professor who, March 21st, introduced him to an “unnamed Russian” who was described as being a relative of Putin’s. Ten days later, he sat in a meeting wtih Trump and said he had connections with Putin where he could use secure meeting with Trump.
The professor said, during the meeting, “They have dirt on her. Thousands of documents.” (her=HRC)
The big secret meeting occurred in June.
Well, sure, when you say it like that it sounds bad…
Interesting bit in the Papadopolous indictment, the Russians offered stolen emails to the campaign in March 2016, long before wikileaks got them. The Trump campaign knew the Russians stole them. They knew the Russians had them. They knew all this before the DNC knew, before Crowdstrike knew, before anyone knew. When they came out on wikileaks, they knew where they were from. And they have lied about it for a year and a half. “It coulda been anybody.” Not only did they know, they knew while the theft was ongoing.
Oh and Papadopolous has obviously flipped.
“Through his false statements and omissions, defendant PAPADOPOULOS impeded the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the Campaign and the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.”
He’s charged with impeding the ongoing investigation into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.
What’s your point?
That they are specifically stating that his lies were to impede the investigation of others in the campaign. He is now cooperating. No more lies. More charges are coming.
I believe your first sentence is incorrect. And even if it weren’t, the rest is speculation.
He has a plea deal. That’s not speculation. You reckon the FBI gave him a plea deal because he doesn’t have anyone else to offer? Fine, that’s speculation in the strictest sense of the word. I’m speculating his plea involves giving additional information and that will come to light on a day that I’m speculating that the sun will rise.
Over at TPM, Josh Marshall argues that Mueller timed the release of the Papadopolous plea to “sucker punch” the White House. He thinks Mueller let the expected Manafort news out, got the expected response, then brought the real heat with the Papadopolous reveal.
(The “He pled guilty I see…” is in the original. I assume “He pled guilty” was meant to be edited out since the sentence reads fine without it. Or maybe he just dropped a period after "He pled guilty).)
My only regret is that Okra didn’t live long enough to see this.
He’s watching over us from above.
“ooooooh… nothiiiiing buurrrrrger!” <rattles chains>
Wait. He got banned? I have a Trump bet with him.
Didn’t he make a bet with someone here over whether there’d be indictments or not over this investigation? I seem to recall Bricker holding the money in escrow.
I’m sure he can still read this and I hope he’s just itching like hell to respond here.
Hi okra!
Fascinating details comingout about Papadopoulos;
“It has been approved by our side”. In other words, others knew about the Trump campaign working closely with the Russians. And they’ve been lying about it since. At it certainly appears that they KNEW THIS WAS WRONG, and were trying to ensure that it was kept under the radar: