George Papadopoulos
has been getting a lot of attention since it was revealed he was under indictment for lying to the FBI about Trump campaign contacts with Russia — and has been cooperating for some time now. (Video at link). The reaction of people who have looked at his background with regard to how he became a Foreign Policy advisor to the Trump campaign has basically been WTF??? Per Josh Marshall,
...This is a thirty year old guy who as best I can tell never once held what could properly be called a job in foreign policy work by really any definition. He was nonetheless for a time one of five official foreign policy advisors for the man who was already the de facto nominee of the GOP (already by March that fact was pretty clear, though not final). On taking the assignment he is, according to the plea agreement, told that a rapprochement with Russia is a top policy priority of candidate Trump. He immediately begins making contacts with people tied to the Russian government in a way that is at a minimum highly irregular and embarrassing.
emphasis added
Marshall quotes Trump campaign advisor Michael Caputo in a further look at Papadopoulos:
“He was invited in because at the time the campaign was really reeling from criticism that it had no foreign policy or other advisers,” Caputo said during an interview with Katy Tur. “Donald Trump prided himself on running a lean and mean campaign. That group was slap dash put together in a way another campaign wouldn’t do it. Papadopoulos had no business being there.”
This is all 100%, unquestionably true. As I wrote yesterday, you can’t read the emails or anything else about Papadopoulos without concluding he is basically a clown who had zero business having any advisory role with any campaign. Indeed, the team clearly was quickly tossed together to quiet a damaging storyline that Trump had no one advising him on anything having to do with foreign policy and was clearly entirely ignorant on the subject himself.
emphasis added
Papadopoulos — How He Got Reeled In by Russia
Martin Longman writing at Washington Monthly has an account of how Papadopoulos became entangled in what looks like a classic Russian intelligence effort to make him an unwitting recruit. It’s a cautionary tale showing the traps for the inexperienced, the unwary, the greedy, and the just plain stupid that are being employed against targets of interest.
Papadopoulos had been living in London, but met a Professor Mifsud in Rome.
Prof. Mifsud is listed as the director of international strategic development at the London Centre of International Law Practice, but foreign policy experts in the United Kingdom seem to have never heard of the organization. Nor have they heard of the “now-defunct London Academy of Diplomacy, where Mifsud is said to have served as ‘honorary director’ before it closed.”
In fact, while it has been widely reported that Mifsud is a professor at the University of Stirling in Scotland and the school has confirmed that they hired him in May, no one seems to have seen him there. He has no office. He has taught no classes.
Mifsud’s interest in Papadopoulos bloomed when he found he was an advisor to the Trump campaign. A relationship developed, including an introduction to a woman Mifsud identified as Vladimir Putin’s niece — whom Papadopoulos believed would give him “a very direct line to the Russian president”.
As it happens, she was actually no relation at all — but Papadopoulos was certainly a direct line back to Trump. Mifsud introduced him to another connection:
...This person worked at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). They would become his most important contact as he tried to arrange some kind of summit between Putin and Trump.
Longman has a bit more on what was going on, and has this conclusion about Mifsud’s role:
It’s pretty clear, I think, at this point, that Professor Mifsud is a Russian intelligence officer. George Papadopoulos had been unwittingly recruited. There are pictures of Mifsud with the Russian ambassador to the United Kingdom, and Papadopolous was repeatedly promised a meeting with the ambassador. However, according to the court documents, this meeting never took place. It would be wrong to say that Papadopolous was strung along, however. If he had succeeded in convincing the Trump campaign to authorize a Russian trip, one might very well have taken place. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was willing to accept a Trump visit and they were actively solicitous of low-level “off the record” meetings, even inviting Papadopoulos to a meeting at their Moscow headquarters. In fact, on July 14th, Papodopolous wrote to the MFA officer, explaining that an August or September off the record meeting in London had been approved, and claiming that Trump’s “national chairman” would attend and expect to see an approved Putin official.
Read the whole thing — this is just a bare outline of what Longman has pieced together.
This is classic spy craft. Identify people who may have access to certain information and/or individuals of interest, approach them in a seemingly innocent context, establish a relationship with them, gain their trust — and exploit them. It’s a game that can be played both ways of course — but that requires competence on both sides.
Competence is not a hallmark of the Trumpocracy, aside from grifting. Whether or not active collusion on the part of the Trump campaign can be proven, it would seem to be pretty clear that Russia was playing them — and they wanted to be played.
The spy novel genre usually comes across as a chess match, in which one side tries to outwit and stay one step ahead of the other, and both sides are evenly matched. Not this crew. Tom Sullivan thinks it’s a potential future blockbuster though — if we survive.
If you want more background on what Russian efforts against the U.S. and Trump in particular may amount to, take a look at a post from a few months back: Expert Opinion — John Le Carré on Trump and Russia “I think they have him by the short hairs”