Note to the Sentencing Judge: When you gave George Papadopolous a reduced amount of jail time, because he “deserved credit for trying to cooperate and for his apparent contrition,” I think you might have been mistaken. Well, first, we are talking about George Papadopolous, “an energy and oil consultant, excellent guy,” according to candidate Donald J Trump, describing him and Carter Page as two of his top foreign policy advisors. The man who brought up arranging a Trump/Putin meeting at the famous pictured meeting. The man who met with Professor Joseph Mifsud in London, who was known to have close Kremlin ties and who brought along a woman named Olga Polonskaya, whom Mifsud claimed was Putin's niece and at which meeting he said he had "dirt on Hillary Clinton." The man who triggered the whole initial Russia probe by drunkenly blabbing his relationship to the Trump campaign and its contact with the Russian government feeding them “dirt on Hillary Clinton” to a member of the Australian diplomat to the United Kingdom, Alexander Downer. Yeah that guy, about whom Trump now says, “I didn’t even know the guy.”
Judge Randolph Moss did believe he deserved more than probation because he had impeded an investigation of “grave national importance.” Prosecutors had more to say.
Prosecutors argued that Mr. Papadopoulos’s repeated lies during a January 2017 interview with investigators hampered the Russia investigation at a critical moment. In part because Mr. Papadopoulos misled the authorities, prosecutors said in court papers, they failed to arrest a London-based professor — suspected of being a Russian operative — before he left the United States in February 2017, never to return.
But, George was sorry.
“I wanted to distance myself as much as possible — and Trump himself and the campaign — from what was probably an illegal action or dangerous information,” he said. He told the judge that he was blinded by personal ambition and the thrill of being part of Mr. Trump’s electoral victory. Just before his F.B.I. interview, he had attended an inauguration event; just after, he promoted his campaign work as a reason he should be hired by the Energy Department.
“I was surrounded by important people,” he told the judge. “I was young and ambitious and excited.”
Well, that’s touching. But now, he is making the rounds of right wing talk, and declaring he and the campaign, for the guy who didn’t even know him, were the victims of the Deep State, but not just in the US, mind you. The tentacles of the conspiracy reach around the globe. And, he, George Papadopolous, former Coffee Boy, knows it all!
Oh, George, you’re talking about making sense?