A former campaign aide to Donald Trump who sought to secure a meeting between the future US president and Vladimir Putin has pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents working for special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.
George Papadopoulos's plea was unsealed on Monday – the same day Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and a business associate, Rick Gates, were charged with money laundering, tax evasion, fraud and failing to register as agents of foreign interests.
Papadopoulos is the first person to face criminal charges that cite interactions between Trump campaign associates and people claiming to be Russian intermediaries during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The Trump aide was told in April 2016 by an unnamed "professor" that Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails". WikiLeaks released a database of thousands of Clinton's emails in March that year, obtained through a freedom of information request. It released further emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee in July and from the Clinton aide John Podesta's Gmail account in October. It is unclear if these are the emails the professor was referring to.
Papadopoulos pleaded guilty on 5 October to one count of lying to FBI agents about the timing and nature of his interactions with "foreign nationals" who he thought had close connections to senior Russian government officials.
The document released by Mueller's team also shows that unnamed campaign officials told Papadopoulos "great work" when he said he was trying to arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin and encouraged him to make a trip to meet Russian officials in lieu of Trump himself.
Papadopoulos was a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, which he joined in March 2016 after serving as an adviser to Ben Carson. The 30-year-old is a graduate of DePaul University in Chicago and was one of five foreign policy advisers announced by Trump in a March interview with the Washington Post at which he referred to Papadopoulos as an "excellent guy". A second of the five, Carter Page, has also been under investigation for his ties to Russia.
Trump aides have said Papadopoulos played a limited role in the campaign and had no access to Trump. At a White House briefing on Monday, the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, even dismissed Trump's praise for the foreign policy adviser.
Around the time Papadopoulos's guilty plea became public, Trump tweeted to renew his claims that there had been no collusion between his campaign and Russian attempts to sway the election and attempt to shift the spotlight to his former rival Hillary Clinton.
Papadopoulos has agreed to provide information in the criminal investigation, according to the indictment unveiled on Monday. And he admitted to making false statements to the FBI in its investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.
Under the terms of the deal with Mueller, the special counsel, Papadopoulos revealed new details of his own involvement in attempts to forge connections between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
A "statement of the offense" document released by the special counsel's office – which Papadopoulos agrees is accurate as part of his guilty plea – states that "on or about March 31, 2016", Papadopoulos attended a national security meeting with Trump and other advisers, at which Papadopoulos stated that he "could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President Putin".
Papadopoulos told investigators as part of the plea that he befriended an unnamed London-based professor he believed had "substantial connections" to Russian government officials after he became an adviser to the campaign.
Papadopoulos had initially told investigators that he met the professor before joining the Trump campaign – one of the lies he pleaded guilty to telling investigators.
The professor was not named in court documents but is described as a person who claimed to have close connections to the Kremlin and who told Papadopoulos that Russia had "dirt" on Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails".
The court records state that the professor claimed to have met with officials in Moscow immediately before telling Papadopoulos about the emails.
The professor also introduced the Trump adviser to an unnamed female Russian national who Papadopoulos falsely believed was Putin's niece.
"He sought to use her Russian connections over a period of months in an effort to arrange a meeting between the campaign and Russian government officials," according to the indictment.
Papadopoulos was living in London when he learned – in March 2016 – that he would be joining the Trump campaign as an adviser. His principal aim in that role, he understood, was to improve US-Russia relations.
Papadopoulos struck the plea bargain to avoid a potential five-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $250,000. The deal outlined to him suggests that he would be more likely to get a prison sentence of between zero and six months and a fine ranging from $500 to $9,500, taking into account his admission of guilt and his previously clean criminal record.
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