Friday, November 17, 2017

But he was just the "coffee boy"

George Papadopoulos claimed last year [to two Greek journalists] that Donald Trump telephoned him to discuss his new position as a foreign policy adviser to his presidential campaign and that the two had at least one personal introductory meeting that the White House has not acknowledged.

[...]

One person close to Papadopoulos told POLITICO that his claims about personal interactions with Trump were untrue, but declined to elaborate. The two Greek journalists were skeptical as well, saying Papadopoulos was prone to self-promotional exaggeration. “Everyone knows I helped him [get] elected, now I want to help him with the presidency,” Papadopoulos said in one text message published by the newspaper.

But they also reported that Papadopolous reveled in the benefits of his newfound fame — at least in Greece — as an adviser to a major party nominee for the U.S. presidency. “He had acquired a new status in Athens,” wrote the newspaper, Kathimerini, which noted that Papadopoulos had been “bestowed with awards, wined and dined by prominent Athenians and even appointed to the judging committee of a beauty pageant on a Greek island.”

  Politico
A prime target for Russian and FBI interest.
Among Papadopoulos’s claims to a Kathimerini reporter and editor was that Trump called him personally in March 2016 after he had been tapped for Trump’s foreign policy advisory team.

During an “informal” five-minute phone conversation, Trump made small talk and invited the young campaign aide to travel from his Chicago home to Washington to attend his March 21 campaign event at Trump’s still-unfinished Pennsylvania Avenue hotel several days later, said Marianna Kakaounaki, an investigative reporter for the well-regarded Greek language daily.

[...]

Papadopoulos wasn’t just one of the five [campaign foreign policy advisers] named by Trump, he was also the only one singled out with a personal endorsement.

“He's an energy and oil consultant,” Trump told the editorial board. “Excellent guy.”

From that day on, the two Kathimerini journalists would write in several articles, Papadopoulos exploited Trump’s personal endorsement, and his unpaid position on the National Security Advisory Committee, as much as possible.

[...]

Because some of their articles were for the Greek-language edition of the paper, they never reached a wider audience. And the journalists never published some key details of what he told them about his role on Trump’s campaign and presidential transition team.
So has Mueller's team talked with the reporters yet?

What The Most Notable Loser said can't be proven, but whether he phoned Papadopoulos can be.
Two weeks before the election, Papadopoulos informed the journalists that he had “left the campaign” because he had “done his piece.” A week later, however, he said he had come back to the campaign, but that he had to follow the campaign directive that no one was to talk about anything but the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.
That seems weird.
Earlier this year, as Trump prepared for his inauguration, Papadopoulos boasted to the reporters that he had Trump's ear, was on the transition team and that Trump had written him a "blank check" for whatever position in the administration he wanted.
Maybe not.
After serving the next eight years in the Trump administration, he said, he planned to move to Greece to work on energy issues of mutual interest to the U.S. and Greece.
His next eight years might instead be served in prison or maybe just under house arrest since he turned FBI informant.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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