It was the "coffee boy"

If [George] Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and is now a cooperating witness, was the improbable match that set off a blaze that has consumed the first year of the Trump administration, his saga is also a tale of the Trump campaign in miniature. He was brash, boastful and underqualified, yet he exceeded expectations. And, like the campaign itself, he proved to be a tantalizing target for a Russian influence operation.

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The information that Mr. Papadopoulos gave to the Australians answers one of the lingering mysteries of the past year: What so alarmed American officials to provoke the F.B.I. to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign months before the presidential election?

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It was not, as Mr. Trump and other politicians have alleged, a dossier compiled by a former British spy hired by a rival campaign. Instead, it was firsthand information from one of America’s closest intelligence allies.

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Exactly how much Mr. Papadopoulos said [during a night of heavy drinking] at the Kensington Wine Rooms with the Australian, Alexander Downer, is unclear. But two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians’ role.

  NYT

So all that GOP/Trumpette squealing about "the dossier is fake! the dossier was paid for by Clinton!" is just more distraction and hopeful muddying of the waters in an attmpt to discredit Mueller's investigation. The Steel dossier is only one bit of information that was brought into the mix after the investigation had already begun.

I assume Mr. Downer has long since been interviewed by Mueller, and I suppose the worthless Congressional committees investigating the deal will be asking to see him now.

F.B.I. officials disagreed in 2016 about how aggressively and publicly to pursue the Russia inquiry before the election. But there was little debate about what seemed to be afoot.

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Interviews and previously undisclosed documents show that Mr. Papadopoulos played a critical role in this drama and reveal a Russian operation that was more aggressive and widespread than previously known.

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Mr. Papadopoulos, then an ambitious 28-year-old from Chicago, was working as an energy consultant in London when the Trump campaign, desperate to create a foreign policy team, named him as an adviser in early March 2016. His political experience was limited to two months on Ben Carson’s presidential campaign before it collapsed.

The company you keep, right? I don't think it was Carson who foisted Papadopoulos off on the Trump campaign. At any rate, it was Sam Clovis who actually brought him on board. (Clovis also brought on Carter Page. I imagine Clovis, who had to withdraw as the nominee for heading the Dept. of Agriculture earlier this year, is persona non grata in Trump circles these days.)

[D]uring his job interview with Sam Clovis, a top early campaign aide, he saw an opening. He was told that improving relations with Russia was one of Mr. Trump’s top foreign policy goals, according to court papers, an account Mr. Clovis has denied.

Clovis was interviewed by Mueller's team and testified before the grand jury at the end of October. Is he still denying that assertion? Do they make orange jumpsuits that large?

In a May 4, 2016, interview with The Times of London, Mr. Papadopoulos called on Prime Minister David Cameron to apologize to Mr. Trump for criticizing his remarks on Muslims as “stupid” and divisive. “Say sorry to Trump or risk special relationship, Cameron told,” the headline read. Mr. Clovis, the national campaign co-chairman, severely reprimanded Mr. Papadopoulos for failing to clear his explosive comments with the campaign in advance.

From then on, Mr. Papadopoulos was more careful with the press — though he never regained the full trust of Mr. Clovis or several other campaign officials.

If this comes up in trial, I assume the Trump lawyers will be painting Papadopoulos as a loose cannon who went off without permission in whatever attempts he made to work with the Russians.

In late April, at a London hotel, [Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor who had valuable contacts with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs] told Mr. Papadopoulos that he had just learned from high-level Russian officials in Moscow that the Russians had “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” according to court documents. Although Russian hackers had been mining data from the Democratic National Committee’s computers for months, that information was not yet public. Even the committee itself did not know.

Whether Mr. Papadopoulos shared that information with anyone else in the campaign is one of many unanswered questions. He was mostly in contact with the campaign over emails. The day after Mr. Mifsud’s revelation about the hacked emails, he told [Trump aide Stephen] Miller in an email only that he had “interesting messages coming in from Moscow” about a possible trip. The emails obtained by The Times show no evidence that Mr. Papadopoulos discussed the stolen messages with the campaign.

And yet, he told an Australian diplomat? Seems a little unlikely.

It is also not clear why, after getting the information in May, the Australian government waited two months to pass it to the F.B.I. In a statement, the Australian Embassy in Washington declined to provide details about the meeting or confirm that it occurred.

It isn't unreasonable to think that the Australian diplomat passed the information to his counterpart -  an American diplomat - not the FBI. And now we're getting into some deep water where, if true, the question would have to be: why didn't the American diplomat immediately pass the information to the FBI? Who would an American diplomat report to? State, right? And who was Secretary of State at the time? John Kerry. Did they huddle with Clinton about the information? (Remember that Clinton accused Trump of being a Russian puppet during the debates.)

I'm off on a slight speculating tangent here, but I don't think it sounds unreasonable. In fact, I think it sounds more reasonable than that the Australian diplomat had the information and held it for two months and then told it to the FBI. I don't think that's how it would work. He wouldn't go directly to the FBI.  He's in the diplomatic system.  That's where he'd go.

Once the information Mr. Papadopoulos had disclosed to the Australian diplomat reached the F.B.I., the bureau opened an investigation that became one of its most closely guarded secrets.

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Issuing subpoenas or questioning people, for example, could cause the investigation to burst into public view in the final months of a presidential campaign.

It could also tip off the Russian government, which might try to cover its tracks.

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Senior agents did not discuss it at the daily morning briefing, a classified setting where officials normally speak freely about highly sensitive operations.

Besides the information from the Australians, the investigation was also propelled by intelligence from other friendly governments, including the British and Dutch.

Curiouser and curiouser. What did those countries' spies come up with?

There's some really strange shit going on. This is going to be the mother of all stories when it's finished.

UPDATE 1/2/18:

The ambassador to the United States Joe Hockey personally steered Australia's dealings with the FBI on explosive revelations of Russian hacking during last year's presidential campaign in a sign of how politically sensitive the Australian government regarded the bombshell discovery, Fairfax Media understands.

It is also understood there is now annoyance and frustration in Canberra that the High Commissioner to Britain Alexander Downer has been outed through leaks by US officials as the source of information that played a role in sparking an FBI probe into the Trump campaign's dealings with Moscow.

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Mr Downer conveyed the conversation to Canberra via an official cable, though apparently not immediately – perhaps because he did not take the 28-year-old adviser's claims altogether seriously until the hacked emails were released by Wikileaks in late July.

  Sydney Morning Herald

I suppose that is an alternate explanation to mine. But mine makes more sense. [Laughing emoticon]

Mr Hockey is believed to have been involved in discussions with the FBI, indicating the Australian government was keenly alive to its political sensitivity.

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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is planning a trip to the United States in February, Fairfax Media understands. Mr Turnbull said on Monday he was "not at all" worried that Australia's role in sparking the investigation that has become a consuming headache for Mr Trump would damage his relationship with the President. Beyond that he refused to comment.

UPDATE 1/5/18:

Along with the Aussies and the Brits, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, France and Estonia also provided intelligence to the Top Secret investigation.

  Chicago Sun Times