Former-Trump campaign aide seeks leniency in Russia probe sentencing

Bloomberg

George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and one of the first people charged in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, doesn’t deserve to go to jail, his lawyers said.
Defense lawyers told the judge who will sentence Papadopoulos that “his motives for lying to the FBI were wrong-headed indeed but far from the sinister spin the government suggests.”
Papadopoulos pleaded guilty last year to lying to federal agents about his contacts with a UK college professor who claimed to have ties to Russians purportedly in possession of emails belonging to Hillary Clinton.
“Caught off guard by an impromptu interrogation, Mr. Papadopoulos misled investigators to save his professional aspirations and preserve a perhaps misguided loyalty to his master,” the lawyers said in a Washington federal court filing. They asked the judge, Randolph Moss, to sentence him to probation that would end immediately.
The lawyers cited their client’s cooperation with federal investigators as well as his 13 months of supervision by the authorities.
Mueller disclosed the plea on the same day he announced the indictments of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his top deputy Rick Gates on charges of money laundering and illegally lobbying American officials on behalf of the Ukrainian government. Manafort was convicted of separate charges on August 21. Gates pleaded guilty and testified against him. Papadopoulos, then 30, had agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Under federal sentencing guidelines, he could avoid prison altogether or receive a term of as long as six months when he’s sentenced on September 7.
Papadopoulos used his contacts with the professor, who the lawyers identified in court papers as Joseph Mifsud, to elevate his status within the Trump campaign and lobby for a meeting between Trump and Russian officials.
His lies about the timing of his meeting with the professor—falsely stating it was before Papadopoulos had joined the campaign—hindered investigators’ ability to “effectively question” or detain the professor when he was in Washington in February 2017, prosecutors said in a court filing.
During a night of heavy drinking in a London bar in May 2016, Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat that Russia had dirt on Clinton, according to the New York Times. The Australians passed the information to the FBI, which apparently sparked the agency’s probe of Trump’s contacts with Russia.