Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos says that, with his attorneys’ permission, he is willing to testify before Congress about a series of mysterious contacts he had during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Papadopoulos sent a tweet Wednesday to the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence saying that he is willing to discuss his contacts with Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer and FBI informant Stefan Halper.
Hons: @SenatorBurr and @MarkWarner if my lawyers are fine with me testifying, I am more than happy to discuss my suspicious encounters with Alexander Downer; US officials who were reaching out to me around that time, Stefan Halper, “Putin’s niece” and of course Joseph Mifsud.
— George Papadopoulos (@GeorgePapa19) September 12, 2018
Mifsud, Downer and Halper all met with Papadopoulos in London at various points during the campaign.
Mifsud told Papadopoulos in April 2016 that he had learned that Russian operatives had obtained “dirt” on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands” of her emails. Papadopoulos told the FBI during a Jan. 27, 2017 interview about Mifsud’s remark. But he later admitting lying about the extent and timing of his contacts with Mifsud. The former Trump aide was sentenced to 14 days in jail on Sept. 7.
Papadopoulos met with Downer at a London bar two weeks after his monumental encounter with Mifsud. An associate of Downer’s contacted Papadopoulos to arrange the meeting.
Downer has said in a media interview that Papadopoulos claimed during their encounter that Russia had information that could be damaging to Clinton. Details of the meeting ended up in the hands of the FBI, which opened a counterintelligence investigation into possible collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government.
Halper, a former University of Cambridge professor, served as an FBI informant during the campaign. He reached out to Papadopoulos on Sept. 2, 2016, and the pair met in London later that month. Halper approached Papadopoulos under the guise of writing an academic paper on Mediterranean energy issues. (RELATED: A London Meeting Before The Election Aroused Papadopoulos’s Suspicions)
Papadopoulos says that during one of their conversations, Halper asked him whether he was involved in the hacking of Democrats’ emails.
Halper, who has close ties to the CIA and MI6, also made contact with Carter Page, the former Trump campaign adviser who was targeted with four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants.
In media interviews since being sentenced to jail, the 31-year-old Papadopoulos has denied taking part in collusion with Russia or of seeing, handling or disseminating the emails that Mifsud mentioned.
Papadopoulos has also questioned whether Downer, like Halper, was tasked with contacting him to discuss Clinton dirt.
“Some organization or entity sent him to meet me,” Papadopoulos asserted on Twitter Tuesday.
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