US

Chuck Grassley Pressed Mueller Over ‘Selective Use’ Of Emails In Trump Adviser’s Court Filings

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
Font Size:
  • Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley claimed that special counsel Robert Mueller quoted selectively from Trump campaign emails in court filings in the case against George Papadopoulos.
  • In a “statement of offense” in the Papadopoulos case, Mueller suggested the Trump campaign wanted a “low-level” campaign staffer to meet with Russian government officials.
  • Grassley claims other campaign emails provide additional context showing that the Trump team wanted a campaign aide merely to reject offers to meet with Russians.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley pressed special counsel Robert Mueller regarding the “selective use” of emails in court filings in the case against former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos.

In a letter sent Friday to Attorney General William Barr, Grassley referred to a letter he sent Mueller on Nov. 16, 2017, two weeks after prosecutors revealed that Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Grassley said that prosecutors’ “statement of offense” against Papadopoulos quoted selectively from campaign emails in a way that suggested the Trump campaign wanted a low-level staffer to meet with Russians.

“In addition, on November 16, 2017, the Committee wrote to Special Counsel Mueller regarding the selective use of emails in the George Papadopoulos Statement of Offense,” reads the letter from Grassley, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee when he sent the missive to Mueller.

The Iowa Republican said other campaign emails showed that the Trump team merely wanted a campaign aide to reject offers to meet with Russia.

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 21: Special counsel Robert Mueller (L) arrives at the U.S. Capitol for closed meeting with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee June 21, 2017 in Washington, DC. The committee meets with Mueller to discuss the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Special counsel Robert Mueller (L) arrives at the U.S. Capitol for closed meeting with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee June 21, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

“As one example, in the absence of additional context, news outlets have seized on the fragment cited in the Statement’s footnote to suggest that a Trump ‘Campaign official suggested ‘low level’ staff should go to Russia,'” Grassley wrote in his letter Friday, citing a CNN article that interpreted the Papadopoulos filing as possible evidence that President Donald Trump’s campaign encouraged staffers to meet with Russians.

The statement of offense quoted from a May 21, 2016 email that Papadopoulos sent to Trump campaign official Sam Clovis with the subject line “Request from Russia to meet Mr. Trump.”

“Russia has been eager to meet Mr. Trump for quite sometime and have been reaching out to me to discuss,” wrote Papadopoulos.

According to Mueller’s filing, Clovis forwarded the email to another campaign official, writing: “Let[‘]s discuss. We need someone to communicate that [Trump] is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.” (RELATED: A London Meeting Before The Election Aroused George Papadopoulos’s Suspicions)

“In full context, the emails in question actually show that the Trump Campaign wanted someone ‘low level’ to decline these types of invitations,” Grassley wrote.

Papadopoulos, who was sentenced to 14 days in jail on Sept. 7, 2018 for making false statements to the FBI, did contact his Trump campaign bosses about potential meetings with Russians. He promoted the idea after meeting Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor who claimed to have links to the Russian government.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in the special counsel’s case on Oct. 5, 2017 to lying to the FBI months earlier about his interactions with Mifsud. Prosecutors said that Papadopoulos lied when he claimed to have met Mifsud before joining the Trump campaign in March 2016.

Papadopoulos did tell the FBI that Mifsud claimed during a meeting in London in April 2016 that he had learned that Russia had “thousands” of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails.

The FBI would open its counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign based on a tip about Papadopoulos that had been provided by the Australian government. Alexander Downer, the top Australian diplomat to the U.K., claimed that Papadopoulos told him during a meeting in London on May 10, 2016 that Russia had information that could harm Clinton’s campaign.

Papadopoulos’ light sentence in the Mueller probe has been widely interpreted as a clue that prosecutors do not believe he colluded with Russia or handled any of Clinton’s emails.

Follow Chuck on Twitter

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel