Australian officials denied yesterday that one of their diplomats conspired against Donald Trump’s presidential campaign during the 2016 election. Officials sent the denial to Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham regarding a letter Graham sent on Wednesday to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
“In your letter, you made mention of the role of an Australian diplomat,” Joe Hockey, the Australian ambassador to the United States, wrote in an Oct. 2 letter to Graham. “We reject your characterization of his role.”
The envoy issued the terse denial after the South Carolina Republican urged Australia to cooperate with Attorney General William Barr’s inquiry into the origins of the investigation that haunted the first two years of Trump’s presidency. Graham’s request, along with Barr’s investigation, has raised hopes among Trump’s allies that it will prove to have been the product of foreign governments interfering in the U.S. election to damage Trump.
“What Attorney General Barr is up to abroad is to get to the bottom of how the Obama administration coerced, and colluded, with foreign governments to spy on a political rival,” former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos tweeted Thursday. “Those governments willfully participated in this operation.”
Graham made a similar comment in his letter to Morrison on Wednesday. “It appears that the United States law enforcement and intelligence communities relied on foreign intelligence as part of their efforts to investigate and monitor the 2016 presidential election,” Graham wrote.
That effort involved “accepting information from an Australian diplomat who was also directed to contact Papadopoulos and relay information obtained from Papadopoulos regarding the campaign to the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he added.
Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with individuals associated with the Russian government, is the point of contact between the Australian government and the Russia investigation. Special counsel Robert Mueller, in his report on Russian interference in the 2016 elections, cited a conversation between Papadopoulos and an Australian official in London as a key moment in the decision to launch an investigation.
“Papadopoulos had suggested to a representative of that foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton,” Mueller’s report said. “That information prompted the FBI on July 31, 2016, to open an investigation into whether individuals associated with the Trump Campaign were coordinating with the Russian government in its interference activities.”
The Australian official, Alexander Downer, maintains that he reported his conversation back to the Australian government, which then decided to relay the discussion to the FBI.
“Of course I wasn’t ‘directed,'” Downer said in response to Graham.
But Downer, a conservative politician with a reputation for gaffes, reportedly also told a U.S. diplomat in London about the conversation without clearing this disclosure with his superiors in Canberra.
“As you have requested, we will work closely with the Attorney General to resolve any misunderstandings in this matter,” Hockey wrote to Graham.
