Former Trump foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos reportedly told special counsel Robert Mueller that President Trump found the idea of brokering a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin “interesting.”
Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty in October 2017 to making false statements to federal investigators and has since become a cooperating witness, told Mueller that he told Trump during a March 31, 2016, foreign policy meeting that he could arrange a meeting with the Russian leader.
This is an idea Trump found “interesting,” according to the book Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on Ametrica and the Election of Donald Trump, by Yahoo News’ Michael Isikoff and Mother Jones’ David Corn published Tuesday.
According to the book, Trump looked at Sessions as if he expected him follow up, and Sessions allegedly nodded in response.
However, it was reported in November that Sessions eventually shot down Papadopoulos’ idea.
“The March 31 comments by this Papadopoulos person did not leave a lasting impression,” a source told NBC News. “As far as Sessions seemed to be concerned, when he shut down this idea of Papadopoulos engaging with Russia, that was the end of it and he moved the meeting along to other issues.”
Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee that he did not remember the March meeting with Papadopoulos until he saw it in the news.
Court documents from the Mueller probe show Papadopoulos continued after the March 2016 meeting to pursue an “off the record” meeting between one or more campaign representatives and “members” Putin’s office from mid-June through mid-August 2016.
Mueller, a former FBI director, was appointed in May 2017 to investigate Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign. His team has so far charged 19 people and three Russian organizations, including former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.
According to the book’s official overview, it is “a story of political skullduggery unprecedented in American history. It weaves together tales of international intrigue, cyber espionage, and superpower rivalry. After U.S.-Russia relations soured, as Vladimir Putin moved to reassert Russian strength on the global stage, Moscow trained its best hackers and trolls on U.S. political targets and exploited WikiLeaks to disseminate information that could affect the 2016 election.
