The wife of former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who was charged as part of the investigation into Russian meddling, believes a pardon for her husband is both “appropriate” and “deserved.”
“I really have this expectation, I really hope, mostly in the light of the circumstances that came out recently and became public recently, I think that it would completely justify and make a pardon appropriate in this case and deserved,” Simona Mangiante, Papadopoulos’ wife, told MSNBC on Tuesday.
Papadopoulos, a member of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy team, pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with a professor with ties to the Kremlin.
As part of his guilty plea, Papadopoulos agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling.
Mueller took over the Russia probe from the FBI in May 2017. The FBI reportedly decided to open its investigation into Russian meddling after Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
It was also recently revealed that Papadopoulos met with an FBI source in 2016, later identified as Stefan Halper, an academic at the University of Cambridge. In addition to Papadopoulos, Halper also met with former Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis and former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The president has accused the FBI of planting a spy in his campaign for political reasons. But Papadopoulos and Page were on the FBI’s radar before they made contact with Halper.
Papadopoulos is currently under a gag order, but Mangiante first asked Trump to pardon her husband during an interview Monday night.
“I trust and hope and I ask President Trump to pardon him, and I hope he will,” she told Fox News.
She revealed Tuesday that Papadopoulos’s lawyers were “not happy” she mentioned the pardon during her interview with Fox News.
When asked if she had spoken with anyone in the White House about a possible pardon, Mangiante said she had not.
Mangiante’s plea to the president comes after he issued a pardon to conservative author Dinesh D’Souza, the fifth of his presidency.
Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One last week, the president said he would be open to a possible pardon for Martha Stewart and commuting the sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Blagojevich’s wife has also appeared on Fox News appealing to Trump.
