George Papadopoulos, dubbed by Trump administration officials as merely “the coffee boy” on the Trump campaign, was sentenced on Friday in court in D.C. to 14 days in federal jail.
A member of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy team, Papadopoulos, 31, becomes the first Trump campaign affiliate in special counsel’s Robert Mueller’s investigation to be sentenced.
Papadopoulos was also sentenced to a year of supervised release and 200 hours of community service, and will pay a $9,500 fine. The sentence came after he pleaded guilty in October to making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with Russians.
Andrew Goldstein, a prosecutor on Mueller’s team, said in court Friday that Papadopoulos “deliberately and repeatedly lied” to the FBI, which harmed the investigation.
But Papadopoulos’ lawyer, Tom Breen, asked for leniency and said President Trump “hindered this investigation more than George Papadopoulos ever could,” by publicly calling the Russia probe a “witch hunt” and “a fake news campaign” in January 2017.
D.C. District Court Judge Randolph Moss criticized Papadopoulos for putting his personal interests above the interests of the country when he lied to the FBI, and for waiting until presented with information that showed he lied to correct his lies.
Breen characterized his client as “ashamed and remorseful” but also as “naive and a fool” for thinking he could deal with Russians.
“He’s a good patriot. He made a strategic decision to keep his name in the hopper for a position in the Trump administration,” Breen said, noting that Papadopoulos was hopeful for a high-level position, and did not want what he told the FBI to jeopardize that possibility.
Trump sought to distance himself from Papadopoulos in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One earlier Friday, saying: “I see Papadopoulos today; I don’t know Papadopoulos, I don’t know. They got him, on I guess, on a couple of lies.”
Papadopoulos himself told the judge he made a mistake by lying to the FBI.
“People point and snicker and I am terribly depressed,” he said in his three-minute apology to the judge. “This investigation has global implications and the truth matters.”
Papadopoulos was arrested and arraigned in July 2017 as part of special counsel Mueller’s wide-ranging investigation into Russian election interference and possible links with the Trump campaign.
In court records unsealed in October when he pleaded guilty, prosecutors said Papadopoulos “falsely described his interactions with a certain foreign contact who discussed ‘dirt’ related to emails” about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
In a memo filed to Moss late last month, Papadopoulos’ lawyers wrote that their client is “ashamed and remorseful” for making false statements to federal investigators, but did not purposely mean to “derail” Mueller’s investigation.
“His motives for lying to the FBI were wrongheaded indeed but far from the sinister spin the government suggests,” they wrote. “Caught off-guard by an impromptu interrogation, Mr. Papadopoulos misled investigators to save his professional aspirations and preserve a perhaps misguided loyalty to his master.”
Since Papadopoulos’ guilty plea, the Trump administration has sought to put distance in between them. “He was somebody that played a minimal role, if one at all,” press secretary Sarah Sanders said last fall.
“I never heard of Papadopoulos,” former Trump adviser Michael Caputo told CNN. “He was the coffee boy.”
However, Papadopoulos’ lawyers made it clear in their pre-sentencing memo that their client had strong ties to the Trump campaign, noting that even though he had “no experience with U.S. and Russian diplomacy,” he landed a job with the campaign’s foreign policy team after learning its focus would be improving relations with Russia.
“He’s an energy and oil consultant, excellent guy,” Trump said in March 2016 when he named Papadopoulos one of his campaign’s foreign policy advisers.
Papadopoulos’ contacts with Russians came to a forefront when it was reported he suggested a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin during a March 31, 2016, meeting.
“While some in the room rebuffed George’s offer, Mr. Trump nodded with approval and deferred to Mr. [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions who appeared to like the idea and stated that the campaign should look into it. George’s giddiness over Mr. Trump’s recognition was prominent during the days that followed,” Papadopoulos’ lawyers wrote in their pre-sentencing memo.
Papadopoulos’ defense team said he has shared with Mueller his recollections of that meeting. Papadopoulos continued to try to organize the meeting between Trump and Putin, meeting with Russians, including someone he believed to be Putin’s niece.
In their pre-sentencing memo, prosecutors alleged that Papadopoulos purposely misled them, causing them to lose track of Joseph Mifsud, the professor who knew about the “dirt” on Clinton, before they could properly interview him.
“The defendant did not provide ‘substantial assistance'” after he was arrested, prosecutors wrote, “and much of the information provided by the defendant came only after the government confronted him.”
“The sentence imposed here should reflect the fact that lying to federal investigators has real consequences, especially where the defendant lied to investigators about critical facts, in an investigation of national importance, after having been explicitly warned that lying to the FBI was a federal offense,” they added.
The only other person charged by Mueller who has been sentenced was Alex Van Der Zwaan, a London-based Dutch lawyer who assisted Manafort and Gates with their lobbying work in Ukraine.
Van Der Zwaan, 33, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in February, and received a sentence of 30 days in prison and a $20,000 fine. He was turned over to Dutch authorities in June after he served his time in a low-security federal prison in Pennsylvania.
