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George Papadopoulos Sentenced to 14 Days in Jail in Mueller Probe

George Papadopoulos Sentenced to 14 Days in Jail in Mueller Probe

(Bloomberg) -- George Papadopoulos, a foreign-policy adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, was sentenced to 14 days in jail for lying to investigators about his contacts with a U.K. professor peddling dirt from Russian officials about Hillary Clinton.

Papadopoulos in October became the first person to plead guilty in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He’s the second defendant to be sentenced, after lawyer Alex van der Zwaan got 30 days behind bars.

Papadopoulos reportedly played a key role in sparking the FBI’s probe of Trump’s contacts with Russia when, during a night of heavy drinking in a London bar in May 2016, he told an Australian diplomat that Russia had dirt on Clinton, according to the New York Times. The FBI, tipped off by the Australians, began looking into the matter.

“I made a dreadful mistake, but I am a good man,” he said Friday at his sentencing hearing in federal court in Washington.

Prosecutors said Papadopoulos used his contacts with the professor, identified in court papers as Joseph Mifsud, to elevate his status within the campaign and lobby for a meeting between Trump and Russian officials, including president Vladimir Putin.

His lies about the timing of his encounter with the professor, including the false claim that it came before he’d joined the campaign, prevented investigators from effectively questioning Mifsud when he was in Washington in February 2017, prosecutors said in a court filing.

Papadopoulos was charged in July 2017. The case was kept under seal for three weeks after his guilty plea and made public only when Mueller announced the indictments of campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his top deputy, Rick Gates, for money laundering, illegal lobbying and other charges unrelated to the election.

Manafort was convicted of bank fraud and tax crimes last month by a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia. Gates pleaded guilty and testified against his former boss. Manafort faces a trial on separate charges in Washington this month. Manafort and Gates have yet to be sentenced.

George Papadopoulos Sentenced to 14 Days in Jail in Mueller Probe

Under his plea deal with prosecutors, Papadopoulos faced zero to six months imprisonment. His lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss for a sentence of probation that would terminate immediately, saying he’s been under close supervision for 13 months and cooperated with the government.

In addition to the two weeks’ jail term, Papadopoulos was given a year of probation and ordered to serve 200 hours of community service and fined $9,500.

"We are very satisfied with the sentence," Papadopoulos’s lawyer, Thomas Breen, told reporters after the hearing. "I think the judge really took everything into consideration."

Papadopoulos lied to investigators because he was "caught off-guard by an impromptu investigation" and wanted to "save his professional aspirations,” his lawyers said.

Prosecutors asked for a sentence of as long as six months in jail, telling Moss that Papadopoulos failed to provide "substantial assistance" to investigators and disclosed what he did only after he was confronted with his own records. They noted that he and his wife appeared frequently in the media to discuss the case.

A defense lawyer took issue with the government’s claim that Papadopoulos interfered with the probe. Citing Trump’s comment that the Mueller probe was a “Witch Hunt,” made before his client was ever interviewed, Breen said in court that "the president of the United States hindered this investigation more than George Papadopoulos ever would."

The president weighed in shortly after the sentence was handed down, scoffing in a tweet at the length and making an apparent reference to the cost of Mueller’s investigation.

George Papadopoulos Sentenced to 14 Days in Jail in Mueller Probe

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
14 days for $28 MILLION - $2 MILLION a day, No Collusion. A great day for America!

Sent via Twitter for iPhone.

View original tweet.

Breen told reporters outside court, "I think we’re all somewhat satisfied at this point in time that they know Russia meddled in the election. There’s no doubt about it." He said his client doesn’t recall telling anybody connected with the Trump campaign about Mifsud’s offer of Clinton dirt.

Van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer who worked with Manafort and Gates, was also convicted of lying to prosecutors. Others pleading guilty in the Mueller probe include former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Washington lobbyist Sam Patten.

Moss said that while Papadopoulos lied for selfish reasons and did real harm to the government’s efforts to carry out its investigation of Russian meddling, he was moved by what he called the defendant’s "genuine remorse about what he did." Though he added, "I don’t feel I can go so far as to not impose a sentence of incarceration at all."

DNC Lawyers Raise Prospect Papadopoulos U.K. Contact May Be Dead

After Moss sentenced him, Papadopoulos could be seen in the courtroom embracing his wife, whispering into her ear, as reporters and members of the public slowly filed out.

The case is U.S. v. Papadopoulos, 17-cr-182, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Flatley in Washington at dflatley1@bloomberg.net;Andrew Harris in Washington at aharris16@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider, Steve Stroth

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.