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As we saw in a previous chapter Trump had a tough week getting pummeled by Omarosa’s tapes and book but he found a sedative-obstructing justice and cracking down on free speech by weaponizing security clearances.

UPDATE: Even more despicably ironic in light of what we learned about Jared Kushner’s clearance-they didn’t want to give it to him but Trump forced them to.

After yanking Brennan’s clearance, he wants to revoke the clearance of more critics-and even more seriously, potential witnesses against him on Russia. Trump’s reasoning is as he ‘won the election’ anything he did during the course of it was good. He’s never heard of the economists or physicists who warn that correlation doesn’t prove causation-of course not, he doesn’t read or have any intellectual curiosity whatsoever. Similarly, if something makes him feel powerful then it clearly ‘works’ and the more of it he does the better.

And he really needed something to make him feel powerful after how small Omarosa made him look all week. As for revoking more clearances-which he’s eager to dole out like candy-he’s particularly focused on Bruce Ohr. Typical of Trump and the GOP to suddenly become obsessed with someone most Americans have never even heard of as a new bogeyman. Bruce Ohr may not be known to many Americans yet-just as no one previously knew the names of Peter Strozk or Glenn Simpson but Ohr has been the focus of some real heat over on Trump’s official news organ, Fox News.

Ohr’s great sin is that his wife-not himself, his wife-worked for: I hope you’re sitting down for this, the fiendish Fusion GPS. 

GPS’s great sin is that they commissioned the Steele dossier. So in guilt by association style Ohr is now being slandered and targeted much as was done to Andy McCabe because his wife ran as a Democrat in 2016-even though he himself was a Republican-not that it matters. In truth, despite Trump’s ’17 angry Democrats’ the number of actual Democrats at the FBI are few and far between.

Regarding Trump’s focus on Ohr:

It points to the usual Trump/GOP game of guilt by association and that they just need a red herring, a counternarrative. But that they focus on Ohr-or any one connected to Fusion GOP no matter how tangentially-points to a major part of the Trump/GOP counternarrative: that the real crime is that the dossier was compiled at all and that all they need to do is debunk the dossier and they’ve refuted the Russia investigation itself.

But, this too, of course, rests on yet another false premise: that the Russia probe was opened because of the dossier. In truth the investigation opened due to Australia’s top diplomat’s reporting to U.S. authorities what Papadopoulos told him about incriminating emails the Russians had on Hillary Clinton.

So Papadopoulos-who really wasn’t the Coffee Boy but actually Trump’s foreign policy advisor who took lots of foreign trips on behalf of the campaign.

Papadopoulos’ wife has in the past declared he’d be the John Dean of Watergate 2.0-I call it Watergate 2.0 not her.

But now apparently  Papadopoulos’ deal with Mueller has been harmed and she herself may have more than a little to do with it.

Yesterday Mueller recommended a sentence of between 0-6 months for the Coffee Boy who started the Russia investigation. That’s a lot less time than, say, Manafort, and he did say between 0-6 which suggests it could be o. And John Dean himself spent 3 months in prison during the trial

But based on their deal Papadopoulos had an expectation of 0.

His wife has been very vocal, asking on Twitter on Thursday night for a new lawyer to represent them.

People weren’t exactly beating down their door to help a man who colluded with the Russian government to rig an American election. 

“His role in the ‘Russia Investigation’ has been profoundly misunderstood and abused. His young life has been on hold for too long now, and all our savings are now exhausted in legal fees,” wrote Simona on a GoFundMe campaign she launched earlier this summer.

“A pro-bono lawyer would provide life support to the couple’s bank account: As of writing this article, the couple’s campaign for legal fees has raised only $490 of its $75,000 goal. By contrast, former FBI agent Peter Strzok—who investigated the question of collusion until he was fired by the bureau this week—raised $418,872 through a GoFundMe page established just two days ago.”

UPDATE: That was Thursday night. Friday Mueller suggested 0-6 months. 

“Special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday recommended that a federal judge sentence George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide, to up to six months in prison for lying to investigators in relation to Mueller’s Russia inquiry.”

But again, as Abramson notes, the normal expectation would be no prison time.

“The defendant’s crime was serious and caused damage to the government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election,” Mueller added. “The defendant lied in order to conceal his contacts with Russians and Russian intermediaries during the campaign and made his false statements to investigators on January 27, 2017, early in the investigation, when key investigative decisions, including who to interview and when, were being made.”

“Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser in Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, pleaded guilty in October to making false statements to the special counsel’s team, becoming the first person to admit guilt to Mueller’s federal prosecutors. The FBI accused him of lying to to investigators when it asked him about whether he had advance knowledge that Russians had obtained emails connected to Hillary Clinton’s campaign — and whether they intended to distribute them.”

“According to his plea agreement, Papadopoulos admitted to lying about the timing of his contacts with a professor, Joseph Mifsud, in London. Mifsud, according to prosecutors, told Papdopoulos after he had joined the Trump campaign in spring 2016 that Russians had obtained “dirt“ on Clinton. But Papadopoulos, according to Mueller, repeatedly denied that he interacted with the professor before to joining the campaign team.”

And these repeated false denials had a material impact-because of them Mifsud got away and his whereabouts are still not known.

“POLITICO previously reported that Mueller asked U.S. District Court Judge Randy Moss to set Papadopoulos’ sentencing for Sept. 7. He faces a maximum possible sentence of five years in prison.”

Mueller wrote in Friday’s filing that Papadopoulos “was explicitly notified of the seriousness of the ongoing investigation,” and warned by the special counsel’s prosecutors “that lying to investigators was a ‘federal offense’ that could get him ‘in trouble.’”

Instead, Mueller wrote, Papadopoulos “repeatedly lied throughout the interview in order to conceal the timing and significance of information the defendant had received regarding the Russians possessing ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton, as well as his own outreach to Russia on behalf of the campaign.”

Mueller also maintained that Papadopoulos’ false statements “were intended to harm the investigation, and did so.”

“His lies negatively affected the FBI’s Russia investigation, and prevented the FBI from effectively identifying and confronting witnesses in a timely fashion,” he wrote. “His lies were not momentary lapses. He lied repeatedly over the course of more than two hours, and his lies were designed to conceal facts he knew were critical.”

“In fact, Papadopoulos‘ comments prevented the FBI from detaining Mifsud when he was traveling in the United States in 2017, Mueller wrote.”

“The defendant‘s lies undermined investigators‘ ability to challenge the Professor or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States,“ sentencing memo said. “The government understands that the Professor left the United States on February 11, 2017 and he has not returned to the United States since then.“

So as a consequence of Papadopoulos’ repeated false denials,  Mifsud remains on the lam. 

Back to Politico:

“Papadopoulos “had several communications” in January 2017 with incoming Trump administration officials in an attempt to secure a high-level role with the National Security Council or the Departments of State or Energy, according to the filing.”

“In the hours after being interviewed by the FBI, the defendant submitted his biography and a description of work he did on the campaign in an effort to obtain a position as a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Energy Department,” Mueller wrote.

“Papadopoulos‘ wife, Simona, told POLITICO on Wednesday that she was encouraging her husband to withdraw his plea deal with the FBI, and she has become more vocal in recent weeks, accusing U.S. intelligence officials of “entrapment.“

“The information that we have today makes me believe that George has committed no crime, absolutely,” she said in a phone interview.

She thinks that withdrawing his plea deal will get him less prison time? Has she heard of Paul Manafort? Well, her husband certainly has as he emailed Manafort about Trump going to Russia in May, 2016. 

Again, his wife isn’t giving him very good advice. 

“In a follow-up exchange, Simona Papadopoulos told POLITICO that her husband shared “all the information” he had and offered “full cooperation.” She questioned how her husband’s testimony could have prevented the FBI from questioning Mifsud and suggested that she hasn’t seen evidence of Mifsud’s connections to Russia — rather she says he may be a Western intelligence affiliate.”

“When George was under the impression that Mifsud indeed had connections to Russia, he entertained conversations with him for months in the attempt to organize a meeting between Trump and Putin,” she said.

This points to a new narrative she’s been telling-that in fact her husband is working with a Western intelligence affiliate.

While we can’t know what is motivating Ms. Papadopoulos, it seems what may be happening is she’s more concerned about defending his public reputation not understanding that what she’s doing could do some real harm to him legally.

UPDATE: As time has gone on it’s seems pretty likely a lot more than just concern over reputation is motivating Ms. Papadopoulos-many have wondered-including George’s own father-if she’s a Russian spy. It’s a pretty amazing ‘coincidence’ that she herself used to work for Mifsud at the European Parliament-a hotbed of Russian spies

UPDATE 2: As we see in Chapter A, Ari Melber actually was able to discover in his interview with the Coffee Boy and his wife that they not only did it just happen that the Russian Professor was their mutual associate but that they met via this mutual association-Papadopoulos actually asked her about Mifsud. Yet while Ari deserves credit for gleaning this from his interview he failed to appreciate the momentous discovery this actually was-and the way he framed the overall interview was to be honest, rather appalling-that somehow Bill Barr’s fake exoneration letter proved the Coffee Boy did nothing wrong.  While Ken Dilanian declared Trump totally exonerated

Melber for some reason acted as if the very much glorified Coffee Boy had himself been exonerated.

End of UPDATE 2

As for why Papadopoulos lied to investigators-he was, after all, seeking employment with the Trump Administration at the time. He continued to meet with foreign dignitaries and represent the Trump team right through to the Inauguration.

There was more in Mueller’s Papadopoulos’ documents:

This other intelligence agency was likely-Israel.

Some Coffee Boy. In fact, Papadopoulos’ actions during the campaign are central to the central question-was there collusion with the Russian government? It’s very difficult to describe Papadopoulos’ own actions as anything but collusion.

As we await sentencing of Manafort in his tax evasion and bank fraud case let’s remember that Manafort himself is central to the collusion story-he did receive the email from Papadopoulos-just as he was one of the three Trump campaign attendees at the Trump Tower Russia meeting.

UPDATE: It’s now pretty clear that Russia collusion wasn’t only about the Russians-but the Saudis, the Arab Emirates, and the Israelis.

UPDATE 2.0: So much water under the bridge since I wrote this on August 20, 2018.

Manafort, of course stands to be sentenced up to 24.5 years in prison-he ended up with 7.5 pending the state charges-Chapter A for more.

Papadopoulos for his part has insisted starting with his first interviews post sentencing that he never told anyone in the Trump campaign about the emails-though he told them everything else and he did tell the Greek Defense Minister about the emails. Then a Chicago sports bar patron alleges Papdopoulos told him that he told Jeff Sessions about the emails.

UPDATE 5: Alas the Democrats did not ask Mueller wether or not the-rather timid, diffident; at least he’s diffident and timid towards ‘President Trump’-was aware of Jason Wilson’s claim that the Coffee Boy confided he did tell Jeff Sessions about the emails.

Papadopoulos has gone on a massive disinformation campaign claiming the real collusion was the British and Alexander Downer who ‘entrapped him-just like Flynn later claimed. After this Mueller was in no mood to give him any more breaks and he served out his 14 day sentence after Thanksgiving. Since then he’s been talking about running for Congress-sure let’s elect someone who betrayed the country to a foreign adversary.

Papadopoulos has now made such a spectacle of himself the FBI is actively investigating him again. 

Chapter A for more.

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