George Papadopoulos , a former campaign advisor on Donald Trump's presidential campaign, is set to be sentenced Friday for lying to investigators during their probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Papadopoulos, 31, is trying to avoid prison. Instead, he is asking to be sentenced to probation, which his lawyers argue he has already effectively served since his arrest. Special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutors, however, asked for a sentence of up to six months in prison.
The ruling Friday afternoon from Judge Randolph Moss in Washington, D.C., federal court will mark Papadopoulos as the first member of the Trump campaign to be sentenced in Mueller's probe of Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential election.
In a sentencing memo, Mueller's team argued that Papadopoulos' lies to the government "caused damage" to their probe by misleading them about his contacts with London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, who told Papadopoulos in late April 2016 that Russians had "dirt" on Trump's campaign rival, Hillary Clinton.
Papadopoulos falsely told investigators at least a dozen times that the conversation with Mifsud occurred before he joined the campaign in early March of that year, according to the U.S. attorneys.
The foreign policy advisor, who was 28 years old at the time he joined Trump's campaign, lied "to minimize both his own role as a witness and the extend of the campaign's knowledge of his contacts," prosecutors said.
The New York Times reported in December that the FBI's investigation into Russian attempts to sway the 2016 election was spearheaded by Papadopoulos blabbing about compromising Clinton information to an Australian diplomat a month after his meeting with Mifsud.
But Papadopoulos' lawyers disputed the prosecutors' characterization in their own memo to the judge filed last week.
While acknowledging that Papadopoulos "is ashamed and remorseful" for committing an "unquestionably serious" offense by lying to FBI agents, his defense attorneys contend that those lies did not harm the investigation.
The defense team portrayed Papadopoulos as a young and naive aide who had gained a prominent foothold in Trump's campaign and overstretched himself by trying to organize a meeting between Russian officials and the campaign.
"To say George was out of his depth would be a gross understatement," the attorneys wrote. But they maintained he misled the FBI for personal reasons, rather than to send the investigation astray.
"Out of loyalty to the new president and his desire to be part of the administration, he hoisted himself upon his own petard," Papadopoulos' lawyers wrote.
His attorneys argued that Papadopoulos, who was arrested in July 2017, has already spent thirteen months under pretrial supervision, which they considered the equivalent of one year of probation.
Within that time, Papadopoulos has mainly been represented in public through the Twitter account of his wife, Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos.
Simona tweetfrom Top News & Analysis https://ift.tt/2Cu4N9h
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment