Following Monday’s revelation that his campaign adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about his contact with Kremlin-linked Russians, President Trump tried to distance himself from Papadopoulos, saying, “Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar.”
That’s a hard claim to swallow, since Papadopoulos was in regular contact with top campaign officials and met with a number of foreign officials as a Trump surrogate. Trump once called him an “excellent guy.” The Washington Post reports that he even sat next to future attorney general Jeff Sessions at a dinner for campaign advisers weeks before the Republican National Convention.
If Team Trump can’t convince the public that Papadopoulos was a nobody, they’d at least like people to believe that his repeated efforts to set up a meeting between the campaign and the Russian government were rebuffed by more senior Trump officials. For instance, an attorney for Sam Clovis, the campaign’s national co-chairman, suggested he was just “being polite” when he encouraged Papadopoulos to meet with Russian officials, and was actually trying to brush him off.
Former FBI Director James Comey has been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in Miami as part of...
