Papadopoulos is convinced that he was set up—deliberately fed false information by US intelligence agents and their Western allies as an excuse to plant a scandal that would then justify an investigation of Trump and his campaign.127 The false information came to Papadopoulos courtesy of a truly nefarious character by the name of Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese university professor, who was introduced to Papadopoulos by a man he would subsequently learn was “a former FBI employee.”128 Like Halper, Mifsud is an academic, with a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast in Belfast, Ireland. Also like Halper, is it possible that Mifsud may have been a spy or “plant” for the FBI? It is difficult to know, since he seems to have made himself scarce. But in early March 2016, Papadopoulos attended what he thought was an innocuous three-day academic conference in Rome at an international venue called Link Campus University. Only later did he discover that it was a “training school for Western-allied spies, including CIA, FBI, and MI6,” dubbed Spook University. Mifsud was also there.
Once the introduction was made to Papadopoulos, Mifsud kept in contact over the next few weeks by email. Over breakfast at the Andaz London Liverpool Street hotel in London on April 26, 2016, Mifsud did something strange and unexpected:
He leans across the table in a conspiratorial manner. The Russians have “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, he tells me. “Emails of Clinton,” he says. “They have thousands of emails.”129
Papadopoulos insisted that he was not only skeptical but wanted “no part in it.”130 He was determined to avoid anything to do with hacking or security breaches. It was a red flag. He maintains to this day that he never informed anyone on the Trump campaign of the rumor Mifsud had passed along. There is not a scrap of evidence that proves otherwise. No individual in the Trump campaign learned of it, and no emails show that the gossip was disseminated. Papadopoulos knew nothing about the Clinton emails themselves. So he kept his speculations to himself, except once—maybe. It’s a big “maybe.”
Roughly two weeks later, on May 6, Papadopoulos was invited by a woman who claimed to be a “senior adviser” to Alexander Downer, an Australian high commissioner with the rank of ambassador, to meet for drinks with her boss. They convened at the Kensington Wine Rooms in London. In a move that was identical to the one pulled by Halper, Downer hauled out his cell phone as if he might record the ensuing conversation. He was “so aggressive, so hostile, it’s actually a bit intimidating,” wrote Papadopoulos.131
And then something happens. Or more accurately, Downer later claims something happens. In his version of events, he asks me a question about Russia and Trump. I then tell him that the Russians have a surprise or some damaging material related to Hillary Clinton. I have no memory of this. None. Zero. Nada.
In my version of events, Downer brusquely leaves me and Erika [Thompson, his senior assistant] at the table, and we go our separate ways. I remember feeling completely disappointed by the meeting and pissed off about being treated so rudely. Downer’s version, however, is the one that matters.132
Papadopoulos seemed convinced that Downer was spying on him—that the Australian diplomat was a vital component of the scheme to plant phony evidence on the Trump adviser to justify the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the candidate’s campaign:
Did this man with extensive intelligence ties already know what Joseph Mifsud—a man who taught at the spook-training ground that is Link Campus Rome—had told me? Was he trying to bait me into saying something? Something that could spark an investigation? I believe so.133
When the New York Times first reported the story of that encounter a year and a half later, it ran a front-page headline stating that Downer had tipped off the FBI, which was what had triggered the opening of the “collusion” investigation.134 Not coincidentally, that story was published at a time when the FBI was under intense pressure to justify why exactly it had commenced an investigation of Trump to begin with. If the probe had been opened based on an unverified “dossier” about Trump that had been paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democrats, the investigation was highly suspect, if not lawless. The Bureau would be in serious trouble. Therefore, it is quite likely that the FBI deliberately fed the Times an invented or grossly exaggerated story about Papadopoulos to divert attention from the FBI’s primary reliance on the fabricated “dossier” as the impetus for the investigation of Trump. The article added an extra tantalizing tidbit to suck in its readers and other members of the Trump-hating media: it implied that Papadopoulos had been drunk in a bar when he recklessly spilled allegedly incriminating information. In his book, Papadopoulos vigorously denied this:
I don’t know where the “paper of record” got this information, but it’s completely wrong. I had one drink. A gin and tonic. Whoever leaked this false account also spun that Downer and I met in a random, chance encounter at a trendy bar. But that’s false, too. And Downer . . . obviously has extensive ties to intelligence operatives. So this meeting was anything but random. Intelligence operatives engineered it.135
Papadopoulos says Downer spent much of their conversation “praising” Hillary Clinton and “bashing Trump.” Downer had a history with the Clintons, having organized a $25 million gift from Australia to their foundation.136 Therefore, the ambassador had a motive to help the FBI manufacture a fraudulent investigation of Trump that would prove helpful to Clinton in her quest to become president. Two months after his conversation with Papadopoulos, Downer contacted the US Embassy in London after he read news reports that Clinton’s emails had been hacked. He assumed that that was what Papadopoulos had been talking about. Or so the story goes.
But let’s assume that what Downer told the FBI was true—that Papadopoulos had passed along conjecture about Russia having damaging material on Clinton. So what? It would still not come close to being sufficient evidence to launch a formal counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign. FBI regulations demand “specific articulable facts,” not unverified hearsay allegations.137 There must also be a nexus between the target of the probe (Trump and/or his campaign) and a potential crime. Where is the crime? None of this existed.
The Mueller Report tried to theorize a potential crime by inventing a conversation that had never occurred. Near the end of volume I, it stated that the FBI had approached Papadopoulos for an interview in January 2017 because he had suggested to Downer “that Russia had indicated that it could assist the [Trump] campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to candidate Clinton.”138 Hold on a moment. Where in the world did that come from? There is no evidence of a proffer of campaign assistance anywhere in the record, by Mifsud or Papadopoulos or Downer. Mueller threw that statement out there as if no one would notice. He provided not a scintilla of support for it, nor did he source it to any person or any document. It appears to have been plucked from the special counsel’s considerable imagination. Other such concoctions can be found elsewhere in the report, as chapter 5 will show.
As for Mifsud, he appears to be an enigma. The Mueller Report stated that the FBI interviewed him on February 10, 2017, and he “denied that he had advance knowledge that Russia was in possession of emails damaging to candidate Clinton.”139 He claimed that Papadopoulos must have misunderstood their conversation. That, of course, contradicts Mueller’s own unfounded assertion that Russians offered campaign assistance. Months later, Mifsud told the British publication The Telegraph that “he had no knowledge of any emails containing ‘dirt’ on Mrs. Clinton.”140 Whether he is telling the truth is unknown, although the FBI never accused him of lying.
All of this is curious, if not suspicious, because the Mueller Report determined that Mifsud had lied several times to investigators during his interview.141 Doing so is an obvious crime. Yet, he was never charged, even though the special counsel brought numerous criminal charges against Trump associates for lying, including Papadopoulos. Was Mifsud given a free pass by Mueller because he was not connected to the president but was, instead, the “catalyst” of the “collusion”
hoax against Trump?142 Or was Mifsud insulated from charges because he fed Papadopoulos false information at the behest of US intelligence agents in an effort to frame Trump with the phony Russia conspiracy allegation? When Mueller testified before Congress on July 24, 2019, he refused to answer any and all questions about the mysterious Mifsud. Not surprisingly, Democrats and the media were disinterested in knowing the truth behind the man who, according to the New York Times, was the genesis of the FBI’s initial investigation of Trump.
Regardless, let’s examine the rumor that Papadopoulos is said to have heard. An unidentified person in Moscow allegedly told a professor he had “dirt” on an American candidate and maybe some of her emails. The professor then told Papadopoulos, who then purportedly told an Australian diplomat, who then told the FBI. Any of the individuals along the chain of chatter could have lied or exaggerated or mistakenly conveyed the exchange of words. By the time the purported information was repeated numerous times and eventually reached the FBI, it was what lawyers call “quadruple hearsay.” It contained no indicia of reliability and would never be accepted as trustworthy evidence in a court of law. It would be inadmissible in every courtroom in the United States. Hence, it should never have been used by the FBI as justification for opening a counterintelligence or criminal probe of any US citizen, much less a candidate for the presidency. Rumors, innuendo, supposition, and gossip are not a legal basis for an investigation. Hard facts are required. The alleged information must first be verified. Nowhere in the Times article did the reporters raise the essential question of why the Bureau would initiate an investigation with such scant and legally insufficient evidence.
Before opening its case, the FBI was required to identify a possible crime. Where was the crime in listening to someone claim that Moscow had “dirt” on Clinton? Where was the crime in repeating that bit of gossip? Even if someone in the Trump campaign had acted on the information in some way, it was still not a crime to do so. Conspiracy requires an agreement to do something illegal. There was no agreement to do anything at all in the aforementioned recitation of events. There was never any evidence that the Trump campaign was involved in hacking Clinton emails, as the Mueller Report later confirmed.
Papadopoulos was never charged with conspiracy or any “collusion”-related crime because there was nothing unlawful about his contacts or conversations involving Russia or Russians. There was never a factual predicate nor a reasonable basis that warranted the FBI’s investigation in July 2016. Moreover, there was no reliable intelligence information to warrant a counterintelligence probe, which appears to have been a cover for a criminal investigation. “Counterintelligence investigations are not conducted for the purpose of building prosecutable court cases,” according to former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy.143 Yet that was what the FBI was doing.
The Times reporters may have been used, wittingly or unwittingly, to deflect attention from the dubious “dossier” and to provide an additional, albeit erroneous, justification for the Trump investigation. In other words, it appears that the whole story about Papadopoulos’s conversation in a London bar was a convenient false front designed to conceal that it was Steele’s “dossier” that the FBI had relied upon to initiate its investigation of Trump. If that was the goal, it was an implausible and clumsy attempt at misdirection. Under no legitimate circumstances could a rumor based on multiple hearsays be a proper and legal reason for opening a counterintelligence investigation, especially when the original source was not even identified and none of the allegations was substantiated. Yet the Times and, presumably, its readers believed it. It was then circulated and repeated so often and for so long that the chimera became accepted as gospel truth.
Even if both the uncorroborated “dossier” and the Papadopoulos “bar talk” were the basis for launching the Trump-Russia investigation, they were equally deficient under FBI regulations. Nevertheless, the Bureau was determined to ignore their own DIOG guidelines with impunity. Whether the FBI had one reason or two, it matters little. The entire probe was bereft of credible facts or verified evidence justifying its existence. The premise of the investigation was false on both counts.
The chronology of events indicates that it was Steele’s specious memos that moved the FBI into taking devious action against the Trump campaign, not Papadopoulos’s “bar talk.” The Bureau learned of the “dossier” first on July 5, 2016. Michael Gaeta, the agent who saw the document, was so alarmed by what he had read (and, perhaps, unsuspecting) that he allegedly told Steele, “I have to report this to headquarters.”144 Washington was alerted, and a preliminary investigation was set into motion. It was not until two weeks later, on July 23, that the FBI was informed of Downer’s purported conversation with Papadopoulos. However, it is clear that the FBI’s interest in Papadopoulos soon waned after the investigation was formally opened on July 31, 2016.145 Halper’s spying provided the exculpatory evidence that Papadopoulos had known nothing about the hacking of Clinton emails or Russian “collusion.” Instead, Steele’s “dossier,” funded by the Clinton campaign and Democrats, took center stage at the FBI as the agency sought the FISA warrants to spy on Page. Comey’s Bureau turned all of its time, attention, and resources toward finding some evidence that would corroborate the document and implicate Trump. It was evidence that never existed. The FBI knew that. It knew the “dossier” was worthless junk.
The FBI spent the better part of a year attempting to verify the “unverifiable” memos produced by Steele. “FBI agents painstakingly researched every claim Steele made about Trump’s possible collusion with Russia, and assembled their findings into a spreadsheet-like document,” reported John Solomon of The Hill.146 The spreadsheet was nearly empty of proof with “upward of 90 percent of the dossier’s claims to be either wrong, nonverifiable or open-source intelligence found with a Google search.”147 This appears to be accurate based on all we know and confirmed by the conclusions in The Mueller Report. That means that when the FBI launched its investigation on July 31, 2016, it had no credible evidence to justify the probe. When the FBI and DOJ obtained a warrant to spy on Page in October 2016, its “verified” information presented to the FISA court was not only deficient but untruthful. It also means that when Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel in May 2017, there was an insufficient basis under federal regulations to do so. This will be explored in more detail in chapter 5.
The law safeguards US citizens, including political candidates for public office, from overzealous FBI officials. Under the agency’s own operating guidelines, authorized by statutory law, agents are given a stern warning:
These Guidelines do not authorize investigating or collecting or maintaining information on United States persons solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment or the lawful exercise of other rights secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States.148
As the Republican nominee for president, Trump was lawfully exercising a fundamental right guaranteed under Article II of the Constitution: running for office. Nearly every aspect of his campaign was also protected by the First Amendment’s free speech clause. The evidence is persuasive that the FBI abridged those rights in violation of the law.
There is also compelling evidence that Papadopoulos was unfairly and illegally targeted because of his association with Trump. It is unlawful for a government agent to misuse his or her position of power to investigate someone for either personal or political reasons. Is that what happened? Consider the chilling account given by Papadopoulos of what happened on July 27, 2017, the day he was arrested:
They handcuffed me and shackled my ankles. I spotted the two agents who had interviewed me months earlier in Chicago. When I asked them what was going on, I got no answer. When I repeated my question, another agent sneered, “This is what happens when you work for Trump.”149
If that truly occurred, every American should be frightened at the unbridled and pernicious power of his or her own government.
To those who might be tempted to conclude that Papadopoulos is a crooked character who pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the FBI, you should consider reading the rest of his alarming chronicle of how he was treated by interrogators at the FBI and lawyers on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team. In one session, he was subjected to seven hours of intimidation, harassment, and threats as prosecutors pressured him to lie to make their case. He told them, “I don’t understand . . . it’s as if you’re trying to implant a memory in my mind of something that never happened.”150 Indeed they were. That’s how unprincipled and unscrupulous prosecutors work. It should be a crime. That unconscionable treatment of George Papadopoulos will be explored in greater depth in a later chapter.
Papadopoulos may have been the classic “patsy” who was chosen to hold the bag. It could have been anyone in Trump’s orbit, but it appears he was picked because he was, by his own admission, young, inexperienced, and gullible. He could be easily manipulated and framed; he wouldn’t know any better. He was the perfect dupe. Blaming him was the ideal cover as the FBI exploited the phony “dossier” to frame Trump.
For all the spying that Halper and others did, they secured no incriminating evidence. Halper met with Papadopoulos, Page, and Clovis. He tried his level best to obtain something of value for his employer, the FBI. All he got was evidence of innocence. But that did not deter the Bureau one iota. It seemed to inspire Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, and Bruce Ohr at the DOJ. They accelerated their efforts to damage Trump.
Barr Demands Answers
Attorney General William Barr was right: spying on the Trump campaign most certainly occurred. The FBI’s undercover informant, Halper, began his work well before the Trump investigation was initiated in late July 2016. Before that date, he was meeting with Carter Page, snooping for something that could be used against Clinton’s opponent. Journalist Glenn Greenwald concluded that this “suggests that CIA operatives, apparently working with at least some factions within the FBI, were trying to gather information about the Trump campaign earlier than had been previously reported.”151 It wasn’t just Comey’s FBI that had targeted Trump, but likely John Brennan’s CIA. This is a reasonable theory, given Halper’s decades-long work for the CIA. As Greenwald explained, “Halper was responsible for a long-forgotten spying scandal involving the 1980 election” in which the CIA spied on President Jimmy Carter’s administration, passing classified information to Reagan’s campaign team.152 Fast forward thirty-six years and Halper was at it again. Old spy habits die hard. Or not at all.
Witch Hunt Page 15