Washington<\/p>\n
Special Counsel Robert Mueller recommended in a court filing on Friday that a judge sentence former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos to up to six months in prison for lying to federal agents investigating whether Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.<\/p>\n
Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October to lying to FBI agents and is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 7.<\/p>\n
According to Mueller\u2019s sentencing memorandum to the judge, Papadopoulos lied about his contacts with people who claimed to have ties to top Russian officials, including his meeting with a professor who said Russia had \u201cdirt\u201d on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe defendant\u2019s crime was serious and caused damage to the government\u2019s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election,\u201d Mueller\u2019s memo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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,\u201d Mueller said.<\/p>\n
Mueller said the government believed a sentence of up to six months in prison was \u201cappropriate and warranted\u201d along with a fine of $9,500.<\/p>\n
Papadopoulos unwittingly played a key role in triggering the FBI investigation into possible collusion between Trump\u2019s campaign in Russia, which the president repeatedly has denounced as a \u201cwitch hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n
While drinking at a London bar in May 2016, he told the Australian ambassador to Great Britain that the Russians had hacked thousands of emails that could damage Clinton\u2019s presidential campaign.<\/p>\n
When the emails began appearing publicly two months later, the envoy, Alexander Downer, told U.S. diplomats about what Papadopoulos had said, according to U.S. officials familiar with the events.<\/p>\n
Muller also told the judge that Papadopoulos had not fully cooperated with prosecutors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington Special Counsel Robert Mueller recommended in a court filing on Friday that a judge sentence former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos to up to six months in prison for lying to federal agents investigating whether Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October to lying to FBI agents and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39458,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39456\/revisions\/39458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}