George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign aide whose overseas interactions set in motion a series of events that triggered the FBI's Russia investigation in 2016, is slated to interview with House investigators on Oct. 25, his lawyer Caroline Polisi confirmed Friday.
The voluntary interview, part of a GOP-driven investigation into the FBI's handling of the Russia probe, will come less than two weeks before the midterm elections and is likely to provide more fodder for Republicans who have accused former officials at the bureau of letting anti-Trump sentiment fuel the investigation. The probe is being led by a task force run by Republican leaders of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees.
In his appearance, Papadopoulos is all-but-certain to echo the concerns Republicans have raised. Though he pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI and expressed remorse to a judge in order to win a reduced two week sentence, he's since lashed out at the bureau and Western intelligence agencies who he accuses of setting him up.
Papadopoulos' defense team who handled his guilty plea have rejected that contention and said there wasn't even a whiff of misconduct by prosecutors or law enforcement officials — they would've readily called out the bureau for misconduct if they saw evidence, Papadopoulos' lawyer Thomas Breen argued after his sentencing last month.
But Papadopoulos and his wife, Simona Mangiante, have raised increasingly pointed questions about whether encounters with suspect figures overseas as well as an outed FBI source suggest a Western conspiracy to entrap him and implicate the Trump campaign.
Papadopoulos was tapped as part of Trump's campaign foreign policy team in the spring of 2016 after a stint on the campaign of Ben Carson. Papadopoulos met in London with a Russia-linked professor, Joseph Mifsud, who allegedly informed him that Russians had thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails. Papadopoulos later revealed aspects of that conversation to an Australian diplomat, who passed on the tip to U.S. officials.
When the FBI questioned Papadopoulos about his interactions with Mifsud, he admitted he misled them about the timing of the exchange. The FBI has asserted that it missed a chance to question Mifsud because of Papadopoulos' false statements. The judge in the matter, U.S. District Court Judge Randy Moss, agreed to shorten Papadopoulos' sentence to two weeks after suggesting he felt genuine remorse about his lies. It's unclear when his sentence will begin.
Since his sentencing though, Papadopoulos has been on a tear against Western Intelligence agencies who he's argued tried to entrap him. He's suggested that despite what special counsel Robert Mueller's team asserted in court, Mifsud was really linked to western agencies and that the British and Australian intelligence services were in league to sabotage Trump. He also pointed to his campaign-year brushes with Stefan Halper, who was outed earlier this year as a longtime FBI source.
"The attempt to discredit my wife and I before my testimony on capitol hill has reached a fever pitch. Someone is nervous," Papadopoulos tweeted Thursday. "I think America was smart enough to realize that someone who has never knowingly met a Russian official in their life never could have colluded. Fake news."
His recent comments were at odds with Breen, who told reporters last month that there was no evidence Papadopoulos was set up.
"Our firm would in a second stand up if we saw prosecutorial or governmental misconduct. We have seen no such thing," Breen said in response to a question from POLITICO at a brief news conference after the sentencing. "We have seen no entrapment. We have seen no set-up by U.S. intelligence people. … Everything we saw, they've been on the square."
Polisi said Papadopoulos is still in talks with other congressional committees about providing testimony but is primarily focused on testifying to the House panels for now.
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